FACES AND PLACES: Sea gulls on the prairie (08/09/98)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Sea gulls on the prairie

The last thing Lesia and I expected to see during our trip to Alberta was a sea gull.

While traveling through the spectacular Canadian Rockies we photographed a bear, an elk and dozens of mountain goats. But it was not until we stopped to gas-up on the prairies, in Rosewood, some 80 kilometers from Edmonton, that a sea gull came bouncing up to our car. "We're hundreds of miles from the ocean. What's he doing here?" I asked the attendant incredulously.

"Sea gulls came here years ago when the area was infested with grasshoppers. Today we've got few grasshoppers and many sea gulls." Amazing!

But then our entire trip to Alberta was amazing. We landed in Calgary (Canada's fastest growing city), rented a car and visited with Walter and Mary Bialobzyski, a couple we first met some 30 years ago at Canada's National Ukrainian Festival in Dauphin, Manitoba. After serving as a teacher and counselor in both Dauphin and Calgary for 38 years, Walter retired and embarked on a second career as an ordained deacon of the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

On the way to Lake Louise the following day, we stopped at the Castle Mountain internment monument erected in memory of Ukrainian Canadians who were unjustly imprisoned as "enemy aliens" during World War I. Located just off the highway in an isolated corner of a huge forest, the monument had fresh flowers at its base.

After spending the night at Lake Louise and exploring the pristine beauty of this marvel of glacial meltwater, we headed for the Columbia Icefield and spent the night at a hotel across the road from the Athabasca glacier.

The next two days we were in and around Edmonton. We met Deacon Walter in Chipman, where he was conducting a panakhyda at St. Mary's Ukrainian Catholic cemetery for the Achtem (Achtemichuk) family. Some 70 family members had come to Chipman to celebrate the arrival of their patriarch to Canada 99 years earlier. Many wore special commemorative T-shirts. The Chipman cemetery is also the final resting place of Wasyl Eleniak, Canada's first Ukrainian immigrant. Next to the cemetery is St. Mary's Church, constructed in the Byzantine-Ukrainian style; fronting the church one notices an imposing granite monument with the inscription: "In Commemoration of the Ukrainian Pioneers in Canada by Their Grateful Sons."

On our way to Vegreville to gawk at "the world's largest pysanka," we stopped in Mundare, home of Ss. Peter and Paul Monastery and the Basilian Fathers' Novitiate. We visited with the Rev. Bernard Basil Dribnenky, prominent liturgist and prolific writer. One of his books, "The Way It Is," is dedicated "to the Ukrainian Canadian pioneers who were faithful to their Church in handing down the Christian faith to us as their legacy." Across the road from the novitiate is a modern Ukrainian church and a magnificent museum dedicated to the Ukrainian priests/pioneers who brought Ukrainian spirituality to the prairies. Almost the entire museum houses pioneer artifacts with explanatory notes.

On our way back to Edmonton from Vegreville, we stopped at the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village, an outdoor museum also dedicated to Ukraine's immigrant pioneers. What a treasure this is! Using the living history approach, the village creates a "time warp" that enables the visitor to see and experience the everyday 1920s lifestyle of the Ukrainian settlements of east central Alberta. Some 30 historic structures have been moved to this site to recreate life among Ukraine's pioneers, including St. Vladimir's Greek Orthodox Church from Vegreville, St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church from Buczacz, Alberta, the John Demchuk Blacksmith Shop, a house built by Iwan and Maria Pylypow of Star, the house built by Mykhailo and Vaselina Hawreliak of Shandro, a grocery store once owned by Alexander Bockanesky in Luzan, a hardware store built in 1937 by Wasyl Knysh in Wostok, a Canadian National railway station, a lumber and paint store and a grain elevator.

Lesia and I visited the Pylypow House first, where we greeted by a young girl baking bread. She informed us in perfect Ukrainian that the "hospodar" had gone to Edmonton. All of our questions were answered from the perspective of the 1920s. She described her trip across the ocean and across Canada to Alberta.

Visiting the museum gift shop we picked up wonderful souvenirs, including a colorfully illustrated 125-page history of the famed Shumka Ukrainian Dancers of Edmonton. The volume begins with a color photograph of the dancers at the Lviv State Opera and Ballet theater, where they performed on August 20, 1990.

We attended liturgy at St. Josaphat's Cathedral on Sunday. Despite the summer heat, the church was almost full. One heard babies crying - a sure sign of parish health. Significantly, five babies were baptized during the liturgy and welcomed into the parish by all present. When we stop to consider that some Ukrainian parishes in the U.S. don't have one baptism in five years, five baptisms in one day is phenomenal.

Returning to Calgary we visited again with Walter and Mary, who took us to all of the Ukrainian churches. St. Stephen's Ukrainian Catholic Church is a huge, modern edifice designed by the famed Radoslav Zuk. We were shown around the Orthodox Church by one of the ladies who worked in the kitchen. A parishioner for many years, she proudly explained how the people came together to keep the church going. We get along with the Catholics, too, she said, a perception confirmed by Deacon Walter. When I asked her how the parishioners felt about Patriarch Filaret, her response was: "Who?"

So what is it about Alberta that makes Ukrainians there so different? If Winnipeg is on a downslide, why does Edmonton appear to be holding its own? There are many factors: a relatively large Ukrainian population (there are some 80 Melnychuks in the Edmonton phone book), a greater sense of community, more similarities than differences among the people, and a refreshing naiveté regarding Ukrainian religious and national politics.

Finally, the focus seems to be different, both among the people who do the heavy lifting (the "grunts") and the scholars at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta. Their reverence for the contributions of Ukrainian pioneers is unrivaled. This focus on the Canadian past tends to connect the generations, generating mutual trust, respect, support and a sense of oneness that obviates the notion that Ukrainians are supposed to divide and be conquered.

But then what can you expect? Even sea gulls in Alberta don't know who they are.

Myron Kuropas' e-mail address is: mbkuropas@compuserve.com