UCPBA

TALK TO YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT JOINING:

Let them know about the benefits of membership, the fun of being a member and the potential for community service.

NEWSLETTER & MEMBERSHIP DIRECTORY

MEMBER EVENTS

• Speaker’s Dinners

• Golf Tournament

• Annual Barbeque

• Christmas Dinner

• Historical Walking Tours

• Crafts Workshops & More

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

• Yearly SCHOLARSHIPS: designed to assist undergraduates

• IVAN FRANKO LECTURE: Done in cooperation with the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa, this annual lecture brings the best of academic research on Ukraine and Ukrainians in Canada to Ottawa.

• THE RAMON HNATYSHYN MEMORIAL LECTURE: Also run with the Chair, this occasional  series takes advantage of high-calibre academics, politicians and others passing through Ottawa.

• DAVID BURLIUK EXHIBIT. He was the founder of the Futurist Movement in art and literature in Eastern Europe before the First World War,  We have been working the Winnipeg Art Gallery to do the show
  
  SO WHO ARE WE, REALLY? 
       We’re a service group, bringing together business persons & professionals with disparate political, religious and generational origins and viewpoints in the service of Ottawa’s Ukrainian-Canadian community.  We work hard, but also like to enjoy ourselves.  If you want to be part of the most dynamic group in the Ukrainian community of Ottawa, fill in the membership form and mail it in, along with your first year’s dues.

WHY JOIN THE BOARD?

You get to be one of the people who run the most active Ukrainian community association in Ottawa: one that serves the whole community. As a member at large, you get practice in running a whole range of events and projects, in teamwork, in administering a community service organization, in lobbying and a whole host of other areas.

Don’t worry, the whole pile doesn’t get dropped in your lap on the first day! You’ll work on a project or event of your choice, along with an experienced Board member who’ll show you the ropes.

Got an idea? Do you want to do something in the community, but don’t know how to get started? UCPBA(O) can offer you an organizational home and help. Convince the Board it’s a good idea and we’ll give you a hand.

If you’re interested, call anyone of the members of the Nominating Committee: Bob Seychuk, Ron Sorobey or Borys Gengalo. Their contact info is in your membership directory.

2007 : Some members of the UCPBA Ottawa Board at their final meeting before the Annual General Meeting

Find the membership form on:

http://www.infoukes.com/ucpbaott/docs/mem_appl.htm

POTENTIAL EVENTS FOR 2008-09

• Historical Walking Tour

• Ukrainian Independence Day (at the Royal Oak)

• An Evening with a Ukrainian Canadian Opera Star

• Wine Tour of Prince Edward County

• Christmas Dinner (including awards, scholarship and more!)

• Road Trip to the Trypillian Exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum

• Hnatyshyn Lecture

• Franko Lecture

• AGM/BBQ

And: WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?

LISTEN TO OTTAWA’S UKRAINIAN RADIO

NEW TIMES 
TWO OPPORTUNITIES TO LISTEN EVERY WEEK

 SUNDAY 6PM-7PM TUESDAY 10PM-11PM.   

the Ottawa Ukrainian radio program on CHIN CJLL 97.9 FM
(In Ukrainian and English)

Eclectic music/information/events

can also be heard live via the Internet at 

http://www.chinradio.com/ottawa979.html

Producer and Host: Irena Bell
 

Irena Bell, formerly, President of the Ukrainian Canadian Professional and Business Association provides Ukrainian listeners with a variety of information and music. Irena is truly plugged in to her community and has a keen sense of what's of interest to her audience; with grace and a compelling sound, she provides her community with an excellent program.

• Tired of those long silences at family Sunday dinners?

• Don’t want to listen to your teenager’s grunted answers?

• Instead, fill your sonic space with lively bilingual radio, music and stories and get back to enjoying Sunday dinner!

EVENTS

25 NOVEMBER Moved to JANUARY

Hnatyshyn Lecture : How the Government came to support the ‘Holodomor as genocide’ resolution
 

DECEMBER

Awards, Scholarships & more! At the Villa Marconi
 

FEBRUARY

The Ukrainian Canadian Professional and Business Federation biennial convention Calgary
 

UCPBA (Ottawa) SCHOLARSHIPS

Do you know a student who needs help in paying for their education ?
We’ve given out 13 scholarships in the past eight years, close to $15,000 worth,
to help deserving students complete their education, to help build our community
The odds of getting a scholarship from UCPBA(O) tend to be a lot better
than from most other sources, so encourage applications!

