From Toronto's Bloor West to Kyiv's Khreschatyk, and back (08/23/98)

INDEPENDENT UKRAINE: THE 7th ANNIVERSARY

From Toronto's Bloor West to Kyiv's Khreschatyk, and back

by Roman Waschuk

Strolling along Bloor Street West in my old Toronto neighborhood on a sunny mid-August day, I happen upon a poster in a bank window advertising a "Ukrainian Festival" to take place on the 22nd, complete with parade, performing groups and a cabaret night - all in honor of Ukrainian Independence Day.

Three thoughts cross my mind:

(A) The festival is on a Saturday; clearly, in my four-year absence, the Ukrainian lobby has failed to entrench August 24 as a nationwide long weekend.

(B) For the first time in a long time, my family and I are not in Ukraine for the festivities; we are back on the outside, peering in through the trusty diasporic prism.

(C) The redevelopment of the Khreschatyk, begun before I left Kyiv, must be nearly complete. The government's decision to tear up and resurface the capital's main street in time for the national day may have been controversial with many hard-pressed Kyivites (and understandably so), but was a big hit with our 2-year-old son, who was impressed with the assembled might of Ukraine's construction equipment working at full tilt.

Bloor Street, by comparison, seems ... well, comfortable, but rather sedate.

In Kyiv, Independence Day - an official fixture for six years running - is slowly taking its place in the hearts and minds of the populace as a genuine holiday, right up there with New Year's, Christmas and International Women's Day.

Though some of their compatriots in the south and east may still question the entire premise of August 24, Kyivites have come to know and value the benefits, both attitudinal and material, of living in the national capital of a sovereign state.

For children starting school this year, it's the only condition they've ever known.

Walking to the Golden Gate metro stop from the Canadian Embassy along Yaroslaviv Val, I recall a little girl asking her mother: "Mama, what was the Soviet Union?" She was given a storybook reply: "Oh, it was a country where we lived long ago, before you were born ..."

Though Western visitors (and, indeed, many Ukrainians) may feel that elements of the Soviet past are still all too prevalent, time is on the side of Ukraine, establishing its identity through its own trials and (inevitably) errors.

Were we, too, no more than glorified visitors, albeit with a multi-year diplomatic visa? I would like to think not. In our various capacities, we were and remain stakeholders in Ukraine's future.

As a diplomat, I worked daily to put flesh on the bones of Canada's partnership with Ukraine, sensitive both to Kyiv's strategic importance (well appreciated by ministers) and to the domestic political imperatives (represented, among others, by The Weekly's readers).

My wife, Oksana, who has worked as a translator, advisor and editor of government documents, strove to bridge the gap between Ukrainian legalese and the English-centered world of trade law - esoteric yet key to Ukraine's economic future.

As parents of a toddler who spent all but the first few months of his life in Kyiv, we scoured the bookstalls for ever-elusive Ukrainian preschool books and tapes, meeting some of their creators - artistically talented, yet financially beleaguered - and helping them navigate the shoals of shifting rules and regulations.

While we count the blessings of a return to the administrative sanity of Ottawa (proof that all things are relative), the first tinges of "Ukraine regret" and nostalgia are nevertheless setting in. Can anyone here recite a children's rhyme quite as convincingly as our friend the Kyiv poet? Will we ever again eat as much (or as well) as on our farewell trip to Kolomyia and Lviv?

And what will become of our war veteran neighbor and his dogs, one named for Raisa Gorbacheva, the other for Margaret Thatcher, and both his pensioner equals in dog years?

Fortunately, the answers to these questions are the stuff of free and open people-to-people contacts, possibly the greatest achievement of independent Ukraine's relations with Canada and other partners. They no longer depend on government fiat on either side. As a bureaucrat with many personal ties to Ukraine, I'd have it no other way.

Roman Waschuk returned to Toronto in July, after serving as political counsellor at the Canadian Embassy in Kyiv for five years. In June, he received the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers' Foreign Service Award for 1998.

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