Greetings From The President of  The Shevchenko Foundation

 Speech of the President of The Shevchenko Foundation Andriy Hladyshevsky at the 2008 Kobzar Literary Award Dinner, held on March 6, 2008 at the Palais Royale in Toronto

“Man is like a mere breath; his days are like a passing shadow”

Psalm 144.

That excerpt from humanity’s most famous literary work goes on to pronounce that the death of men and women results in their memories, feelings and thoughts dying with them.

We have such little time to do some good in this life. The founders of the Shevchenko Foundation understood this. The vision behind the creation of the Shevchenko Foundation was to preserve the memories, feelings and thoughts of our beloved Ukrainian Canadian Community and to provide them for future generations. By unanimous consent of the Canadian Federal Parliament in 1963, the Bill establishing the Shevchenko Foundation had at its roots the preservation and promotion of the Ukrainian Canadian Cultural Heritage and the advancement of a flourishing Ukrainian community for the enrichment of Canada.

During my term as volunteer President and member of the Board of Directors I have met hundreds of our donors including many of the original donors. Their generosity cannot be underestimated. Unfortunately many of these donors have passed from us and to them vichnaya yim pamyat, “let their memories be eternal”. The foresight and generosity of all of these donors and our current donors enables the Shevchenko Foundation to invest in the future of the Ukrainian community in Canada.

The Shevchenko Foundation makes grants to a wide variety of projects that in turn maintain and strengthen the character of our Canadian Ukrainian identity. Many individuals, organizations and community groups, through their creativity, imagination and dedication and commitment submit exciting proposals to us that require financial support. In this regard we have supported innumerable publications, periodicals, websites, newspapers, videos, multimedia initiatives and films. We provide student bursaries and assistance for workshops, seminars, academic and cultural conferences, countless concerts, tours and festivals, traveling exhibits, support for various institutions including museums and cultural centres, as well as a variety of educational materials. Important to all of us this evening, is the support for all aspects of arts and literature, including the visual arts, the dramatic and performing arts and literature through poetry, drama, fiction and non-fiction support.

In short the Shevchenko Foundation, through its volunteer Board of Directors and its many supporters are representative of the larger community who work diligently to award funding to support a wide range of projects which on completion enhance the Ukrainian Canadian cultural heritage.

This evening we are here to celebrate the Kobzar Literary Award.

Some five years ago I announced the vision of the Board not far from here at Humber College the premise behind the Kobzar Literary Award. The Board believed that the need for the award was self-evident as the stories of Canadians of Ukrainian origin were not effectively being told and certainly not widely disseminated.

Such was the vision of the first Patron of the Kobzar Literary Award, Ms. Anne Smigel, who through her generous donation in 2006 provided significant funding for the first award and was one of the awards greatest proponents. I had the opportunity to spend a dinner together during November 2007. She explained to me her passion for the Award and why it meant so much to her. Sadly she is no longer with us. She passed away last month peacefully in Winnipeg. However her memory remains eternal within this Award. Vichna tobi pamyat, Anne.

Anne especially loved to read historical biographies. As an example, take this story of one of our families that stood dock side in eastern Europe in 1898 passing up an opportunity to board a ship to Argentina and instead opting for a ship bound for the fledgling nation of Canada. That family was joined by hundreds of thousands of other such like minded individuals. And lets say that family produced a grandson who in the latter half of the 20^th century wished to pursue a career in law with the goal of entering a profession which his family had encouraged him to do in order that he be the first to accomplish such a lofty objective. And then this grandson’s family experiences a family tragedy and he leaves his legal studies and goes home. He comes home to save the family farm, he comes home to nurture a family legacy and through his faith and through his hard work perseveres and ultimately through his determination and self sacrifice he is rewarded on March 3, 2008 when he become the first person of Ukrainian origin to be elected as the Premier of the Province of Alberta.

Such a story described with my minimal eloquence has always for me been a story not peculiar to or about the pursuit of some ethno-cultural community living in disguise as Canadians or hyphenating themselves into some distant and remote corner of Canadian society. On the contrary that story and hundreds of thousands of other stories are great Canadian stories compelling to Canadians and on a par with any historical non-fiction stories that are written about the founders of our nation like Sir John A. MacDonald, Wilfred Laurier or many of our other political leaders. The hopes, dreams, memories of Canadians of Ukrainian heritage represent collectively millions of years of life experience in this country. These ideas need to be nurtured, fostered for development and encouraged for publication and stand up to scrutiny for their own intrinsic literary merit.

The donors for the Kobzar Literary Award and the Shevchenko Fund which sustains it, will over the course of the next century produce dozens of award winners emanating from hundreds of authors working on literature that will forever shape how Canadians view themselves and how the rest of the world views Canadians by providing this Kobzar Literary Award and instituting a program that takes these Ukrainian Canadian themes and achieves greatness.

Oh, to imagine standing in a room one hundred years from now with bookcases full of short listed works written by our Kobzar Literary Award authors.

“However my life (our lives) is merely like a passing shadow.”

We can only imagine what those works shall be like but we are confident in the present and that our presence here today guarantees the creation and gifting of those works to our Canadian society and to the Canadian people and that these words will be standing tall within the realm of world literature.

On behalf of all of the volunteers who made this event possible and all of the donors, those of you present this evening and those whose memory remains eternal and abide within our hearts and in our beloved Shevchenko Foundation, I humbly thank you for your support for the Kobzar Literary Award.

May the good Lord bless all of you and keep you and may our Creator continue to extend His grace to our short listed authors and to all of those to come, as we continue to expand and fulfill that gift, that precious gift of literary creation that has been provided to us. Thank you for your attention.