SPRING/SUMMER NEWSLETTER 2024


THE CORNEL AND ANNE FILIPCHUK UKRAINIAN FOLKLORE ARCHIVES ENDOWMENT

Dr. Cornel and Mrs Anne Filipchuk, March 2024. Signing endowment documents
 at the Kule Folklore Centre, University of Alberta.

In April of this year the University of Alberta celebrated the new Cornel and Anne Filipchuk Ukrainian Folklore Archives Endowment, made possible by the generous donation of Dr. Cornel and Mrs. Anne Filipchuk. 


Cornel and Anne were born in North-East Alberta and met in 1959 while studying at the University of Alberta. Cornel obtained his DDS degree in 1960 and, in 1971, completed a Master's Degree and specialty in Prosthodontics from the University of Washington. Then, together with Anne, he established his practice in Edmonton and practiced for 57 years until the age of 80. They have maintained strong ties with the University as their children and grandchildren followed in their footsteps at the U of A.


The Filipchuks have been longstanding volunteers in the Ukrainian community and chose to honor their parents by supporting the Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives in its mandate to document, preserve, and study Ukrainian folklore in Ukraine, Canada, and around the world as it changes over time.

Celebrating the new Endowment, Friday, April 12, 2024
Peter Lougheed Hall, University of Alberta 

NEWS FROM THE DIRECTOR

Spring at the Kule Folklore Centre has meant launching a new endowment, completing courses, publishing new research papers, forming new community partnerships, and preparing for a summer season of Ukrainian festivals. In this issue, we highlight our community collaborations, outreach programming, as well as student and independent research projects. 

FOLKLORE LUNCH SERIES

Each semester, the Kule Folklore Centre hosts a series of lectures delivered by our Graduate students and visiting scholars. The following presentations were recorded from January - April 2024 and are now publicly available on our YouTube Channel.

Malanka in Ukraine: a Ukraīner exploration of regional variations

Presented by Dariia Titarova, from the Ukraīner Project
12 January 2024

Malanka brings together entire communities in a street carnival with masks and fancy costumes to celebrate the arrival of the new year. The Ukrainian holiday has deep pre-Christian roots.

LEARN MORE...

The history of Malanka celebrations in Ukraine is about the persistence of the tradition, which was not eliminated despite all the attempts of the Soviet regime, about its reinterpretation, and revival. In 2021-2022, the Ukraїner’s team travelled to different regions of Ukraine to tell the story of hand-crafted masks and the most bizarre bear costumes in Bukovyna, exciting battles between Malanka characters in Halychyna, contemporary festive parades in the Carpathians, and the resurrected ritual of walking a goat in Poltavshchyna.

You can watch the Ukraїner's story from Krasnoilsk, Bukovyna here.

Dariia Titarova is a volunteer and author of texts for Ukraїner, a Ukrainian community and organization that has been researching Ukraine and the Ukrainian context since 2016. Since 2019, Dariia has written long reads for Ukraїner multimedia stories and texts to books such as “Christmas and Malanka”, “National Minorities and Indigenous People of Ukraine”, and “Ukraïner. Ukrainian Insider 2”. The volunteering community inspired her to explore her own motherland, its culture, people, and local initiatives. Dariia's special focus is on national minorities in Ukraine and the traditional customs and winter holidays, namely Christmas and Malanka.

Art Under Siege: the Legacy of Ukrainian Monumental Art of
Alla Horska and Viktor Zaretskiy

Presented by Anna Morozova, MLCS Graduate Student

Funded by the Kuryliw and Kawulych Endowments

09 February 2024


"My research is based on a study of Ukrainian Monumental art of the 1960s in a close relationship with socio-political reality and Russian vandalism, which led to the destruction of numerous Ukrainian monumental panels. My presentation will focus on the monumental art of Viktor Zaretskiy and Alla Horska, who were dissident artists and members of the Sixtiers movement.” 

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“I began my work with Zaretskyi’s archive in 2021 in Kyiv, working with the sketches for his mosaics. Sadly, I  later discovered they were destroyed by Russian missiles in 2023. My presentation will focus on key aspects, including the question of whether these monumental artworks served as soviet propaganda or represented a form of rival nationalism. Additionally, I will analyze how dissident artists remember the ways in which soviet censorship restricted their artwork. Lastly, I will address the unfortunate destruction of artists’ monumental panels due to the war in Ukraine in the years 2022-2023."

