A Personal Journey of Gratitude
Before I share this story of Ukrainian heritage in Canada, I must acknowledge the profound gift I have received from my Canadian family. When I came to Canada in 2004 to study for my Master of Social Work at the University of Manitoba, I could never have imagined the depth of love and support that awaited me.
To my Canadian Mama and Canadian family who opened their hearts and homes to me – you transformed what could have been a lonely immigrant journey into a celebration of belonging. You didn’t just welcome me; you embraced me completely, allowing me to enjoy every moment of my time in Winnipeg. You made it possible for me to complete both my MSW and PhD at the University of Manitoba, supporting my academic dreams with unwavering encouragement and practical help.
Your kindness made Winnipeg truly my Canadian home – a place where I could grow both as a scholar and as a person learning to navigate the beautiful complexity of being Canadian-Ukrainian. Even now, as I reside on Secwépemc Territory in Kamloops and work to serve this community, you continue to support me every single day with your friendship, wisdom, and unconditional love.
You showed me that family is not just about blood or birthplace – it’s about the people who choose to walk alongside you, celebrate your victories, and lift you up during challenges. My own research on Ukrainian immigration adaptation documented the struggles many newcomers face, but my personal experience, thanks to you, was one of joy, growth, and profound belonging.
To my Canadian Mama and family – you are living proof that Canada’s promise of welcome and opportunity becomes real through genuine human compassion. Thank you for making my journey to becoming Canadian-Ukrainian not just possible, but a source of profound joy and gratitude that I carry with me every day.
Imagine you are born in a village in Galicia or Bukovyna in the 1870s. Around you, endless fields of wheat and barley stretch to the horizon, but none of it belongs to your family. Your father works someone else’s land, your mother spins wool by candlelight, and your siblings crowd into a single room where the walls are thick with smoke from the clay stove.
The Austrian Empire rules over you with an iron fist. Your Ukrainian language is suppressed, your Orthodox or Greek Catholic faith barely tolerated. Taxes devour what little your family earns, and the promise of owning even a small plot of land seems as distant as the stars.
Then comes 1891. A stranger arrives in your village with stories that sound like fairy tales – vast prairies across the ocean where land is free. Free homesteads of 160 acres for anyone willing to work them. Dr. Józef Oleskiw and Cyril Genik speak of a place called Canada, where Ukrainian settlers like Wasyl Eleniak and Ivan Pylypiv have already made their mark.
The Journey Across the Ocean
You sell everything – your few possessions, your mother’s wedding ring, even the family cow. The steamship ticket costs more money than your family sees in three years, but somehow you scrape it together. You are nineteen, alone, carrying a cloth bag with black bread, a change of clothes, and your grandmother’s prayer book.
The ship is hell. Packed into steerage with hundreds of others, you sleep on bare wooden planks. The smell of vomit, unwashed bodies, and fear fills the air. Children cry constantly. Adults pray in languages you’ve never heard. For two weeks, you exist on watery soup and stale biscuits while the Atlantic tosses the ship like a toy.
When you finally see the shores of Halifax, your legs barely hold you up. Immigration officers bark questions in English – a language that sounds like gravel in your mouth. They spray you with disinfectant, examine your eyes, check your hands for calluses to prove you’re a worker, not a burden.
Then comes the train journey west. For days, you watch an endless landscape roll past the window – forests that seem to stretch forever, lakes bigger than entire counties back home, and finally, the prairies. Flat land that goes to the edge of the world, with sky so vast it makes you dizzy.
Homesteading on Indigenous Land
The train stops at a wooden platform in the middle of nowhere. This is your new home – or rather, this is where you must make a home. The Canadian government official hands you papers written in English, points to a section of land, and walks away. You stand alone under that enormous sky, holding your cloth bag, looking at 160 acres of grass and wondering what you’ve done.
But this land you’re given was not empty. It was home to the Cree, Blackfoot, Métis, and other Indigenous peoples for thousands of years before any European ever set foot here. The Canadian government first took this land through treaties that Indigenous communities had little choice but to sign, often not understanding the full implications. Now, that same government offers it “free” to settlers like you, part of their plan to populate the West and assimilate Indigenous peoples into Canadian society.
