From 28 to 30 October 2026, the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) at the University of Alberta marked fifty years since its founding in 1976 with the international symposium Recentring the Humanities: Ukraine and the World (Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies [CIUS], n.d.). The symposium brought scholars, community leaders and students together to reconsider the place of Ukraine and Ukrainian studies in a changing world, especially since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
The first day alone was so full that it has taken me ten days just to describe some of its joys. This post gathers them in one place: the people I met, the scholarship they carry, and the connections between Ukrainian studies and social work that kept growing in my mind as the day went on.
A Welcome at the Networking Lunch: Mariia Burtseva
When I arrived at the networking lunch, someone asked my name. Before I could answer, Mariia Burtseva said, “It is Oleksandr Kondrashov. I read his MSW thesis.” We first met years ago at a conference in Lutsk, and what a joy to find her here, after her years at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, now doing her PhD at the University of Alberta. Later, Mariia gave me a personal tour of the exhibition marking fifty years of CIUS, bringing the institute’s research, people and partnerships with Ukraine to life panel by panel. I was also glad to connect her with one of my Mitacs students, an incredible social worker from Kamloops.
An Ambassador Who Carries Ukraine in His Heart: Roman Waschuk
I had heard about pan Roman (пан, a respectful Ukrainian form of address, much like “Mr.”) from so many people, and I finally met him in person. Roman Waschuk served as Canada’s Ambassador to Ukraine from 2014 to 2019 and later as Ukraine’s Business Ombudsman (Roman Waschuk, n.d.). He is Canada’s longest-serving ambassador to Ukraine and has received the Ukrainian Canadian Congress’s Shevchenko Medal (New Pathway, n.d.).
Roman shared with me the work of the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre (UCRDC) in Toronto, including the story of Stephen (Stepan) Jaworsky, born in 1919 in Semykivtsi in Western Ukraine. Jaworsky was sentenced to eight years in the Soviet camps in 1940, released in 1941, crossed the Soviet Union to find his orphaned nephew, and enlisted in the Polish army as the only way out. He later served as a Polish Air Force navigator and an Allied interpreter, and in Canada, as a federal public servant, he was one of the officials who drew up Canada’s Multiculturalism policy in 1971 (DokUCentre UCRDC, 2026). His 1989 interview, recorded by UCRDC’s Iroida Wynnyckyj, is now shared with its audio, transcripts and a map of his journey.
Discovering More of Ukraine’s Peoples: Janush Panchenko and Anna Antonova
Janush Panchenko, from Kakhovka in southern Ukraine, opened my eyes to the Roma people of Ukraine from inside the community. A Romani language translator and voice whose career has included work for the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies and Swedish Radio, Janush traces how Romani words travelled for a thousand years from the Indian subcontinent to Europe. I learned that some Roma communities have lived on Ukrainian lands for centuries and are part of Ukraine’s story, and I have decided to include Roma people of Ukraine in my upcoming series.
Anna Antonova of the University of Alberta, originally from Donetsk, taught me a word I had never heard: Urums (урум, urum). The Urums are Greek Orthodox people who speak a Turkic language and whose identity formed in Crimea between the 13th and 17th centuries. After the Russian Empire annexed Crimea, Catherine the Great ordered the Greeks of the peninsula to resettle in the North Azov region around Mariupol, in today’s Donetsk Oblast (Urums, n.d.). I was born in Lviv and have studied Ukraine all my life, and still these two scholars showed me peoples whose stories are woven into Ukraine’s. As we learn, we can also remember two days that honour Roma people: International Roma Day on 8 April and the Roma and Sinti Genocide Remembrance Day on 2 August.
Keeping Ukrainian Alive in Alberta Classrooms: Larisa Hayduk and Nataliya Nayavko
As we moved into the opening ceremony, I saw my longtime friend Larisa Hayduk, Director of the Ukrainian Resource and Development Centre (URDC) at MacEwan University. Under her leadership, URDC partners with universities in Ukraine and builds relationships between Ukrainian and Indigenous communities in Alberta (MacEwan University, n.d.). Larisa introduced me to Nataliya Nayavko, Alberta Education’s advisor for Ukrainian language and culture, who works so that Ukrainian is taught in Alberta schools from grade 1 to grade 12. Nataliya told me about the Ukrainian Language Certification Exam for grade 11 and 12 bilingual program students, run with Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, my home city. Students who pass receive a certificate from Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science (CIUS, 2018). I shared the Ukrainian Roots Challenge with her, and how wonderful it would be if every Alberta student learning Ukrainian took part.
A Greeting from Olena Zelenska
Olena Zelenska, First Lady of Ukraine, could not join us in Edmonton this time, but she recorded a video greeting that participants were glad to receive. In her post about the symposium, she reminded readers that CIUS gave the West a Ukrainian lens at a time when Ukraine was seen through Russian and Soviet eyes, and that its five-volume Encyclopedia of Ukraine was for decades one of the few independent sources about Ukraine in English.
