Update: There was a surprising number of people who seemed to have voted for Borys but filled out the ballot improperly, if there were more than 26 of these it could have delivered him a victory:
Over the long-weekend, about 800 questionable ballots were reviewed by a judge, with lawyers for the candidates making arguments for or against the admissibility of each.
There were plenty of problems, according to Wrzesnewskyj, who sat in a nearby room waiting for the final results on Sunday night.
Some voters simply circled their choice. Others couldn’t keep their X in the lines. Others just crossed out the names of candidates they presumably didn’t like.
A surprising number of voters used the ballot to write messages to their favorite candidates, Wrzesnewskyj said.
Some drew hearts.
…
In the meantime, a silver lining. After the “agonizing†recount process was complete, Wrzesnewskyj’s lawyers offered some encouragement.
“If it’s any consellation,†they told him. “None of the other candidates got hearts.â€
Two documentaries about life in Ukraine are to be featured in the Toronto HotDocs film festival which starts today. Â One’s about a 15 year-old in eastern Ukraine who works illegal coal mines to help feed his family, while the other features a family raising over 20 orphans, 16 of them who are black, and the xenophobia they encounter.
Snizhne, a Ukrainian mining town that thrived during Soviet-era occupation, is today plagued by crushing poverty. For years, the town’s desperate residents have been illegally mining coal on their own, dangerously excavating abandoned mines, the basements of condemned buildings, the nearby woods, and even their own backyards. Everyone digs to survive—women, retirees, unemployed miners, even children. Since leaving his alcoholic mother’s home, 15-year-old Yura has put his schooling and his dream of becoming a cook on hold. He takes it upon himself to provide for his sisters the only way he knows how: by working the illegal pits. Yura shoulders familial responsibilities—parenting, shopping, cooking meals, making ends meet—in the absence of adults. The parental perspective on the children’s situation? “They want to eat, so they work.†A heart-rending case of children forced to grow up too quickly with no role models. – Angie Driscoll
Here’s an emotionally absorbing subject filled with layers of complexity. In a modest house in a small Ukrainian town, Olga Nenya raises 27 kids, among them 16 black children who were abandoned by their mothers and orphaned because of their race.
There’s tension with the outside community – ignorant neighbours, tsk-tsking health inspectors – but there’s also bickering within the mixed family, as the loving, hardworking yet hardline Nenya gushes over one no-good son while standing in the way of another’s talent for soccer or a daughter’s desire to move to Italy. (After the Chernobyl disaster, a summer exchange between Ukrainian kids and European families began.)
The next-to-last scene, in which one of Nenya’s children describes his treatment in a psych institution, is so full of horrific details it couldn’t be made up.
Here’s a little something to fill your weekend calendar:
Ethnic cleansing of Ukrainians in Poland documentary
Saturday at 4pm at the Revue Cinema in Roncesville (just south of Dundas West TTC station)Â is the airing of ‘The Last Journey Home’, features stories of some of the 150,000 Ukrainians forcefully deported from their homeland annexed to Poland after World War 2 under ‘Operation Wesla’ and returning 63 years later.
These Ukrainians were scattered among the hostile Polish population and condemned to assimilation. They were expelled from over 1000 villages and towns, hundreds of churches were destroyed, some 4,000 people were imprisoned and tortured in the Jaworzno concentration camp, and around 1,000 were killed during the operation and added to the list of the thousands of victims of previously carried out pacifications, executions, and torture. As the consequence of Operation “Wislaâ€, the most western part of the Ukrainian ethnic territory ceased to be inhabited by Ukrainians.
For those of you who forgot, this Sunday is Palm Sunday. Лоза б’є, Я не б’ю, від нині за тиждень, буде Великдень!
Calgary Ukrainian Festival – June 4 & 5
Carassauga – June 3 -5
Edit: I’ve updated this post using a 
![images[1]](http://www.ukrcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/images1.jpg "images[1]")
Two documentaries about life in Ukraine are to be featured in the 
Saturday at 4pm at the
For those of you who forgot,