The Indigenous peoples you occasionally encounter are often kind despite everything – sharing knowledge about surviving harsh winters, showing you which plants are edible, teaching you how to preserve meat. Their generosity stands in stark contrast to the government policies designed to erase their cultures and confine them to reserves.
Building a Life from Nothing
Your first winter nearly kills you. You live in a burrow dug into the side of a hill – a burdei – with walls of sod and a roof of branches and mud. When the temperature drops to forty below, your breath forms ice crystals that fall like snow inside your underground home. You burn dried grass and cow dung for fuel because there are no trees for miles.
The work is backbreaking. Breaking prairie sod with a wooden plow behind borrowed oxen. Your hands bleed, your back screams, and every muscle in your body aches. But slowly, impossibly, you create something. A field of wheat. A small wooden house. A barn for the livestock you’ve saved every penny to buy.
You write letters home in Ukrainian, describing this strange new world to your family. You tell them about the endless sky, the bitter cold, the way the wind never stops howling across the plains. But you also tell them about the first green shoots of wheat pushing through the soil, about the pride of owning your own land, about the dream that your children will have chances you never had.
Community in Isolation
Other Ukrainian families settle nearby. Together, you build a church with an onion dome that looks like home against the alien landscape. You establish a school where children learn Ukrainian alongside English. On Sundays, the sound of liturgical singing carries across the prairie, a bridge between the old world and the new.
The Ukrainian women become the backbone of these communities. They preserve traditional foods, teach folk songs to their children, maintain the customs that give meaning to life in this harsh place. They deliver each other’s babies, tend the sick, and keep Ukrainian culture alive in a land that wants to make them disappear into the Canadian melting pot.
British Columbia’s Different Struggles
For those who venture further west to British Columbia, the challenges are different but no less daunting. The mountains and forests offer beauty but also isolation. Ukrainian families in BC work in lumber mills, mines, and salmon canneries. They face not only the physical dangers of industrial work but also discrimination from established communities who see them as foreign, Orthodox, and undesirable.
In BC’s remote logging camps and mining towns, Ukrainian workers endure twelve-hour days in dangerous conditions for wages barely sufficient to survive. They send what little they can back to families in Ukraine or save for the day they can bring their wives and children to join them in this new land.
The Great War and Internment
Then comes 1914, and the world explodes again. Canada declares war on Austria-Hungary – your former homeland – which makes you an “enemy alien” overnight. The same government that invited you to settle their prairies now views you with suspicion.
Thousands of Ukrainian-Canadians, along with other immigrants from Austria-Hungary and Germany, are stripped of their rights. Many are forced into internment camps – including some in British Columbia at Fernie, Revelstoke, and Mara Lake. You watch as neighbors disappear in the night, arrested for the crime of being born in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In these camps, men who came to Canada seeking freedom find themselves behind barbed wire, forced to build roads and clear land for a dollar a day. Their families, left without providers, struggle to maintain farms and businesses. The Ukrainian community learns a bitter lesson about how quickly acceptance can turn to persecution.
The internment camps operate on the same principle as the reserve system imposed on Indigenous peoples – the government’s solution to populations they consider problematic is confinement and forced labor. Both communities understand what it means to be seen as foreign in a land they helped build.
Survival and Resilience
But you endure. Ukrainian-Canadians always endure. Through the Great Depression, when wheat prices collapse and drought turns your fields to dust. Through the Second World War, when your sons fight for Canada against the land of their grandfathers. Through decades of being told to speak English, to abandon your customs, to become “real Canadians.”
The Ukrainian community in BC grows slowly but steadily. Churches rise in Vancouver and New Westminster. Cultural halls echo with the sounds of traditional music. Saturday schools teach Ukrainian to children born in Canada but determined not to forget where they came from.
Preserving Heritage Against All Odds
Through it all – the backbreaking labor, the discrimination, the forced assimilation – Ukrainian-Canadians preserve their heritage. Grandmothers teach granddaughters to embroider traditional patterns. Fathers pass down folk songs to sons. Communities organize festivals where the smell of pyrohy and kovbasa mingles with prairie wind or Pacific mist.