Tell them to go to our website: http://www.infoukes.com/ucpbaott/scholar.htm
As well, check out the list of previous winners:
 

REMEMBERANCE DAY

• UCPBA(O) MEMBERS Major Michael T. Baran (recently returned from Afghanistan) and Victoria Karpiak lay a commemorative wreath, sponsored by our association, during Remembrance Day ceremonies at Canada’s National Military Cemetery, within the confines of Beechwood Cemetery. In addition to senior representative from DND, a large parade contingent of service members, a military band and a children’s choir, over 3,000 members of the general public attended.
   

• On the initiative of Ron Sorobey, UCPBA(O) has been laying a wreath for close to 15 years at the National War Memorial, during the commemorative ceremonies on Remembrance Day. This year we decided to add a second wreath at the National Military Cemetery.

• During the 10 nights leading up to Remembrance Day the names of all the men and women who died in the Canadian Armed Forces were projected onto the National War memorial and oat other sites across Canada and in London.
  
  Onufre Belik came from the province of Podilia in Ukraine. He was a labourer at the time he joined the 137^th Overseas Battalion (Alberta Regiment) of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in Calgary 15 Feb, 1916. Belik died in battle 28 April 1917, just after the Battle of Vimy Ridge. Private Belik has no known grave, so his name has been inscribed on the Vimy Memorial.

 In the foreground, spotlighted, you can see the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

OUR MEMBERS

• Robert Sibley, partner of UCPBA(O) member Margret Kopala, has been awarded second place in the Templeton Religion Writer of the Year competition. The award is given for ‘Excellence in enterprise reporting and versatility in the field of religion in the general circulation news media’. The award is managed by the Religion Newswriters Association and is funded by the Sir John Templeton Foundation.
  Robert is Senior Writer with the Ottawa Citizen. In 2006 he won the Templeton Religion Story of the Year prize for his series ‘The Way of the Shikoku’, in 2001 the George W. Cornell Award for his series dedicated to the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage.
  Incidentally, you’ve probably seen Margret’s by-line on the editorial pages of the Citizen as well. She writes a regular column on Western Canada. You can see previous columns on her website:

http://www.margretkopala.com
 

• Our secret gossip column reporter (Vicki Karpiak) informs us that David Lupul and Myra have just come back from their Foreign Affairs posting in Los Angeles.  David says that he will not take any more postings and are nicely settling back into Ottawa life. 
   

• Welcome back to Larissa Smorang, who has returned from her studies at Queen’s and has taken up a position as policy analyst at Human Resources and Social Development Canada (HRSDC).
   

• Kudos to Walter Weslowski on his organization of the memorial service for those Ukrainians, in various armies, who died defending Ukraine and Canada. The service was held after each Mass at St John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic National Shrine on the 9^th of November. Among UCPBA(O) former members of the Forces participating were Anne Marie Weslowski, Borys Gengalo, Brigadier-General Joseph Romanow (the winner of our Filip Knowal Award for Lifetime Achievement in the service of the Ukrainian-Canadian community, in 2006) and Lieutenant-Colonel Mary Romanow (who is a serving officer in the Canadian Air Force). Colour-bearers (flag carriers) were two youths from PLAST Ukrainian Youth Association. Honorary colour-bearers were BGen (Ret’d) Joe Romanow and BGen (Ret’d) Isidore Popowich. On a related note: some of you may remember that it was Walter, a number of years ago, who rediscovered the location of Filip Konowal’s grave at Notre Dame Cemetery.
   

• Congratulations to Andriy Sawchuk. The dust from the election having settled, he now finds himself moved from the office of the minister at Human Resources Social Development Canada to the position of Senior Special Assistant for the Hon. James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages. At 32, Mr. Moore is, apparently, the youngest minister ever appointed to the federal cabinet.

SHEPTYTSKY COLONY

Quebec : 1928-1935

Father Jean and settlers in front of monastery building, Sheptetski, 1935.
Third from right is Natalia Andrusyshyn, to the right, her husband Philip.
 

The headstone is that of their daughter, Marusia, who died in 1942 at the age of two months.
 

A general view of part of the cemetery.

     At one time a whole host of small Ukrainian communities clung to the edges of the Canadian Shield across Canada, on the resource frontier. Most have disappeared. Myron brings us the story of one.

     On September 10, 2008, I drove with a friend from high school, north from Val D’Or to Lac Castagnier. I wanted to visit the site of a Ukrainian agricultural community established by Fr. Josaphat Jean in the late 1920’s in this remote part of northwestern Quebec. The area still remains remote and can be reached by gravel roads. Fr. Jean was a French Canadian priest who decided to serve the Ukrainian community in Canada, converted to the Ukrainian Catholic Church, learned Ukrainian in Halychyna and took a prominent role in Ukrainian diplomacy at the end of the First World War in western Ukraine and other parts of Europe.

