Walter Kish

Over the past month, I have been to a number of both formal events of one type or another, as well as informal social dos within the Ukrainian community here in Toronto. What has struck me in particular from the cumulative experience, has been the sense of fragmentation and isolation that is characteristic of most of these self-contained groups.

The Catholics and the Orthodox rarely associate and know little of what goes on in each others congregations. Individually, they each do commendable religious and cultural work within their own domains, but little effort is dedicated towards bringing their respective communities together.

The old guard of the Melnykivtsi and Banderivtsi, despite the rare joint participation in commemorating some pre-split OUN event, show little sign of forgiving past grudges and conflicts, and coming together again. They are stuck in a perpetual time warp, maintaining inflexible positions that long ago lost their relevance to Ukrainians here in Canada. Even more unforgivable is the fact that their primary focus is still overwhelmingly on what is happening to Ukrainians in Ukraine rather than Ukrainians here in Canada.

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress and Ukrainian World Congress are the preserve of an activist elite whose programs and politics reflect mostly their own ideological interests and priorities rather than those of the large, mostly silent Ukrainian community they claim to represent. As Prof Luciuk pointed out in his recent book Searching for Place, the creation of the UCC was engineered by the Canadian government as a tool to keep tabs on and control the fractious Ukrainian community of the early 1940s. These days, the Congress is doing an admirable job in lobbying the government over contentious political issues such as the odious Denaturalization and Deportation program, but does little to try and bring the numerous Ukrainian organizations in Canada into one unified, co-operating and effective whole.

The Ukrainian Canadian Profe-ssional and Businessmens Association, ostensibly the most broadminded and least partisan of the Ukrainian organizations, is well-meaning and organizes a lot of fun events, but falls short of using its potential financial and political clout towards creating any lasting community or cultural infrastructures. This organization probably has more potential than any other in becoming the vehicle that could engage and unify the various blocs and fragments within the Ukrainian community, yet it has shown little desire or interest in doing so.

The most recent wave of Ukrainian immigrants that have come to Canada in the past decade are the latest distinct group of Ukrainians that have through choice or circumstance also distanced themselves from the rest of the Ukrainian community. Perhaps it would be fairer to say that the existing Ukrainian community here has failed to integrate them into its body politic. Nonetheless, they too have become just another Ukrainian faction of sorts, that keeps to itself.

There is one large bloc of Ukra-inians that is unified in a perverse sort of way namely that vast majority of second, third and fourth generation Canadian-born Ukrainians that are unified in the sense that they have shunned all Ukrainian organizations of any type. They probably constitute over three quarters of all those Canadians that can claim Ukrainian descent in some degree. The last census indicated strongly that a large proportion of them still identified themselves as Ukrainians and had various degrees of interest in their heritage and culture, yet few of them were involved in organized Ukrainian community life.

It is time that the UCC, or the Ps & Bs, or any one of the established Ukrainian organizations here in Canada took the initiative in making the unification of the Ukrainian community their primary goal. Everything else frankly, is secondary. Until we can mobilize hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Canadians behind a common cause, common goals and common leadership, we will have a negligible effect on Canadian life and politics, and a non-existent future.