The Ukrainian Cultural Centre of Vancouver, established in the 1960s, becomes a beacon for preserving traditions. Dance groups perform at festivals, choirs sing ancient melodies, and language schools ensure that Ukrainian words continue to be spoken in Canadian mouths. In churches across BC, from Vancouver to Prince George, liturgies continue in Ukrainian, maintaining spiritual connections to ancestral homeland.
Recognition at Last
And now, in 2025, something remarkable happens. The Government of British Columbia officially proclaims September 7th as Ukrainian Heritage Day. This recognition comes at a moment when Ukraine once again fights for its survival, when the world watches young Ukrainians defend their homeland with the same courage their great-grandparents showed in building new lives on Canadian prairies.
Today, as we celebrate this inaugural Ukrainian Heritage Day, we gather on the traditional territory of the Secwépemc Nation in Kamloops – a place where the Thompson River has flowed for millennia, where Indigenous peoples have lived, worked, and preserved their culture for countless generations. It is here, on Secwépemc land, that we honor both the Ukrainian journey to Canada and the Indigenous peoples who have been the stewards of this territory since time immemorial.
This proclamation honors not just the Ukrainian pioneers who arrived in 1891, but all those who followed – the farmers who turned prairie grass into wheat fields, the workers who cut BC timber and mined its mountains, the families who preserved their culture while contributing to Canada’s multicultural mosaic.
Gratitude and Acknowledgment
Today, as we celebrate Ukrainian Heritage Day in British Columbia on the traditional territory of the Secwépemc Nation, we must acknowledge a fundamental truth: Ukrainian-Canadians built their new lives on land that was first home to Indigenous peoples. The Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, Secwépemc, and dozens of other nations welcomed Ukrainian newcomers, often sharing knowledge and resources despite the injustices they themselves faced from colonial policies.
Here in Kamloops, on Secwépemc territory where the rivers converge and the grasslands stretch toward distant mountains, we give special thanks to the Secwépemc people who have been the guardians of this land for thousands of years. Their deep knowledge of this territory – how to survive its winters, where to find medicinal plants, how to read the patterns of wildlife – has been passed down through generations, preserving not just the land but the wisdom of how to live in harmony with it.
The free homesteads that gave Ukrainian families their start came at the cost of Indigenous displacement. The same government policies that opened opportunities for Ukrainian settlement simultaneously worked to suppress Indigenous cultures, languages, and ways of life. This parallel experience of cultural preservation under pressure creates a bond between communities that continues today.
As we honor Ukrainian heritage, we must also thank all Indigenous peoples of Canada who, despite centuries of colonial oppression, showed kindness and hospitality to newcomers seeking refuge and opportunity. Their generosity, extended even as their own lands and rights were being taken away, deserves recognition and gratitude. The Secwépemc Nation, like Indigenous peoples across Canada, has preserved their culture, language, and connection to the land through generations of adversity – a resilience that Ukrainian-Canadians deeply understand and respect.
The Legacy Lives On
From Wasyl Eleniak’s first steps onto Canadian soil in 1891 to Ivan Pylypiv’s pioneering settlement, from the anonymous families who survived prairie winters in sod houses to the modern Ukrainian-Canadians who maintain cultural centers and Saturday schools – this is a story of extraordinary resilience.
The Ukrainian-Canadian community in British Columbia today stands as testimony to what immigrants can accomplish when given opportunity, even under the most challenging circumstances. They built farms from wilderness, businesses from nothing, and communities from shared struggle and hope.
As we mark Ukrainian Heritage Day on September 7th, we remember not just the achievements, but the cost. We honor not just the success stories, but the countless individuals who didn’t survive the journey, who broke under the pressure, who disappeared into unmarked graves on the prairie or in BC’s forests.
And we acknowledge that this heritage – preserved through generations of hardship, discrimination, and forced assimilation – now enriches all of Canada. The traditions brought from Galicia and Bukovyna, sustained through prairie winters and internment camps, celebrated in community halls from Vancouver to Dawson Creek, have become part of the Canadian story.
