Visiting Scholar Finds Wealth of Archival Information

By Andrij Makuch

Dr. Iryna Matiash, a leading archive scholar from Ukraine, visited several Canadian cities between October and December 2006. She returned to Kyiv  with a considerable amount of information on Ukrainian collections in Canada. Dr. Matiash, a specialist in the history of Ukrainian archival development, is the director of the Ukrainian Research Institute for Archival and Records Studies (Ukrainian acronym: UNDIASD) in Kyiv. She was in Canada as a John Kolasky Memorial Fellow under the auspices of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) at the University of Alberta.

The materials gathered by Dr. Matiash will be used toward the compilation of an annotated guide to Ukrainian archival sources in Canada. In addition, a special issue of the UNDIASD’s journal Pam’iatky, dedicated to Ukrainian-Canadian topics, is being planned. It will feature contributions from scholars Dr. Matiash met in Canada, former John Kolasky Fellows, and source materials from some of the institutions she visited.

The archive scholar’s Canadian sojourn began in Toronto, where she looked at materials at the Ukrainian Research and Documentation Centre (UCRDC), the Archives of Ontario (AO), and the University of Toronto (including the Peter Jacyk Central and East European Resource Centre, the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library, and the University Archives). She paid special attention to the UCRDC’s extensive oral history collection, the university’s George Luckyj, Arkadii Liubchenko, and Lydia Kaluzhna/Danylo Skoropadsky collections, and the AO’s Toronto Ukrainian People’s Home and Stephen Rosocha collections. Dr. Matiash also delivered a lecture at the University of Toronto concerning archival development in Ukraine since independence. It was greeted with considerable interest, as the appointment of Olha Ginzberg, a former member of the Verkhovna Rada from the Communist Party of Ukraine, as head of the State Committee of Archives of Ukraine had been announced just a few days earlier.

Following a brief stay in Montreal, Dr. Matiash spent about a month in Ottawa, where she was impressed with the extent of the Ukrainian holdings housed at Library and Archives Canada (LAC). Here she was assisted by former LAC archivist Myron Momryk in finding various materials. She paid particular attention to the Andrii Zhuk, Mykhailo Yeremiiv, Vasyl Avramenko, Kateryna Antonovych, and Olha Woycenko collections. In Ottawa, she also met with members of the Ukrainian community to discuss archival and related issues as well as to visit the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa.

Dr. Matiash then traveled to Winnipeg, where she looked at materials in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada Consistory archives, the Ukrainian Catholic Church of Canada archives, and the Mennonite Heritage Centre archives. The archive scholar paid particular attention to the collections at the Ukrainian Cultural and Education Centre (Oseredok), where she focused on the Oleksander Koshetz and Evhen Onatsky biographical files, the Centre’s large photo collection, and materials related to a Second World War memoir-writing competition. She also found materials in Oseredok related to Volodymyr Sikevych, a former brigadier general in the Army of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR), who later served as a diplomat for the UNR government-in-exile before settling in Canada. She plans to write a biography of the soldier-diplomat.

Following her stay in Winnipeg, Dr. Matiash went to Edmonton where she continued her perusal of Ukrainian collections at the Provincial Archives of Alberta (paying particular attention to the Petro Savaryn Collection), the University of Alberta archives (where she examined the Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky papers), the University of Alberta’s Ukrainian Folklore Archive, and the Ukrainian Canadian Archives and Museum of Alberta. She also managed to visit the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village and delivered a lecture at the University of Alberta in the CIUS seminar series.

Before departing for Kyiv, Dr. Matiash spent a few days in Toronto where she returned to work in the AO and managed to find the grave site of General Sikevych. During her stay in Canada she also drafted agreements for cooperation between her institute and both CIUS and UCRDC, and was interviewed in Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa for Ukrainian radio programs.

The planned guide to Ukrainian archival holdings in Canada should be very useful. Although there are some listings posted online for individual institutions and in-house guides on Ukrainian materials at others, a general overall work of this nature has never been compiled.

Before her departure, Dr. Matiash remarked on the extraordinary degree of help and cooperation she received from many people while she was in Canada and expressed her gratitude to them. CIUS would also like to express its thanks for the assistance rendered to our visiting scholar.