My name is Anastasiia Bykhovskaia and I'm the new reporter for Estevan Mercury Publications.
I came to Canada in 2013. And just a few months after my cold and snowy landing in Winnipeg, I got caught in between two Prairie provinces. For four years Manitoba and Saskatchewan were my two new homelands. Throughout this time I was working hard to receive my masters’ degree in the field of peace and conflict studies from the University of Manitoba, while my husband – born and raised in Saskatchewan – was waiting for me and helping me in Estevan.
Coming from Russia – a country where a smile given to a stranger is usually gets taken as something suspicious and insincere – but being a very open and friendly person, I felt welcome and happy here, where three handshakes are usually enough to reach anybody in the united networking Estevan community.
Curious and passionate, I decided to get to know Estevan – my new and my husband’s lifetime home – better. This interest, along with my long-term experience in journalism brought me to the Estevan Mercury Publications office.
In the past, I got a chance to try a lot of different jobs in the journalism field. At different stages of my life, I was a copywriter and a reporter, a news editor and a producer, a proofreader and a fashion media project chief. Working for online, television and printed media I gained a rich and diverse experience.
However, all of it happened in Saint Petersburg, where I always used the Russian language as my main and one of the favorite tools.
Now Estevan is my home and the Estevan Mercury is a brand new page in my personal and professional life. And you wouldn’t believe how excited I am to dive into the community life and to get to know people, who shared their smiles with me so many times, as well as those whom I haven’t met yet.