     Father Josephat Jean returned to Canada and in 1925, he began preparations to establish a Ukrainian agricultural colony called ‘Sheptytsky’ approximately 25 miles north of Amos, Quebec. Fr. Jean named this settlement after Archbishop Andriy Sheptytsky, head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Lviv. He had examined potential sites in northern Alberta but felt that the Abitibi region had the best prospects. The colony was intended for Ukrainian immigrants from Bosnia (former Yugoslavia) and from Halychyna or Galicia (western Ukraine under Polish administration). He received a large grant of land of 300 square miles from the Quebec provincial government which was surveyed by January, 1927. In Ottawa, the Cabinet awarded a grant of $250.00 by Order-in-Council on 25 June, 1927 to Father Jean "for hostel to accommodate Ukrainian settlers arriving at proposed settlement at Lake Castagnier, PQ." By November, 1928, he built a two-storey building approximately 30 feet by 60 feet to serve as a monastery and also, about a dozen houses were built for the perspective new settlers.

     In August, 1929, the first two Ukrainian families arrived. In the next year, he began to settle Ukrainian families from Montreal and new arrivals from Europe. Some families which had earlier settled in Kazabazua moved to Lac Castagnier. He had great plans for this colony which he envisaged as a future center of Ukrainian life in eastern Canada with a Studite Monastery, school, cooperative, Ukrainian library and museum. However, the isolation of the area, the long winters and short growing seasons, the coming of the Depression in 1929-30 stopped further settlement and limited the number of new Ukrainian farmers. The pioneers began to leave for other parts of Canada and in 1931, there were only 52 Ukrainians in the colony. Fr. Jean left Sheptytsky for Montreal where he was a parish priest. During the Second World War, he was the parish priest of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Ottawa.

     On 10 August, 1935, the area was settled by the first French Canadian families mostly from the Montreal area. This was part of the land settlement program to assist unemployed from the urban centers. On 12 April, 1939, a fire destroyed the original building built by Father Jean as a monastery. With the building, Father Jean`s library of rare books from Ukraine was also destroyed although a rare Bible was rescued by one of the settlers. During the Second World War, at least one member served in the Canadian Army in Europe. The husband of another member was shot down over France in 1944 while serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force.

     The small community continued to survive and maintained contacts with the Ukrainian community in Val D’Or. One of the Ukrainian families owned the local store and on Saturday evenings, the counters were moved and dances were held. Movies were also shown to local audiences. From the early 1950’s the Ukrainian Catholic parish priest from Val D’Or visited this remote community and individual families would attend social functions in Val D’Or. With time, families moved to Val D’Or, Amos and to other large centers.

     After the Second World War, one of these families sponsored a Ukrainian immigrant family from Europe. Stanley Klosevych and his family arrived in Lac Castagnier and after a short stay moved to Toronto. The last few Ukrainian families continued to farm in the area until the 1970`s. Some stayed ‘for nostalgic reasons’ while others enjoyed the independent life in this remote part of Quebec because, as one settler said, “… we lived as Cossacks in days of old.”

     In 1991, one family still farmed in the area of the original settlement. Today there are a few homes with only two or three permanent Quebecois families. Almost all of the French Canadian families had also moved away. There are still two buildings occupied during the summer by descendants of the original Ukrainian settlers. The French Canadian Roman Catholic Church has been demolished and a picnic area was constructed. The local cemetery has several Ukrainian tombstones. A local road was named after one of the original Ukrainian settlers, Chemin Kurello.

     We had good weather during this trip and returned to Val D’Or through Spirit Lake near Amos. This is the site of a proposed museum dedicated to the internment camp which held large numbers of Ukrainians during the First World War.

     The name `Sheptytsky` remains on a few old maps of northwestern Quebec indicating the location of the original settlement. Also, for historical reasons, the founding of the Sheptytsky colony rather than the opening of the internment camp in Spirit Lake near Amos during the First World War is considered as the beginning of the Ukrainian community in Abitibi.
 

2008 CUPP Internship

UCPBA(O) member Borys Gengalo (seated, as usual) guided the CUPP interns on walking tour of Ottawa.
Yes, it’s come to the point where your Beloved Editor© has to search overseas to find an audience!