Anna Morozova is a Research Assistant at the Kule Folklore Centre, a Graduate Student at the University of Alberta (Media and Cultural Studies), and a manager and tour guide at the Ukrainian Museum of Canada, AB. MA in Cultural Studies at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. In 2020-2022, Anna was responsible for the management of The Naked Room gallery in Kyiv, while simultaneously processing Horska and Zaretskyi’s archive together with their granddaughter, Olena Zaretska. In 2020, Anna curated the exhibition “#PropertyRights” by Alevtina Kakhidze.

Beyond Kalyna, Blueberries, and Hazelnuts

Presented by Karen Slevinsky, President of the Alberta Mycological Society
01 March 2024

Karen Slevinsky, President of the Alberta Mycological Society, shares stories from her Ukrainian heritage about what, when, and how to forage, with a specific focus on local wild mushrooms. She introduces us to a variety of mushrooms and teaches us how to refine our diet and enhance our experience foraging Edmonton’s river valley.

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Karen is the consummate educator, having been in the education system for more than 40 years.  There is nothing she likes more than an audience.  Her formal education includes a Bachelor of Education, a Bachelor of Science, and a Master of Education.  Informally, Karen has spent much time learning the fungi and flowers found in Edmonton’s river valley.  Currently, she is the President of the Alberta Mycological Society, which provides forays, expositions and citizen science projects for its members. Karen also comes from a rural Ukrainian family that spent a good amount of time gathering in the bush in Kalyna country, Alberta.  

Mockery, Conflict, and Cultural Scripts

Presented by Brittany Dyck, MLCS Graduate Student
Funded by the Kuryliw and Kawulych Endowments
15 March 2024

Jokes are popular folklore expressions found shared among people from varying cultures and walks of life. Some are comical while others explore a darker side of humanity. In her lecture, Brittany Dyck explores how school shooting jokes reveal differences in youth and adult perceptions of school shootings This presentation is based on her  Master’s Thesis completed under the supervision of Dr. Mariya Lesiv, at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador.

ANNUAL BOHDAN MEDWIDSKY LECTURE

Folklore of Anger: Systemic Vernacular Imperialism and Ukrainian Responses to the full-scale invasion of Ukrainian By Russia

Presented by Dr. Mariya Lesiv
Associate Professor of Folklore, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador
05 April 2024

War produces intense emotions that are frequently expressed in creative ways. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia has resulted in numerous such expressions communicated on the Internet. Frequently rooted in traditional curses, the Ukrainian folklore of anger may be disturbing to many Western outsiders who treat tolerance, positivity, and niceness as societal virtues. In line with a folkloristic approach rooted in the understanding of insider perspectives behind creative practices, I look at war-generated folklore by contextualizing the voices of its performers, namely, people directly affected by the Russian aggression. The concept of Russian systemic vernacular imperialism, as historically manifested in smaller-scale imaginaries and acts – in the words and behaviours of regular citizens – and its role in fueling the ongoing war can shed some light on complex human emotions in traumatic contexts. It can also contribute to ongoing scholarly efforts to decolonize regional studies involving Ukraine and other countries that have historically operated under the Russian orbit.


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Mariya Lesiv is an Associate Professor of Folklore and current Head of the Folklore Department at Memorial University. She is the author of The Return of Ancestral Gods: Modern Ukrainian Paganism as an Alternative Vision for a Nation published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2013. Her work on belief and politics, religious folklife, diasporic culture, and folk art has also appeared in edited volumes as well as scholarly journals, including Anthropologica, Journal of American Folklore, Ethnologies, Western Folklore, and Folklorica. With Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby, she recently co-edited a special issue of Folklorica devoted to folklore and protest. Mariya is a recipient of a Social Studies and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Development Grant for her fieldwork-based project “Host­Region: Post­Socialist Diaspora Communities in Newfoundland,” devoted to recent immigrants to the province from the former Socialist countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Mariya is a former President of the Folklore Studies Association of Canada and current President of the Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian Folklore Association.

Dr. Bohdan Medwidsky (1936-2021) was the founder of the Ukrainian Folklore Program, Kule Folklore Centre (KuFC), and the Ukrainian Folklore Archives at the University of Alberta. Without his foresight, perseverance, and wisdom, KuFC and many other Ukrainian Canadian organizations would not be where they are today. Every year since his passing, the Kule Folklore Centre has hosted a lecture in his name to promote the study of Ukrainian folklore and stimulate critical thought related to folklore studies and folk expressions in Ukraine and diaspora communities. This year’s lecture held on April 5, 2024 at the University of Alberta. The guest lecturer was Dr. Mariya Lesiv, a former graduate student of the Ukrainian Folklore Program at the UofA, now an Associate Professor of Folklore, at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador.

