Appreciating Pioneer Craftmanship

Roman Fodchuk. Zhorna: Material Culture of the Ukrainian Pioneers. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2006. 250 pp., $34.95 (paper)

Review by Andrij Makuch

Zhorna is an upbeat account of the material culture of the Ukrainian pioneers in Canada. Written in a popular manner, it provides a detailed account of the everyday implements and physical surroundings of the earliest Ukrainian settlers in our Dominion. This is then supplemented with illustrations, many of them very handsome line drawings.

 The book’s strongest suits may be the extensive personal knowledge that the author, Roman Fodchuk, has for his subject matter as well as the passion he feels for it. Fodchuk grew up in the Ukrainian bloc district of Alberta in the twilight years of the pioneering generation and has a direct understanding of and experience with many of the items shown and described in the book.

 Later, as a young district agronomist in East Central Alberta, Fodchuk witnessed the disappearance of these artifacts. He begins Zhorna with an account about a farm homestead he began photographing during the mid-1950s—with only a limited number of exposures left on his camera—that had been levelled by the time he returned to it several years later. The experience made an impression on him, and he recognized the value of the images he had preserved.

It follows, not surprisingly, that the atrium wall of the author’s home in Cochrane, Alberta is graced with hand-made Ukrainian-Canadian kitchen utensils and tools. Fodchuk refers to them as “a wonderful exhibit of craftsmen’s art from the turn of the [20^th] Century.” Like the book itself, this is very much a celebration of the Ukrainian-Canadian vernacular. I, for one, can appreciate this sentiment and concur with Fodchuk’s assessment—even though at times excessive.

The core of Zhorna consists of chapters dealing with housing, the details of activity on Ukrainian homesteads, and other seasonal and occasional tasks related to pioneer life. Fodchuk’s descriptions draw upon his own knowledge of these activities and associated material culture. He does not invoke other sources to any great extent, with the exception of writings and drawings by Peter Svarich (Zvarych), a prominent Ukrainian community leader of the time. In fact, Svarich is cited so often that one has to wonder whether Fodchuk is relying too much on him for supplementary information. In the same vein, the account is top-heavy with material from in and around the area of Shandro, Alberta (in fact, a unique oil press now found at the Shandro Museum is reproduced in sketches on pages 66 and 86 and in a colour photograph on p. 151).

The line drawings that appear in the book are beautifully executed. They actually provide a clearer image of the material culture items being discussed than would a photograph. The Svarich drawings, housed at the Provincial Archives of Alberta, provide striking illustrations. A potential drawback is that they are reproduced in their original with Ukrainian-only text. As such, a reader unfamiliar with Ukrainian may have some difficulty discerning what is being illustrated (although a good deal of this should be clear through context).

Beyond the core of the book, Zhorna tends to wander in some questionable directions. There is an initial chapter on “The Journey” to Canada that is not really needed. Fodchuk should not be singled out in this regard. One has to wonder why so many authors insist on reliving the first-wave emigration experience in their writings. A solid account of the material culture of the Old Country would have been much more useful here. The appendices—the first dealing with Fodchuk’s proposed model for the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village outside of Edmonton, the second with “Religious History Pertinent to the Ukrainian Settlers in Canada”—are not at all connected with the theme of the book. In fact, churches are not dealt with at all in the text. Twelve pages of colour photographs are presented haphazardly without full detail, a good number of them are “keepers.”

In the end, Fodchuk’s “Epilogue” ties much of this together. It is something of a crie de coeur—an invocation to his grandchildren to appreciate and to realize the strengths employed by their ancestors in Canada, who made the most with means available to them. Although not explicitly stated by the author, he evokes these descendants to carry on in the same spirit as their pioneer ancestors.

Zhorna is a lovely book with a few twists and turns. It will make a wonderful addition to your Ukrainian-Canadian bookshelf or, alternately, a great gift book.