From the Heart of a Woman

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For an afternoon of Christian fellowship, heart health information and a hands-on Ukrainian "bake and take" activity women of all ages are invited to a very lovely afternoon event called "From the Heart" on Saturday, February 1, 2014.  The Ukrainian Women's Association of Canada, Calgary Branch invites you to register or seek more information from Marla don.belsheim@shaw.ca

or Lori lorichomik@gmail.com. for the event. 

I remember being at their last event a couple of years ago and fascinated at the mix of lovely people there - the room was filled from edge, to edge to edge.  Such a very warm, intelligent, and community rich experience! Clearly the women of Calgary enjoyed the event, and UWAC Calgary has planned another women's day!

Bring $5 for entry, knowing all proceeds will be donated to the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Alberta. You can help women in need by bringing sample sized hand lotion, perfume, shampoo (etc), and new women's socks and underwear, to assemble Valentine Gift Bags for our Southern Alberta Sisters in Need.

Saturday, February 1, 2014
St. Vladimir’s Cultural Center
404 Meredith Road N.E.
1:00 p.m.

Remember to bring a friend!

Do You Hear Me Now?

“SLOOKH” Based in Edmonton, the Canada-Ukraine Alliance for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Persons will continue to sponsor summer educational camps in Ukraine for deaf children and their parents in 2014.  Started in 2000, the camp has grown into a popular program that draws over fifty participants, including students, teachers, parents and specialists in Ukrainian Sign Language. The last camp was at the Odessa-Zatoka breach and included both recreational and learning sessions. Camp participants left with a deeper understanding of sign language and its importance in educating deaf children. Finances from the Canadian side are donated by individuals and various organizations in Alberta, such as the St. John’s Cathedral and Lac La Biche branches of the Ukrainian Women’s Association of Canada. Additional donations would be appreciated.  This is a worthwhile charitable assistance provided by Canadians to Ukrainians.  More information can be obtained from the President of the Alliance, Roman Petryshyn (780 – 431 – 1473) petryshynr@macewan.ca) or from the Secretary, Elaine V. Harasymiw (780 – 437 – 6629) elainelvh@shaw.ca).

Soar like an Eagle - Sokil Project

Eagles keep soaring on a thermal updraft even though gravity is constantly pulling.  Such is the life of birds and such is the life of academic aspirants today in the Sokal Student Award Project in Ukraine.  The objective of the project is to support Ukraine's youth by inspiring them to pursue higher education, help define their goals and aspirations while increasing their confidence in their abilities.  Graduating high school students in the Sokal Region of Western Ukraine, from the cities of Sokal, Velyki Mosty, 17 villages and Internat (which is a home for invalids and children with serious illnesses) participated in the project.  There were 45 students awarded financial gifts in the 2012 year, soon the 2013's will be announced. 

Student essays on the topic "What I want to Become and How I will Achieve This" exhibited their high academic potential, character traits and purposeful goal setting.  The Ukrainian Women's Association of Canada, Alberta Provincial, as well as Ukrainian Women's Association of America, New York, are among the women's associations who are helping smaller localities with their academic opportunities in this manner.  Financial gifts have enabled study at Lviv universities in medicine and history to date. 

Did you know that the first Ukrainian Youth Association in Canada was called Eagles and Eagless?  At a 1930 Ukrainian Self Reliance League of Canada convention they chose the name Sokole for the youth group which would over time be renamed Canadian Ukrainian Youth Association- CYMK (SUMK).  In its 80 plus years, the poetic Sokil-eaglets have been proud and freedom loving birds,  kings among birds, whose ability to soar the heights has enabled perception, precision and far-reaching potential. 

It's time to put some money into the hands of those able to help a strong democratic foundation for Ukraine's leap into economic prosperity. A warm thermal updraft will keep the young eagles from Sokil Region afloat - let's help them soar!

All donations for this project may be directed to The Sokal Student Award Project in Ukraine, UWAC Alberta Provincial Executive, 10951-107 Street, Edmonton, AB. Canada T5H 2Z5

In Sokal, the Student Project is administered by the executive committee of The Charitable Fund, "Ukraine's Future, Sokal Area," through the Sokal Region Department of Education. 
 