Friends Who Brought Me Back: Marusia Petryshyn and Her Circle
I know Marusia and Roman Petryshyn through Ukrainian diaspora studies classes, and seeing them again is one of the reasons I came. Roman is the founder and first director of MacEwan’s Ukrainian Resource and Development Centre and was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 2021 (MacEwan University, 2021). Marusia introduced me to a circle of friends who met as students and, though they now live from Eastern Canada to the southern United States, came together for a reunion. Among them was Bohdan Krawchenko, a former CIUS director, who shared his work in Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan and the new courses he is creating. I saw what a hromada (громада, a community that holds together) truly is.
Meeting the Authors of the Books We Read: Yaroslav Hrytsak
One of the joys of conferences is meeting the people whose books you have read. Professor Yaroslav Hrytsak, born in 1960 in Dovhe in Lviv region (YES, 2025), is a historian and public intellectual at the Ukrainian Catholic University and the founding editor of the journal Ukraina Moderna (Україна Модерна, “Modern Ukraine”) (Ukrainian Institute London, 2026). His popular history of Ukraine appeared in English as Ukraine: The Forging of a Nation (Leiden University, 2026). He now lives in Vienna and was one of the symposium’s guest speakers (CIUS, n.d.).
Business Bridges and Mountain Memories: Vitaliy Milentyev
Seeing my friend Vitaliy Milentyev brought back memories of Winnipeg and of his visits to Sun Peaks, where he loves to ski and I love to drive up to see friends. Vitaliy has been part of Alberta’s Ukrainian Canadian business community since 2010 and has led the Alberta Ukraine Chamber of Commerce (CIUS, 2020), helping Ukrainian exporters and Canadian businesses find one another. Economic ties are another way to stand with Ukraine.
The Evening Lecture and a Conversation in Line: Tamara Hundorova
Waiting in line for the reception after Metropolitan Borys Gudziak’s public lecture, I met Professor Tamara Hundorova, a Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and Principal Research Fellow at the Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature (Davis Center, n.d.). Her books include The Post-Chornobyl Library: Ukrainian Postmodernism of the 1990s, which reads the literature of the 1990s through the trauma of Chornobyl (Ingram Academic, n.d.), and Lesia Ukrainka. Knyhy Syvilly (Леся Українка. Книги Сивілли, “Lesia Ukrainka: The Books of the Sibyl”) (Davis Center, n.d.). Earlier she had spoken in a morning panel, and we were both part of the toloka session (толока, a Ukrainian tradition of community members coming together to do shared work).
Friendships That Last a Lifetime: Serge Cipko and Olenka Bilash
Serge Cipko and I first met in Lutsk. Since then he has given a guest lecture by Zoom to my Ukrainian Diaspora Studies course and sends diaspora updates I love reading. This week he was part of the symposium team. Olenka Bilash, Professor Emerita of second language education and Director of the Ukrainian Language Education Centre at CIUS (Ukrainian Canadian Congress, n.d.), is an incredible language scholar. We even compete, in the friendliest way, for the best Mitacs students, since we both love welcoming them to Canada.
So No One Can Say It Never Happened: Peter Melnycky
As I told Serge about my F.I.L.T.E.R.+ research, which I hope to offer as a Zoom course in 2027, he introduced me to Peter Melnycky. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Peter earned his MA at the University of Manitoba and has worked as a historian for the Alberta government since 1982 (Manitoba Historical Society, n.d.). He has researched Canada’s first national internment operations of 1914 to 1920, when Ukrainians and others were interned as “enemy aliens,” and with Bohdan Kordan he edited In the Shadow of the Rockies: Diary of the Castle Mountain Internment Camp, 1915–1917 (Kordan & Melnycky, 1991).
A few days later, at a gathering in Kamloops, Andrea Malysh, a leading expert on internment in Canada, screened Ryan Boyko’s documentary That Never Happened: Canada’s First National Internment Operations (Boyko, 2017), which tells the story of camps across the country, including those at Vernon, Mara and Monashee in British Columbia. There on the screen was Peter. I am grateful to be connected with scholars who make sure no one will ever say it never happened.
When Your Student Leads the Room: Alexandra Shkandrij
I know Alexandra Shkandrij from my online course on Ukrainians in Canada at the University of Manitoba, and her father, Professor Myroslav Shkandrij, from the university’s Department of German and Slavic Studies. Alexandra is now a PhD student in political science at the University of Toronto, researching the conditions under which armies loot, destroy, sell or repurpose cultural property. At the symposium she presented “Cultural heritage destruction and the logics of war in Ukraine” and led a toloka session. She was curator of exhibitions at the Oseredok Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Centre, directs the Heritage Sustainability Program at the Shevchenko Foundation, and serves on the Board of the Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies. There is no greater joy for a teacher than seeing a former student lead the room.
