26 years ago yesterday was the anniversary of the Chornobyl (Ukrainian spelling) disaster. While there’s little new news coming from that event, here are some finer points all should remember:
The signing of the Charter was a very difficult, complex journey that involved many players to see it through, and one of them was a Ukrainian Canadian:
“It was not the kitchen, actually, but rather a pantry,†recalled Romanow. “We happened to be there by accident — one Anglophone from Ontario, me a Ukrainian socialist from Saskatchewan, and this French Canadian from Shawinigan.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is on “the wrong side of history†by failing to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms to avoid stirring up lingering resentment in Quebec, says former Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow.
In an interview with Evan Solomon, host of CBC’s Power & Politics, Romanow believes bitter divisions have dissipated over time, and that Harper is in a “very, very small minority of Canadians†not marking the occasion as a historic milestone.
“I’m saddened a bit that the prime minister would not recognize it as an important contribution to Canada’s nation-building, an articulation of our values and our responsibilities,”
…
“There will be separatists who don’t like the process or perhaps even the substance – what can we do about that, except to explain in Quebec and elsewhere to Canada and elsewhere in the world that this country is one of the greatest, most fair-minded, most opportunity-filled nations in the world?†he said.
“I think that’s what we should be celebrating, and harbouring, in fact, raising the spectre, I find it tough to accept that a prime minister would raise it.â€
…
Romanow was Saskatchewan’s attorney general and intricately involved in the high-stakes political negotiations in the run-up to the patriation of the constitution in 1982. Failure to bring home the constitution would have had “unconscionable and unfathomable†consequences for Canada, he said.
Happy Easter! Â For those celebrating this weekend, here are some articles and videos that should get you into the spirit:
While we’re in hockey playoff season, even Don Cherry gets into the spirt… sorta :/
Ukrainian Easter in Kerhonkson
Parishioners Saturday at the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Kerhonkson celebrated Easter and Ukrainian traditions of egg-decorating and food at a Ukrainian Easter Festival. The church’s annual event before Easter features traditional Ukrainian homemade breads, gift items and various meats from the East Village Meat Market in Manhattan, and special emphasis on carefully decorated eggs. Times Herald-Record
A Ukrainian Easter Egg from the Midwest
Luba Perchyshyn, an artist and owner of the oldest Ukrainian Gift Shop in Minneapolis, keeps the traditional art of decorating Easter Eggs alive… In the video that I shot in her Ukrainian Gift Shop — in business since 1947 — Perchyshyn demonstrates how to create a Ukrainian Easter Egg.
In the files of the Peace River Museum Archives and Mackenzie Centre is a descriptive compilation of Ukrainian Easter customs by Joyce Sirski. She documents the customs thusly: “Easter customs are rich in heritage. Easter is not only a three-day period, but also a cycle of 40 days known as Lent, when age-old associations with man and nature come to a religious climax with the resurrection of Christ.
As Easter approaches (Sunday the 15th on the Julian calendar and this Sunday on the Gregorian), one of the oldest Ukrainian traditions is decorating Easter Eggs known as Pysanky (which is plural, where as Pysanka is one). An ancient custom pre-dating Christianity in the region over 1,000 years ago, these eggs were decorated to symbolize new life that began in Spring.
An 18-year-old Ukrainian woman who prosecutors say was gang-raped, half-strangled and then set on fire in an attack that sparked street protests in a provincial Ukrainian town, has died, a hospital official said on Thursday. Hundreds of people took to the streets earlier this month after police released two of Oksana Makar’s three suspected attackers whose parents had political connections, re-igniting a public debate on corruption in the ex-Soviet republic. Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko confirmed earlier this month that the parents of at least one of the three suspects were former government officials in the Mykolaiv region.
Taras H. Shevchenko Museum is a cultural oasis, wedged incongruously between a dentist’s office and an employment agency. Inside, visitors will find a two-storey homage to Shevchenko, a 19th-century Ukrainian poet, artist, and rebel. The museum’s original location north of Oakville was damaged by arson in 1988. In 2001, its three-metre bronze statue of Shevchenko was sawed down and stolen by hooligans. Only the head was returned, when a Hamilton antique dealer tried to sell it back to the museum last November, apparently unaware of its criminal origins
After scooping 10 awards at international festivals, a Ukrainian-Estonian documentary on child labor in abandoned mines finally made it home to Ukraine. It was scheduled to premiere at an international documentary festival on March 24. But instead, in a bizarre and unprecedented turn of events, “Pit Number 8†was banned by its own Ukrainian producer.
Since Ukrainian has no g, use h: Hryhory, Heorhy, Ihor (not Grigory, Georgy, Igor). Exception: Georgy Gongadze.
There very much exists ‘g’ in Ukrainian, it’s ґ, and ‘h’ is г. Conversely in Russian there is no ‘h’, just ‘g’ which is г . So a Ukrainian ‘h’ is a Russian ‘g’ which is why sometimes you’ll see golubtsi instead of holubtsi, and Golodomor instead of Holodomor.
Use the familiar British renderings of placenames: Chernigov not Chernihiv, Kiev not Kyiv, Lvov not Lviv, and Odessa not Odesa.
Those Soviet spellings went out decades ago. The Economist likes to think if you disagree then ‘it’s time to get a life’.
A local author takes us behind the colourful curtain of Ukrainian Dance. In his book, Dr. Andriy Nahachewsky explores the differences between what the audience sees on stage…and what would happen in a small Ukrainian village.
26 years ago yesterday was the anniversary of the Chornobyl (Ukrainian spelling) disaster. While there’s little new news coming from that event, here are some finer points all should remember:
As Easter approaches
