Annychka rocks 100,000 at Ukrainian Festival in Toronto (10/27/02)

Annychka rocks 100,000 at Ukrainian Festival in Toronto

by Jurij Roman Klufas

TORONTO - Pop star Annychka from Lviv was the feature act during the Bloor West Village Ukrainian Festival's kick-off concert on Friday night, September 13, in Toronto. "It's so much fun to be performing on a professional stage and to such a large and enthusiastic crowd," she commented.

Indeed, by early Saturday afternoon one of Canada's national TV networks CTV was announcing attendance of 50,000 in its national news coverage of the start of the event just after the festival's opening ceremonies. By the end of the day festival organizers were pleased that attendance had comfortably topped well over 100,000 visitors.

One of the festival's main attractions was the four-hour live broadcast from the festival site, Toronto's west end on Bloor Street, by Canada's most prestigious radio station CFRB.

CFRB "Morning Man" Ted Woloshyn was this year's festival parade marshall, and CFRB announcer Christina Chernesky, after finishing her on-site broadcast, rushed home to freshen up and returned to MC the evening's gala concert.

Mr. Woloshyn said: "It feels great to be contributing in this way to the community and it's fantastic that this Ukrainian Festival is now a mainstream event. This is great business for the station!"

The chairman of Toronto's Business Improvement Association and the longtime president of the Bloor West Village BIA, Alex Ling, also pointed out: "You may have started this festival for yourselves, but now, six years later, this has turned out to be a party event for all people and one of this city's better events."

The seven-block festival's main attraction continued to be the huge 40-square-foot stage, which offered a perfect setting for the all-day concert and full line-up of feature performers: pop soloist Annycka from Lviv, the Telnyuk Sisters from Kyiv, the Todaschuk Sisters from Winnipeg, Ihor Bohdan from Calgary, Lvivski Muzyky folk ensemble from Lviv, pop singer Taras Kurchyk from Lviv, Emmy award-winning artist Roman Klun and the festival's house band, Dunai.

There were many others including the dance ensembles Desna, Ukraina, Vesnianka, the Ukrainian Academy of Dance, Arkan and Barvinok from Mississauga, London and Windsor.

This year's parade was led by the Baturyn Band and for the opening ceremonies the Avanguard Band played the Ukrainian, United States and Canadian National anthems with a special tribute to the United States in memory of the September 11 tragedy of last year.

A new festival feature this year was the Friday evening concert sponsored by Ukrainian Credit Union, featuring Annychka and her excellent renditions of traditional Lemko Folk melodies.

Saturday morning started off with another innovation: a free gourmet breakfast for the first 1,000 festival visitors sponsored by Buduchnist Credit Union.

The most visible addition to the festival was the huge 10-square-foot video wall sponsored by the So-Use Credit Union that allowed festival patrons to comfortably continue their conversations, dinners and drinks in the 1,000 seat festival garden without missing any of the stage performances.

The Bloor West Village Ukrainian Festival - North America's largest Ukrainian street festival - is presented by Kontakt Television. It is a free event for all festival patrons and therefore is very grateful for all corporate sponsors that share and support the festival's vision. The main sponsors whose support paid for the professional stage were Northland Power, and Acuity Investment Management, who have been the festival's sponsors since day one, and newcomer Meest. This year was the first year that Ukrainian credit unions supported the festival in a significant way and this allowed for several innovations to the annual event. Other sponsors whose support contributed to the overall infrastructure were: Western Union, Slavutych, the Petro Jacyk Educational Foundation, Dock Edge, Cardinal Funeral Homes and Coffee Time Donuts. The elegant new Lviv Ukrainian restaurant provided both meeting and office space for festival headquarters, not to mention exquisite food.

The festival management and staff - made up of about 200 volunteers from the Toronto Ukrainian community also focuses on the concept of community partnering. Last year's partners, St. Joseph Health Center Foundation and St. Vladimir Ukrainian Institute, were joined by the Ukrainian School Board, St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral, St. Demetrius Foundation and the Ukrainian Care Center.

A very significant boost to the 2000 festival organizers was the approval of a two-year grant from the Ontario Provincial Government's Trillium Foundation. Festival General Manager Raya Shadursky explained: "The Trillium Foundation grant of $115,000 over two years enables and specifically directs us towards building a long term infrastructure for the festival's organization. So far we have been able to raise corporate financial support specifically for the expenses of the festival days, but not for long term professional planning."

Next year's plans call for expansion of the seven-block festival further eastward along Bloor Street in Toronto. The idea is to present an exhibition of both individual and corporate international Ukrainian business achievement from both sides of the Atlantic. Both the ambassador of Ukraine to Canada, Dr. Yuri Shcherbak, and the new consul general of Ukraine in Toronto, Ihor Lossovsky expressed their commitment to find contributing exhibitors in Ukraine.

Plans call for outdoor structures that represent Ukrainian community and corporate life; structure could range from a 20-foot-high model of a Ukrainian church or domed bell tower to a street sized model of a Ukrainian credit union lobby.

Dr. Ostap Hawaleshka of Winnipeg, the first and founding director of the internationally funded Science and Technology Center for Ukraine, when approached about building a street-sized model of a Ukrainian-made airplane for this new festival project responded: "This is a great idea." Then, reflecting for a while, grabbed his head with his hands and sputtered: "How am I going to make a 'small' model of the world's largest airplane, the Antonov 225 Mria?"

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