An exhibit called Mriya: Ukrainian Dreams, is currently on display at Windsor’s Community Museum. It traces the history of the Ukrainians who settled in the southern Ontario town from the late 19^th century to the present.

The exhibit features up to 75 artifacts on loan from local Ukrainian-Canadian community members, churches and organizations.  The local Windsor community lent the various items, including traditional Ukrainian icons, rushynyky, dresses, historical paintings, carvings, pysanky and musical instruments as well as old passports and other immigration papers, to the Museum.

The exhibit reminds us of the “people who came seeking better things in Canada and in the Windsor-Essex area and also it shows what we have contributed to the social life, the political life and the economic life of this community, said Leisha Nazarewich, speaking to the Windsor Star about the exhibit.  “We sometimes forget of overlook it, there are other people other than the founding two nations…that have contributed to making this a great area,” she added.

Ms. Nazarewich was part of the 12-member community-input committee that helped the exhibit’s curator and education and volunteer coordinator Hugh Barrett organize the exhibit.

Also on display are 600 black-and-white photographs of local Ukrainian families were scanned and either placed in an album or mounted on panels that line the exhibition’s walls.  Each panel outlines the journey of a family from Ukraine to Canada, often through circuitous routes, taking them often first to Western Canada or displaced person’s camps before they finally arrived in Windsor.  52 local families are featured: among them are farmers Elie and Mary Boyer, the Drul brothers (Myron, Peter and Donald), who own Drul’s Tavern, and Ihor Stebelsky, a University of Windsor Professor.

The photographs will become part of the museum’s permanent collection and “our hope is that this will become a virtual exhibit in the fall,” said Hugh Barrett, the museum’s curator and education and volunteer co-ordinator.  

In addition, the works of four local Ukrainian-Canadian artists, iconographer and sculptor Halyna Mordowanec Regenbogen, painters Sofie Stoyshin and Orysia Rivest and woodcarver Ted Wojcik, are featured.

The exhibit was sponsored by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, Windsor Branch. Financial assistance was provided by St. Vladimir’s Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral; Saints Vladimir and Olga Ukrainian Catholic Church; and the Ukrainian Canadian Business and Professional Association of Windsor.

Mriya: The Ukrainian Dreams: The History of the Ukrainian Community in Windsor is on display at Windsor’s Community Museum, 254 Pitt Street, West, until January 14, 2006.  The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., on Tuesdays to Saturdays, and from 2:00 p.m.to 5:00 p.m. on Sunday.  Admission is free.