Ukrainian Churches in the Prairies: The Sanctuary Project

By John-Paul Himka

An all-day workshop held at the University of Alberta on Saturday, January 26, 2008, focused on preserving the heritage of Ukrainian sacred culture in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.

Forty-three participants from across the three Prairie Provinces accepted the organizing committee’s invitation to help plan Sanctuary: Spiritual Heritage Documentation Project. This is a major collaborative effort aimed at:

•     digitizing, as comprehensively as possible, the results of all past projects that have painted or photographed the churches;

•     copying historical photos and videos in private and institutional hands for a central digital record;

•     systematically photographing all churches (exterior and interior), church vessels and vestments, bell towers, cemeteries, tombstones, and chapels in the Ukrainian Canadian Prairies;

•     digitizing all historic recordings of church music from the parishes; and

•     video recording liturgical services.

Most of this material will be made available on the Internet.

In his remarks, at the workshop’s opening session, the national Executive Director of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, Ostap Skrypnyk, made the point that the Ukrainian bloc settlements and the Ukrainian areas of cities are important components of our heritage, but they are disappearing. The churches and other sacred monuments show that we exist here and even changed the landscape of Western Canada. Preserving the record of these markers resists our erasure as a community. Consider, he said, that the French Canadians have a well established geographical place. Ukrainian Canadians need to recognize that they have their place too.

Conference presentations included a survey of existing publications and projects dealing with Ukrainian churches and other sacred monuments, a well-illustrated talk on Ukrainian graveyards, presentations on past and former projects in Manitoba, and several presentations on photography and databases. There were also three hour-long directed discussions in which participants made suggestions on how to go about this work.

Among the participants were Metropolitan Lawrence Huculak of the Ukrainian Catholic Church as well as official delegates from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada, representatives from the Alberta and Manitoba governments, community activists, members of the executive of the Ukrainian Canadian Archives and Museum of Alberta, professors from various disciplines (including Natalie Kononenko, Kule Professor of Ukrainian Ethnography), a techno-logy-savvy architect with a passion for these churches, a computer and systems analyst from the City of Edmonton, a choir director, a photographer-artist, and others.

The conference was organized by a committee consisting of Jars Balan (Kule Ukrainian Canadian Studies Centre, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies), John-Paul Himka (Religion and Culture Program, CIUS), and Frances Swyripa (Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta). The Ukrainian Studies Fund subsidised travel for participants from outside Edmonton, and the Religion and Culture Program covered all other workshop expenses thanks to the Anna and Nikander Bukowsky Endowment Fund.

Detailed information about and materials from the Sanctuary planning workshop and conference are being put up on the Religion and Culture Program of CIUS web-site: http://www.ualberta.ca/~cius/religion-culture/index.htm