COURSES - WINTER 2024 Highlights

FOLK 205 - History of Folklore Studies

Instructor: Dr. Larisa Sembaliuk Cheladyn

During the winter semester, 45 students participated in Folk 205. This introductory folklore course explores the history of folklore studies from the Brothers Grimm to Simon Bronner. Students explored how various folk genres (oral, text, material, and performative) were studied in the past and how the methodology can be applied to the study of contemporary folklore as a subtext of media studies. On March 18, 2024, Dr. Frank Sysyn and Dr. Bohdan Klid introduced the students to the 3 volume set of Father Mykhailo Zubrytsky's ethnographic field notes from Galicia and the Boiko region of Ukraine. Dr. Klid’s presentation also featured the phenomenal rediscovery of the "Sofiivska koliadka" found among Zubrytsky’s documents. Dr. Bohdan Klid's article "How a Unique Old Carol Was “Discovered,” “Rediscovered,” and Given New Meaning in the Context of the Battle for Kyiv" can be read HERE.

MLCS 696: Oral History - Theory and Praxis

Instructor: Dr. Natalka Khanenko Friesen

Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, many Ukrainians have found it necessary to leave their country in search of safety and security. Between the introduction of the Canada-Ukraine authorization of emergency travel (CUAET) and December 2023, 210,000 Ukrainian nationals arrived in Canada. Of those who came to Alberta, almost two-thirds settled in Edmonton. 

Studies using oral history and other methodologies have documented the experiences of Ukrainians fleeing the war, yet none we know of have delved into the motivations, goals, and stories of those sharing their homes with this population. What reasons do families and individuals have for choosing to host Ukrainian newcomers? Why are Canadians without Ukrainian ancestry willing to help? How has their experience of hosting affected their view of the war? In sum, what is it like to host Ukrainian displaced persons in Edmonton?

To try and answer these questions our seven-person, graduate student research team conducted oral history interviews with seven individuals who have hosted Ukrainian newcomers.  The course culminated in a presentation on April 24, 2024 titled: Sharing Home in Edmonton: An Oral History of Hosting Ukrainian Newcomers in Wartime

MORE about MLCS 696

The Canadian federal government has funded emergency accommodations in hotel rooms for those who arrive without immediately accessible housing, but this support only lasts two weeks, which has proved to be insufficient time for many individuals and families struggling to adapt to a new country. In response to this need for longer-term housing, many Albertans have opened their homes to Ukrainian displaced persons. Not only Ukrainian Canadians, but Edmontonians from a variety of cultural and national backgrounds have reached out to help. Studies using oral history and other methodologies have documented the experiences of Ukrainians fleeing the war, yet none we know of have delved into the motivations, goals, and stories of those sharing their homes with this population. What reasons do families and individuals have for choosing to host Ukrainian newcomers? Why are Canadians without Ukrainian ancestry willing to help? How has their experience of hosting affected their view of the war? In sum, what is it like to host Ukrainian displaced persons in Edmonton?

To try and answer these questions our seven-person team conducted oral history interviews with seven individuals who have hosted Ukrainian newcomers. Through our own connections to the Ukrainian and Ukrainian Canadian communities in Edmonton, as well as the aid of leaders in non-profit organizations like the Ukrainian Canadian Congress of Alberta, our small-scale project will focus specifically on those hosts who do not identify as Ukrainian Canadian. We hope that, by exploring the desire to help these seeming outsiders to the community in need, we can identify ways that more Canadians may be mobilized to support displaced persons and refugees fleeing this and other crises, now and in the future. Sharing our research is necessary for achieving this goal. To do so, we will record our interviews with video and audio, take photos of any relevant images or mementos shown to us by participants, and then use this material to create a public presentation consisting of a short film, lecture, and discussion. We aim to complete our project and hold this event by the end of April. Afterwards, the project records will be kept in the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) archive at the University of Alberta for the benefit of future researchers and oral historians. 