A Bridge Builder with a Humble Heart: Metropolitan Borys Gudziak
The meeting I will treasure most was with Vladyka Borys (Владика, a respectful Ukrainian title for a bishop). Born in 1960 in Syracuse, New York, to Ukrainian immigrant parents, he founded the Institute of Church History in Lviv, served as rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) from 2002 to 2013, and has been its president since 2013 (Ukrainian Catholic University, n.d.). Since 2019 he has been Metropolitan-Archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia (Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, n.d.).
He gave the symposium’s public lecture, yet he was present every day and joined every session, listening as much as he spoke. Humble, caring, wise and always building bridges, he helped make UCU a globally respected university. For me it was personal: I was baptized at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, so meeting him felt like meeting part of my own story.
Between Sessions: Teaching, Snow and a Question
Between sessions, my teaching continued. I met with students who needed me, and that evening I gave an online lecture to an MSW class on why research matters in social work practice. As I told them about the symposium, we celebrated their learning: each of them is designing groundbreaking studies in their home communities. One student first studied with me in her BSW, and the words she shared during our web conference will stay with me for a long time. I have taught her only online, yet I have watched her grow into a social work researcher.
Late that night I walked in the falling snow outside Pembina Hall, past a tipi and an old wooden cart standing side by side under the lamplight, thinking about how to bring social work and Ukrainian studies closer together: how research on memory, language, displacement and identity can strengthen the way we care for people, and how social work’s commitment to people and communities can strengthen Ukrainian studies. That question is where my next work begins.
Diakuyu (дякую, thank you) to CIUS for fifty years of building Ukrainian studies, and to everyone who made this first day unforgettable.
Love. Care. Share.
References
Boyko, R. (Director). (2017). That never happened: Canada’s first national internment operations [Film]. Armistice Films.
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. (n.d.). Recentring the humanities: Ukraine and the world international symposium. University of Alberta. https://www.ualberta.ca/en/canadian-institute-of-ukrainian-studies/projects/cius-at-50/international-symposium.html
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. (2018, October 4). Learning achievements celebrated in Edmonton. University of Alberta. https://www.ualberta.ca/cius/news-and-events/news-at-the-cius/2018/october/learning-achievements-celebrated-in-edmonton.html
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. (2020, May). Online symposium: Ukraine’s economy: An equation with many variables. University of Alberta. https://ualberta.ca/en/canadian-institute-of-ukrainian-studies/news-and-events/news-at-the-cius/2020/may/ukraines-economy.html
Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. (n.d.). Tamara Hundorova. Harvard University. https://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/about/people/tamara-hundorova
DokUCentre UCRDC. (2026, September 17). A Polish-Ukrainian wartime odyssey, 1939–1948: An interview with Stephen Jaworsky. https://dokucentreucrdc.substack.com/p/a-polish-ukrainian-wartime-odyssey
Ingram Academic. (n.d.). The post-Chornobyl library. https://www.ingramacademic.com/9781644692387/the-post-chornobyl-library
Kordan, B. S., & Melnycky, P. (Eds.). (1991). In the shadow of the Rockies: Diary of the Castle Mountain Internment Camp, 1915–1917. Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press.
Leiden University. (2026, January 26). Ukrainian nation-building in the past and the present [Event]. https://www.staff.universiteitleiden.nl/events/2026/01/lunn-jan-2026-forum-ukrainian-nation-building-in-the-past-and-the-present
MacEwan University. (n.d.). About us [Local narratives digital exhibit]. https://digitalexhibits.macewan.ca/s/localnarratives/page/aboutus
MacEwan University. (2021, December). Longtime MacEwan educator and Ukrainian Canadian community leader receives national honour. https://www.macewan.ca/campus-life/news/2021/12/news-petryshyn-21/
Manitoba Historical Society. (n.d.). Peter J. Melnycky. https://mhs.mb.ca/docs/people/melnycky_pj.shtml
New Pathway. (n.d.). UCC Tribute Gala to honour contributions to public service. https://newpathway.ca/?p=55261
Roman Waschuk. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved November 7, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Waschuk
Ukrainian Canadian Congress. (n.d.). Olenka Bilash [Speaker biography]. https://congress.ucc.ca/speakers/olenka-bilash
Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia. (n.d.). Metropolitan-Archbishop. https://ukrcatholic.org/about-us/leadership/metropolitan
Ukrainian Catholic University. (n.d.). Bishop Borys Gudziak, Ph.D. https://ucu.edu.ua/en/?p=55672
Ukrainian Institute London. (2026). Ukraine in global history: Istoria 2026 [Event]. https://uil.org.uk/?p=15497
Urums. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved November 7, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urums
YES Yalta European Strategy. (2025). Yaroslav Hrytsak [Participant biography]. https://www.yes-ukraine.org/en/yes-annual-meetings/2025/uchasniki/gritsak
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