2009 Ukrainian Cultural Festival in Mission, BC this Saturday

Edit: Information about the 2010 one is coming, they’ve changed their website URL to http://www.bcucf.ca/

The 14th annual BC Ukrainian Cultural Festival is happening this Saturday May 2nd, 2009 at the Clarke Theatre Heritage Secondary School at 33700 Prentis Avenue, Mission, BC.

Here’s the schedule:

8:50AM – 7PM Dance competition commences: participants from Prince George, Kamloops, Vernon, Kelowna, Vancouver Island, Lower Mainland and Seattle
10AM – 5PM Display Arts & Crafts
10AM – 3PM Cafeteria opens
10AM – 4PM Entertainment cafeteria & display area
10AM – 5PM Pictures in gym
5PM – 8PM Evening food in cafeteria
7:30PM – 10:30PM Family zavaba (dance)

Tickets at the door. Programs will be available at the festival.

Their website should be updated soon

GG pitches Candu reactors to Ukraine

From the Calgary Herald

Governor-General Michaelle Jean is calling for intensified energy cooperation with Ukraine, including in the nuclear sphere, to help it achieve energy self-sufficiency.

Ms. Jean, interviewed by Reuters on Saturday during a state visit to Ukraine, also said it was up to Canada and other industrialized nations to help Ukraine find permanent solutions to the dire, long-lasting consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Read the rest of the article

Remembering Chornobyl

23 years ago…

On April 26, 1986, Reactor #4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near the town of Pripyat, Ukraine exploded. The explosion took place around midnight while the neighboring town of Pripyat slept. 4 workers were killed instantly. Four days later, the residents of Pripyat were ordered to evacuate. The residents never returned and the town still remains uninhabited to this day.

While we should never forget the tragedy and who it affected, never forget who allowed it to happen and let innocent people suffer:

The first warning came in Sweden. At 9 a.m. on Monday, April 28, technicians at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant, 60 miles north of Stockholm, noticed disturbing signals blipping across their computer screens.

Two days later, Sweden noticed the radiated pollution before the Soviet authorities mentioned anything!

A glance at prevailing wind patterns confirmed their fear. For several days, currents of air had been whipping up from the Black Sea, across the Ukraine, over the Baltic and into Scandinavia. But when the Swedes and their neighbors demanded an explanation from Moscow, they were met by denials and stony silence. For six hours, as officials throughout Scandinavia insisted that something was dangerously amiss, the Soviets steadfastly maintained that nothing untoward had happened.

…

Throughout the week, an anxious, puzzled and increasingly frustrated world struggled to understand the extent of the disaster. The task was made impossibly difficult by the Soviets’ stubborn refusal to provide anything more than a few sketchy details. Moscow’s obstinance condemned people everywhere to fragmentary and often conflicting accounts that tended to shift abruptly as new facts became known. Not until the weekend did a Soviet official come forth with the beginnings of a straightforward account.

….

While Soviet pronouncements sought to minimize the extent of the damage, information gathered from satellite photos suggested a hellish scene at the accident site. All evidence pointed to a nuclear reactor fire burning out of control in the gentle, rolling Ukrainian countryside and steadily releasing radiation into the air. That makes the catastrophe unimaginably worse than the 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island, where a containment building kept most radioactive material from escaping out of the plant. The Chernobyl unit, by contrast, lacked such a protective structure.

Why lose face in front of your global peers when you can let your second class citizens (the Ukrainians) suffer in silence instead?

Continue reading Remembering Chornobyl

Catch the Kyiv Chamber Choir in Western Canada this week

I had a great time seeing the Kyiv Chamber Choir at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto last Friday night. Wrapping up in Ontario, the group heads next to the Praries and Western Canada.  You can also catch an interview with head of their touring company at Nash Holos.

Below is Ukrainian radio host Irena Bell’s interview with Mykola Hobdych, conductor of the Kyiv Chamber Choir after the Ottawa concert last Thursday. You can listen to her show on CHIN Ottawa 97.9 FM Sundays 6PM  &  Tuesdays 10PM.

Beware Russia’s coverage of the Ukrainian Presidential election

I noticed a big difference in how Russia’s ITAR-TASS news agency is starting to report the upcoming Ukrainian Presidential election, especially Viktor Yanukovych’s recent announcement to run:

Viktor Yanukovich hopes to contest Ukrainian presidency

KIEV, April 20 (Itar-Tass) — The leader of Ukraine’s oppositional Party of Regions, Viktor Yanukovich, has for the first time declared his intention to participate in the early presidential election the national parliament set for October 25.

Luckily the Kyiv Post offers a little more truthful representation of the event:

Yanukovych to run for president

Opposition leader Viktor Yanukovich, who lost a re-run of a rigged 2004 presidential election in what came to be known as the "Orange Revolution", says he will run in Ukraine’s next presidential race.

Is it a case of bad English or misleading information? Everyone who is running in this Presidential election is technically running for the first time in this particular election – why the redundancy?  It’s no secret that Yanukovych has always been a pro-Russian candidate. Would the Russian “independent” media lie for their country? You decide!

Edit: Taras points out it’s Yanukovych in Ukrainian and Yanukovich in Russian