Our project is being organized as part of the graduate-level course "Oral History: Theory and Praxis" offered by the Modern Languages and Cultural Studies Department at the University of Alberta. We the students, Victoria Kostyniuk, Zoe Wagner, Kai Lin, Anna Olenenko, Anna Morozova, Vlada Fatiushchenko, and Margaret DeCoste, have spent this semester learning about how to plan and carry out oral history projects, as well as the benefits of this methodology for discovering and sharing stories which may be lost or ignored by traditional histories. Our professor, Dr. Natalia Khanenko-Friesen, is also director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) and leader of the ongoing oral history project "Ukrainian Displaced Persons in Canada post 2022: Making Home in Times of Peace and War." We hope our research can provide a small contribution to the vital work being done with and for Ukrainian displaced persons.

View our website here.

COMMUNITY RESEARCH PROJECTS

The Kule Folklore Centre and Bohdan Medwidsky Archives were initially created to support academic research at the University of Alberta. Primary resources such as letters, photographs, memoirs, and family histories provided context for students and faculty research projects.  Since that time the centre and resources have grown and attracted researchers from all over the world. In this issue, we are focusing on three research projects led by independent researchers in Edmonton.

FRIENDS OF THE UKRAINIAN FOLKLORE CENTRE

Do you celebrate Christmas? Easter? 

The Friends of the Ukrainian Folklore Centre are curious.

Calendar customs are celebrated yearly. They correspond to predetermined dates based on several factors, such as religious (Christmas, Easter, Hanukkah), historic (Ukraine's Independence Day, Canada Day), agricultural (Farmer's Day), and celestial events (Summer Solstice/Kupalo, New Year/Malanka).

Ukrainian calendar customs are plentiful and varied depending on location and demographics. Over centuries, immigration and political pressure have had an impact on when, where, and how these traditions are celebrated. Most often, changes have occurred in response to assimilation, integration, social upheaval, or even weather patterns. Depending on the circumstances, the transition could take place over hundreds of years or in the blink of an eye. 

During current, chaotic world events and technological changes, the Friends of the Ukrainian Folklore Centre in Canada would like to record how people celebrate holidays and what customs they include for future reference. 

We invite you to participate in the following survey.

Please contact UkrFolkloreSurvey@gmail.com with any questions.

Gordon Gordey (MFA, MA, B Ed)

Gordon Gordey is an internationally recognized professional arts stage director, academic, and Ukrainian dance librettist/writer. He is well known in the Ukrainian dance community for his long-time affiliation with SHUMKA as a dancer, choreographer, and past Artistic Director.  Gordon now sits on the Board of the Alberta Ukrainian Dance Association and continues to research and publish topics related to Ukrainian Dance as it presents itself on a global stage. Gordon’s research has brought him to the BMUFA on many occasions to dig for details and vet facts. The following two articles by Gorden were published earlier this year.

Joyce Sirsky-Howell

Joyce Sirsky-Howell is no stranger to the Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives. She was first drawn to our library and archives when she wore the hat of Costume Mistress for SHUMKA. Later on, her interest in Ukrainian cuisine and the history of Ukrainian Cookbooks in Canada found her in our stacks compiling the most extensive database of Ukrainian community cookbooks in North America.

The following article by Joyce was recently published by the Culinary Historians in Toronto.

“Searching For and Documentation of Ukrainian-Canadian Cookbooks” in Culinary Chronicles:
Occasional Papers of the Culinary Historians of Canada,  New Series, Issue 3.
Culinary Historians in Toronto, 2024.
by Joyce Sirsky-Howell


BOHDAN MEDWIDSKY UKRAINIAN FOLKLORE ARCHIVES

Our mandate includes supporting academic, community, and independent researchers by collecting and archiving primary resources related to Ukrainian and Canadian history and folklore.

NEWS FROM THE ARCHIVES

The winter semester at the Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives (BMUFA) was very exciting. It was filled with archival work, such as acquiring new donations, describing and processing collections, workshops, and special events, and establishing ties with the Ukrainian community in Edmonton. 

OPEN HOUSE

In early March, the Kule Folklore Center and the BMUFA welcomed visitors for a series of Open House Lectures and Workshops. One of those events was the Scan-a-thon workshop, led by Nataliia Yesypenko with the help of the KuFC Research Assistant Dmytro Yesypenko. During the workshop, the participants learned about the basic guidelines for handling archival documents and approaches to arranging a family archive. Hands-on experience included an opportunity to scan invaluable personal photographs on the BMUFA's scanners.