To everyone who preserved Ukrainian heritage in British Columbia – who taught the language, maintained the customs, built the churches, organized the festivals, and refused to let their culture disappear – thank you. To all Ukrainian-Canadians who have made BC their home while keeping their ancestral traditions alive through generations of challenge and change – your dedication has enriched this province immeasurably. Your stubborn insistence on remembering where you came from while building something new where you are has made both Ukraine and Canada richer.
And to all Indigenous peoples who have preserved these lands for generations, who maintained their connection to the territory despite every attempt to sever it, who shared their knowledge with newcomers even as their own rights were denied – thank you. Your stewardship of this land made it possible for Ukrainian families and countless others to build new lives. Your resilience in preserving your own cultures provides an example that Ukrainian-Canadians honor and respect.
In recognizing Ukrainian Heritage Day here on Secwépemc territory, British Columbia acknowledges that being Canadian doesn’t mean forgetting who you were before you arrived. It means adding your story to the great multicultural narrative that defines this nation, while always remembering and thanking those who made space for you to tell it – both the Indigenous peoples who have been here since time immemorial and all who continue to preserve their heritage on this shared land.
A Historic Day for British Columbia
Today marks a milestone in British Columbia’s history. The proclamation of September 7th as Ukrainian Heritage Day represents more than recognition – it represents the province’s commitment to honoring all the communities that have contributed to its rich tapestry. To everyone who worked tirelessly to make this day a reality – the Ukrainian-Canadian Congress, community leaders, elected officials, and countless volunteers – your dedication has written a new chapter in BC’s story.
To the Ukrainian-Canadian community who never gave up hope that their contributions would be formally recognized, to the allies who supported this cause, and to the Government of British Columbia for taking this historic step – thank you for ensuring that Ukrainian heritage is now permanently part of our province’s official calendar.
This day belongs to every Ukrainian-Canadian family who made British Columbia their home, every child who will now learn about Ukrainian contributions in school, and every future generation who will benefit from this formal recognition. You have made Ukrainian Heritage Day not just a celebration, but a lasting part of British Columbia’s identity.
Academic Reflection
As I reflect on this history as someone who came to Canada in 2004 to study for my Master of Social Work, worked on Mi’kmaq territory in Halifax from 2014, and since 2016 have been serving on Secwépemc lands here in Kamloops, I am reminded that the immigrant experience continues to evolve. My own MSW thesis, “An exploratory study of fourth wave Ukrainian immigration in Winnipeg: problems and perspectives of immigrants’ adaptation” (2008), documented the ongoing challenges and resilience of Ukrainian newcomers in the 21st century.
Further Reading and Resources
For those interested in learning more about Ukrainian-Canadian history and the immigrant experience, I recommend exploring:
From my thesis research:
- Kondrashov, O. (2008). An exploratory study of fourth wave Ukrainian immigration in Winnipeg: problems and perspectives of immigrants’ adaptation. Master’s thesis, University of Manitoba. Available at: https://mspace.lib.umanitoba.ca/items/77532cf5-f9c7-45fc-90ff-184e6b15ef84
- The Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Centre in Winnipeg, which houses extensive archives and resources
- The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta
- Works by scholars like Orest Martynowych, Frances Swyripa, and Stella Hryniuk
Key academic sources:
- Martynowych, O. (1991). Ukrainians in Canada: The Formative Period, 1891-1924
- Swyripa, F. (1993). Wedded to the Cause: Ukrainian-Canadian Women and Diaspora Identity 1891-1991
- Darcovich, W. & Yuzyk, P. (1980). A Statistical Compendium on Ukrainians in Canada, 1891-1976
For contemporary immigration research:
- The work of Jeffrey Reitz on immigrant skill utilization and labor market integration
- Statistics Canada’s immigrant settlement and integration studies
- Local Ukrainian-Canadian Congress archives and community documentation
These resources provide deeper insight into both the historical foundations and contemporary realities of Ukrainian life in Canada, continuing the important work of documenting and preserving these experiences for future generations.
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