How Ukrainians are different from other people.

By Volodymyr Kish

If you are a “practising” Ukrainian like I am, you will no doubt agree that Ukrainians in some ways are distinctively different from other Canadians or other people in general. By that, I don’t mean better or worse, just different. For those of you who may not have ever given this any serious thought, let me enumerate a few of the things that make us so distinctive.

First of all, we are “organizomaniacs”.  By that I mean we are addicted to creating and belonging to as many Ukrainian organizations as we can.  Most normal adult people, if they belong to anything at all, belong to at most one or two organizations, typically to a local church of some kind and maybe something like the Lions Club or some local sports league or association.  Active Ukrainians, on the other hand, are seldom satisfied unless they belong to at least a half dozen groups.  Consider such examples from the Ukrainian environment I am familiar with - the local Ukrainian church, the church men’s or women’s organization, a cultural/political association like the Ukrainian National Federation or League of Ukrainian Canadians, a Ukrainian choir, a dancing group, Ridna Shkola, Plast or SUM for the kids to belong, perhaps a Ukrainian credit union, the Ukrainian Canadian Professional & Business Association, the Lemko Association, various Ukrainian foundations, etc. etc.  If one is in a leadership position with one of these organizations, then one is probably also involved with the national parent body (of a local organization) as well as the umbrella organizations composed of other organization, i.e. Ukrainian Canadian Congress, Ukrainian World Congress, and quite a few others.  Paradoxically, as the number of Ukrainians in Canada active in the Ukrainian community decreases, the number of organizations in that same community seems to be increasing significantly.  Must be something in the borscht!

A second distinctive feature is that Ukrainians love to sing and dance.  By that I don’t mean going out to the club downtown to shake your “booty” with friends, or singing along to the hip hop or rap song that is the current craze on music videos. I mean serious organized dance groups and choirs with rehearsals and concerts.  Seriously - how many of your non-Ukrainian friends have ever belonged to a choir or a dance group?  How many times at a non-Ukrainian social event that you have attended (party, wedding, dance) has the crowd broken out into the singing of old folk songs that everyone seems to know the words and enjoy singing? 

Several weekends ago, my wife and I spent a delightful few days at UNF Camp “Sokil” and Recreation Area at Hawkestone, Ont. on Lake Simcoe.  The highlight of the weekend was Saturday night, when with a convivial set of friends, we whiled away the evening out under a gorgeous night sky, singing old Ukrainian songs, assisted by ample supplies of good wine.  My own contributions to this were limited as I seldom know more than the first verse to most of these songs.  Fortunately, there were some veterans with prodigious memories that kept things going well into the wee hours.

The same is true with Ukrainian dance.  In contemporary non-ethnic North American society, the serious dancer is often viewed as someone on the effete side of the macho spectrum, and dancing is not normally accorded respect as a “manly” art.  This also extends to most species of ethnic dance which though artistic and pretty, does not usually evoke hormonal stimulation.  Almost the only exception is Ukrainian dancing which, with its energy, spirit, exceptional athletic showmanship and bravado, usually evokes “kudos” and admiration more commonly reserved for exceptional athletes and performers.  If you are a teenager of the WASP variety and you tell your friends you are a dancer, they will usually react with “Hmmm?!”  If you are a teenaged Ukrainian and tell someone you do Ukrainian dance, the reaction is more bound to be “Wow!”

Still another area of distinctiveness is of course food.  Although most non-Ukrainians in North America have come to accept and appreciate some of the staples of our cuisine such as varenyky (perogies) and holubtsi (cabbage rolls), there is vast cornucopia of Ukrainian foods that we devour in vast quantities that most of our WASP brethren still often look askance at – cabbage in all its various forms, horseradish, garlic, borscht, pickled vegetables of almost all kinds, pickled herring, studynets (headcheese), kasha (buckwheat), salo (pork fat) in all its variations, sausages stuffed with every imaginable edible part of the domesticated animal repertoire, and on and on.  A Ukrainian’s delicacies are often a more conventional Canadian’s horror.

In most countries, being “different” can be cause for suspicion, discrimination or worse.  Fortunately, in Canada, we can indulge in our “differences” without worries of any negative consequences.  So…revel in the joys of being Ukrainian!