Open House events, also focused on the accessibility and variety of BMUFA’s holdings, highlighting the Local Culture Project of pioneer interviews across the prairies. This ongoing collection includes about 800 hours of audio recordings and is partially available on the Aviary platform hosted by the University of Alberta. Click here to view.

In preparation for the Open House, the Kule Folklore Centre's Research Assistant Brittany Dyck engaged with the Local Culture Project collection. She described it in the following words: 

"Over the course of the past two years, we have been making slow but steady and significant progress with continuing to organize and prepare Local Culture Project materials. The current focus is on creating indexes for the interviews that are currently already publicly accessible and to ensure that keywords and topics are easily searchable for researchers and family members alike. This includes ensuring that all metadata is accurate and that GPS coordinates of each mentioned location are linked to each interview when possible. Going forward, the next priority will be attaching collected photographs to the interviews so they are viewable for anyone accessing the interviews."

Dome, St. Josaphat's Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral
Photo by Orest Semchishen
 UF2011.61,p1

RESEARCH, CONSULTATIONS, AND REFERENCES

The Medwidsky Archives provides supporting services for academic and community researchers. Our archivist,  Nataliia Yesypenko, continued to provide consultations and references both in-person and online. The most requested collections in the first half of 2024 were:

PROCESSING DONATIONS

Donated archival materials are processed as they are received. Research assistants under Nataliia's guidance have been actively involved in describing and digitizing each collection. Currently, Marta Dvuliat has made progress in digitizing the Goberman Photograph Collection. David Goberman Photograph Collection consists of several thousand photographs, captured between the late 1960s and 1970s. They depict museums and their artifacts, as well as the exterior and interior of churches, landscapes, and architecture in the western regions of Ukraine, specifically Bukovyna and Halychyna. The Bukovyna part of the collection is scheduled to be published online later this summer.

RECENTLY UPLOADED COLLECTIONS

Our graduate Students and Research Assistants continued to work diligently throughout the past four months. The Ivan Lahola Collection has now been processed, digitized, and uploaded to the database by Marta Dvuliat. Additionally, Anna Morozova completed descriptions of the Bohdan Klid Collection and Sophie Sakousky Family Collection. The information is now publicly available. They can be accessed by clicking on the links above or accessing the directory HERE.

LIBRARY NEWS

The research library of the Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives consists of various publications on Ukrainian folklore, art, theatre, dance, history, folklore theory and methodology, and Ukrainian Canadian history and community life. At this time, we have approximately 10,000 items in our holdings. Our library Catalogue is accessible online. See the button below.

Library Assistant, Sia Chernyavska, recently completed the Library Juice Academy, Library of Congress Classification course. She has now undertaken a project revising the call numbers of many BMUFA library publications. Call numbers are combinations of letters and numbers that can be found on spine labels of publications in libraries. Each letter indicates a general topic of the content which is further narrowed down using letter-number combinations. Sia continues working to ensure the BMUFA library publication call numbers align with the Library of Congress standard, used by all academic libraries in North America. Additionally, she creates new call numbers for numerous publications that are unique to the BMUFA library or recently published and lack metadata. 

Library of Congress classification for Ukraine

Over the winter, Sia also focused on the newly revised Library of Congress classification for Ukraine. Ukrainian history was finally removed as a subclass of Russian history, and now has a class of its own. She reclassified a large section of the BMUFA Ukrainian history publications, and continues working on more titles. This work contributes to broader initiatives to make library descriptions more accurate and inclusive, as well as to the efforts of many Ukrainianists to decolonize Slavic Studies. 

Last year, the BMUFA acquired two substantial family libraries—the Arabchuk and Turzansky collections. Incorporating these collections into the KuFC library catalogue has been a time-consuming process involving the organization of documents and the identification of duplicate books and other resources.  We aim to complete the cataloging by the end of this year.

SUCH is a Kule Folklore Centre initiative launched six years ago thanks to Peter Arabchuk's generous support. Our mandate is to help individuals and communities preserve and share Ukrainian-Canadian history and culture. Peter Arabchuk’s significant contributions to the University of Alberta enabled the creation of the SUCH network and the ongoing study and documentation of the history and culture of Ukrainian Canadians.  The uniqueness of the SUCH Program lies in its combination of academic objectives and its connection to the needs of individual and community organizations in their quest to connect Ukrainian Canadian archives and cultural heritage collections in North America.

CONTACT INFORMATION:  

suchnetwork@ualberta.ca

How Can You Benefit?

