Ukrainian Canadian

Here’s a video featuring the Roztiazhka Ukrainian dance group on Australia’s Got Talent:

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) 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 “Wisla”, the most western part of the Ukrainian ethnic territory ceased to be inhabited by Ukrainians.

Admission is available at the door for $15

[Full preview from the Canadian Lemko Association]

Palm Sunday

For those of you who forgot, this Sunday is Palm Sunday. Лоза б’є, Я не б’ю, від нині за тиждень, буде Великдень!

Saturday at 4pm at the Revue Cinema of Roncesville (just south of Dundas West TTC station), UNF is showing an encore of the Ukrainian dancing documentary Folk!:

Folk! is a documentary that explores the unique underground and acrobatic world of Ukrainian folk dancing through the eyes of narrator/filmmaker Roxy Toporowych. Featuring the legendary ballerina and choreographer Roma Pryma Bohachevsky and the Syzokryli Dance Ensemble of New York, “Folk!” is relevent to anyone trying to balance ties to one’s heritage and culture. Also featuring the Virsky National Dance Company of Ukraine, the Kashtan School of Ukrainian Dance in Cleveland and The Voloshky Dance Ensemble of Philadelphia, Folk! is the first film to be a joyful embracement of Ukrainian culture and dance in North America today.

You can get more information on their Facebook page

Also a quirky video coming out of the internets, as someone in Ukraine claims to have identified the legendary Big Foot:

MSN doesn’t allow embedding of their videos, click the picture to go to the video

The BBC investigates the closing down of the Maidan (Independence square) by the Yanukovych government – the home of the Orange Revolution and recently protests over unfair changes to the tax code:

BBC doesn’t allow embedding of their videos, click the picture to go to the video

While the video addresses Maidan square and even interviews Yanukovych about it, for some reason it is described (as many others on the BBC news site) as being about the Ukrainian people’s disillusionment with the Orange Revolution! The Revolution ended over a year ago, but the BBC editors for some reason do not place the spotlight instead on the current Yanukovych government leading the country into the bottom third of the world’s most corrupt countries.

The Gareth Jones memorial website run by his great nephew Nigel Colley posted a clip last week from a popular game show University Challenge last week that asked participants “killed in 1935, the Welsh journalist Gareth Jones was posthumously awarded which country’s medal of freedom award in 2008 for his efforts in publicizing the Holodomor, a famine of 1932 and 33 during which several millions died as a result of policies instituted by Stalin”

Unfortunately no one got the answer correct. Laughably upon hearing the word ‘Stalin’ one participant quickly buzzed in his answer of ‘Russia’, but I don’t think there is a single case of Russia awarding anyone any sort of decree for their work denouncing Stalin – especially since Russian schools are now being equipped with new textbooks justifying his millions of murders and praising the dictator.