Montreal High School Students Visit Ukraine

By Adriana Luhovy

MONTREAL–The first major Canada-Ukraine high-school student exchange program in Quebec between Royal West Academy (RWA) in Montreal and the Kyiv Mohyla Collegium in Kyiv drew to a successful close this summer.

The program, which took two years to organize, started off with a visit by a classroom of students from Kyiv to Canada last fall. Among the highlights of the group’s visit was the signing of the golden book of honour at the Montreal City Hall, organized on behalf of Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay by Mrs. Oksana Kaluzny, attorney and councillor for LaSalle, and trips to Ottawa and Quebec City.

Their two-week stay in Canada was financed through the fundraising efforts of the RWA students and their parents.  They received financial support from the Termerty Foundation in Toronto, the Canada Ukraine Foundation in Winnipeg, the Ukrainian Professional and Business Association of Calgary, the Ukrainian National Association and numerous Montreal Ukrainian organizations. 

Regarding the exchange, Mary Reynolds, principal of Royal West Academy stated: “This international students exchange has been an unqualified success. Exchanges such as this one certainly serve the purposes of education vastly more than sitting in a classroom learning about the world from a book.”

This summer, RWA students and teachers visited Ukraine. Their two-week program was organized by the Kyiv Mohyla Collegium. “Had it not been for this wonderful exchange, I doubt these gifted students would have ever considered visiting Ukraine,” said RWA teacher Victor Zwetkow.  “It has, undoubtedly, opened up in them a whole new awareness of Europe,” he added.

In Kyiv, the students visited major historic sites including the Chornobyl Museum.  Their side trip to Chernihiv and Lviv was financed with a much-appreciated grant given to the Collegium by Mykola Plawiuk of the Olzhych Foundation in Ukraine.

To prepare for their trip, the RWA students took Ukrainian language lessons at the school. They also organized a Ukraine Cultural Day before leaving for Kyiv and all exchange students made presentations on some aspect of Ukrainian culture, history, and politics that they themselves had researched.  A book display on Ukraine and Ukrainians, performances by a Montreal dance group, headed by Bohdan Klemchuk, and by the talented singer Olha Zelman and a Ukrainian food buffet all enhanced the students’ and parents’ awareness of Ukrainian culture.

The head organizer was RWA teacher Sidney Westlake who has spearheaded a student-exchange program for over ten years, each time choosing a different country for her classroom to visit. This year, she was assisted by teachers Doug Floen, Victor Zwetkow and former RWA parent Zorianna Hrycenko-Luhova. The program coordinator in Kyiv was Tymor Oratovskyy, vice principal of Kyiv Mohyla Collegium, who was assisted by teachers Olena Bohdanova and Olena Tarasova.

Experiencing each other’s culture and staying in each other’s homes has created lasting bonds and friendships between the 50 participating students and teachers of Canada and Ukraine.