As of 2024, the SUCH Program team includes Dmytro Yesypenko and Sia Chernyavska. Under the guidance of the Director of the KuFC, the team is responsible for coordinating community-based projects, offering guidance and support for new collections, and managing the SUCH website.  

Visit the website for more information and to search the newly linked community collections.

“The assistance that you [SUCH] provided seems so long ago, but I do recall it vividly and it was very important for us. We had no other affordable options to help us capture the large-size art from our Joseph Ulan collection. We are confident now knowing that the pieces have been professionally preserved digitally'”
(Gordon Yaremchuk, Friends of the Ukrainian Village Society)


SPECIAL EVENTS

Special events bring community and campus life together in a sharing of new and old traditions. The following news clips begin where the last newsletter ended, starting with a montage of special event photos from Malanka to the recent celebration of UFEST 2024 at Borden Park in Edmonton.

MALANKA 2024

On January 13, 2024, the Kule Folklore Centre celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the 1st Malanka on campus at the University of Alberta. It was a great success featuring a Ukrainian buffet, caroling, mumming, and dancing to John Stech and John Calverley…So successful we have booked the University Club again. Ticket sales will begin on September 1. Watch for details

SAVE THE DATE:  University of Alberta Malanka -  Saturday, January 11, 2025

OPEN HOUSE

March 4 - 8, 2024 

March was Open House Month at the Kule Folklore Centre. We opened the doors from March 4-8, and in collaboration with the Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives and SUCH Network, the centre hosted workshops on digital scanning, textile preservation, and finally Genealogy with special guest Elaine Kalynchuk. Students registered in Folklore and Language classes in MLCS also participated in an Introduction to Archives led by our Archivist, Nataliia Yesypenko.

Taras Shevchenko at the Edmonton Public Library

March 10 - April 7, 2024

Ukraine’s most famous poet was Taras Shevchenko (March 9, 1814 - March 10, 1861). 

His works still resonate today in Ukraine and among generations living in the diaspora. This year, the Kule Folklore Centre collaborated with the Edmonton Public Library—Stanley A. Milner Main Branch to set up an exhibit and create finding guides that introduced Shevchenko and his works to Edmontonians in the downtown core.  

UFEST 2024

May 24 & 25, 2024 

UFest Edmonton marks the beginning of the Summer Ukrainian Festival Season in Canada.  Once again, the Kule Folklore Centre collaborated with the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies to host a tent featuring the many books published by both centres. In addition, for $1 visitors could purchase gently worn deaccessioned duplicate books from the Libary holdings.  

In Memory… Dr. Robert Klymasz

It is with heavy hearts that we mourn the passing of Dr. Robert (Bob) Klymasz. Dr. Klymasz was the preeminent Ukrainian Folklorist in North America. It is his research that has had an impact on Ukrainian Folklore studies in Canada. He was also a close friend of the Kule Folklore Centre and a guiding light to Drs. Medwidsky and Nahachewsky as they developed our Centre. Dr. Robert Klymasz obtained a B.A. from the University of Toronto, and later studied at Charles University, Prague (1962), University of Manitoba (M.A., 1960), Harvard University (1960-1962), and Indiana University (Ph.D., 1971). In 1967, he joined the Canadian Museum of Civilization and served as its first programme director for Slavic and East European Studies. He was the executive director of the Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Centre (Oseredok) in Winnipeg, a visiting associate professor in Folklore for Memorial University's Department of Folklore, a visiting professor in Folklore and Slavic Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, and a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School. In 1993, as a curator with the Museum of Civilization, Dr. Klymasz began a comprehensive study on community life in Gimli, Manitoba. Dr. Klymasz was a renowned expert on Ukrainian Canadian folklore, having extensively written, published, and lectured on this subject.

We extend our deepest condolences to Dr. Klymasz's family, friends, colleagues, and all those whose lives he touched. May his memory be a blessing, and may his contributions to Ukrainian Folklore studies continue to inspire future generations.

May his memory be eternal. Вічна йому пам'ять.

In 2022, Dr. Klymasz was the inaugural speaker of the Annual Bohdan Medwidsky Memorial Lecture, where he spoke about new perspectives on Ukrainian Folklore in Canada. You can watch his lecture HERE.

COMING SOON...

The Kule Folklore Centre is accepting donations of Ukrainian souvenir T-shirts to add to our collection. Contact:  ukrfolk@ualberta.ca for more information.