UCPBA(O) member (and retired Associate Deputy Minister) Paul Migus (standing)
invited the Canada Ukraine Parliamentary program (CUPP) interns
to his home on Lac Grand for a day-long seminar on how the Canadian government works, and for a BBQ.

Re-elected MP David McGuinty (R) speaks to intern Vasyl Khomiak at the Pub Night for them sponsored by UCPBA(O).

Frank Cedar makes a point to CUPP intern Oleksander Shumsky during a reception at the Ukrainian Embassy

Nick Turinski (L) holds forth at the CUPP Interns’ Pub Evening

Members of the winning Ukraina soccer team watch in anticipation as the door prize is drawn.

At the UCPBA(O) CUPP INTERNS PUB NIGHT, Pres Bob Seychuk (R)
thanks evening organizers Markian Shulakewych and Bohdan Tomiuk for putting together a great evening.
Thanks also went to Bank Street - Sausage & Deli, 1920 Bank Street, Ottawa
for being an event co-sponsor and providing most of the prizes for the door prize draw.
 The interns won enough kobassa to last them the whole bus trip next morning to Quebec City!

You can also see our last Kobassa Competition winners : http://www.infoukes.com/ucpbaott/kobassa/kobassa.htm
 

UCPBA Ottawa MEMBER OF THE YEAR AWARD

UCPBA Ottawa FILIP KONOWAL, VC LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Go to our webpage: http://www.infoukes.com/ucpbaott/docs/awards.htm
In addition to lists of who won, you’ll see information about each award.

Nominate someone!
(You don’t have to be a member to get the Konowal Award)
How : That’s easy. Send an e-mail or letter to any member of the Past President’s Committee
Iris Bradley (Chair) ; Ron Sorobey ; Borys Gengalo
or to this email address : ucpbaottawa@infoukes.com
Be sure to include the person’s full name and at least a paragraph-long explanation of why you’re nominating them.
 

UKRAINIAN HISTORICAL CALENDAR FOR NOVEMBER

Check the last paragraph to see how you can learn more about each topic

November 1 1918 November Uprising in Lviv, 1918, Ukrainian-Polish War in Galicia, 1918–1921

November 3 1698 Cossack Hetman Petro Doroshenko dies. He tried to unite left- and Right- Bank Ukraine in alliance with the Turkish Sultan, against opposition from Poland and Moscovy.

November 6 Death of Mykola Lysenko, famous Ukrainian composer.

November 10 1838 Death of Ivan Kotliarevsky, author of the Eneiida, a satirical poem based on Virgil’s Aenied and the first work in vernacular Ukrainian.

November 16 1863 Birth of Ukrainian author Olha Kobylianska, modernist writer and activist in the women’s movement.

November 15 1918 Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky announces federation with Moscow. The Directory calls for revolt against him.

November 19 1917 First Universal of the Central Rada, proclaiming the Ukrainian National Republic.

November 16 - 23, 2008 International Holodomor Awareness Week.

November 21 1921 Red Army executes 359 Ukrainian partisans, prisoners of war from the Army of the Ukrainian National Republic, at Bazar in Volyn (see Winter Campaigns).

November 29 1778 Birth of Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko, author, playright and historian. His major service was to extend the use of vernacular Ukrainian to ‘serious’ literature.

November 30 1932 Death of Staryk and Berezynsky, members of OUN (Ukrainian abbreviation for Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists). They were in the process of ‘engaging in an act of political expropriation at a Polish post office’. Previously, Berezynsky had assassinated the Polish police comissioner of Lviv, E. Czechkowski.

To learn more about the topics in bold, go to the online Encyclopedia of Ukraine (A Canadian project!): www.encyclopediaofukraine.com and paste the text in the search engine. The Encyclopedia is continually entering more information, so don’t be surprised if something Ukrainian you’re looking for is not there yet. To see pictures related to the Encyclopedia article, click on IMAGES at the bottom of the page.
 

COMPLAINTS DEPARTMENT

     One of our hard-working Board members complained to Your Humble Editor© about what she considered to be a less-than-flattering photo of her published in this rag. It was part of the Rogues’ Gallery of Board Members from two issues ago. Unfortunately, she was not able to provide an appropriate snap herself. The mighty Editorial Staff Research Department threw itself into the task and, after more effort than they’re used to (a telephone call) came up with this stunning replacement. We trust it will silence all complaints on the issue.

     We of course are always happy to hear from our readers and react appropriately to your comments!
 

 Our e-mail address!

To assist in the electronic distribution of the newsletter, we now have a new, permanent e-mail address:
ucpbaottawa@infoukes.com
You can use it to communicate with us.