Keeping Track of Time

Memorable events, times of regret, happy days, but none like the present!  How to be "present", stay in moment, and yet understand it is "just" a moment?  Seize the day! Carpe diem! 

So many events happen on a regular cycle - birthdays, anniversaries, weekends, feast days, holidays - why is it that we still need to mark them on the calendar? 

If we were just a bit more attentive to the rhythms of nature perhaps the blooming crocus, the first tulips, the first buds of spring, a whiff of ancient smoke might creep deep into our psyche and refresh the spirit! Keeping pace with the fluff of daily living, are we missing the eternal heartbeat of home?

Visual reminders everywhere, lists of duties and responsibilities, all prioritized, externally driven.  Time is so fleeting, there comes a time when the imposing clamour of contemporary living gets to be oppressive! But soft, tender as a fleeting memory, in an instant, an image can remind us to breathe.  All the whispered endearments in the "forever memories" of our lineage patiently wait to be heard.  Time to "keep with the culture".  And recently this beautiful one appeared in my collection!

Beautifully photographed exponents from the Ukrainian Museum of Canada, bearing tons of cultural insight, now grace the pages of a new calendar.  The only place in southern Alberta to get this beautifully photographed calendar of edifying wisdom is from the kiosk at the Ukrainian Museum of Canada - Calgary Collection at 403-264-3437.  A sister museum in Toronto has just released this beautifully photographed calendar - I am sure that Darcia Moskaluk-Rutkay the UWAC Provincial President for Eastern Canada must be thrilled with the new release.  Just lovely.

For more information contact 
The Ukrainian Museum of Canada - Ontario Branch
621 Spadina Ace., Toronto, Ontario  M5S 2H4
Telephone:416-923-3318 ext. 105 Fax: 416-923-8266
Email: museum@stvladimir.ca  Web site: www.umcontario.com

Another Great Ukrainian Cookbook!

Another great Ukrainian Cookbook to tell you about!

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This is the most recent publication of the Ukrainian Women's Association of Canada, Hanka Romanchych Branch in Saskatoon!  This is the home organization of the Savella Stechishin of Traditional Ukrainian Cookery fame.  And now the ladies have continued in the fine tradition, and published a beautiful, new collection entitled From Baba, With Love.

From Baba,With Love is truly a lovely recipe book.  With full colour pictures, and ethno-cultural background, it is full of newly adapted recipes that use contemporary methods and technologies.

Because I know you will want to get yours quickly, here is the contact information to the only store in Calgary that carries the book! You may want to order several to have as gifts to share the whole year long!!

Contact the lovely ladies at - The Ukrainian Museum of Canada - Calgary Collection -

St. Vladimir’s Ukrainian Orthodox Cultural Centre

404 Meredith Road NE

Calgary, Alberta T2E 5A6

For more Information, phone 403 264 3437.

The Most Loved Ukrainian Cookbook!

Cooking is soul work, at least in a Ukrainian home.  You can always order in pizza, or get a bucket of chicken, but traditional Ukrainian foods are a trip down nostalgia lane.  Making pyrohy, kolach (braided circle bread), holubtsi (cabbage rolls), no matter whether you are using instant ingredients, or a stand mixer, still require tender loving care, lots of handiwork and an admiring audience.

So, for the best known and perhaps the best loved Ukrainian cookbook I reach for my Savella Stechishin cookbook.  Traditional Ukrainian Cookery by Savella Stechishin was published by Trident Press in Winnipeg, Canada in 1984. (ISBN 0 919490-36-0) So, I have the Fourteenth Edition!

Interestingly enough, the book was initiated by the Ukrainian Women's Association of Canada as a national organization project, and first published in 1957.  But it was the product of much love and dedication, and took a long while from conception to publication.

The way I heard it, Savella Stechishin was among the first Ukrainian women to attend University in Saskatchewan, earning a Bachelor in Home Economics.  She was also an early leader in the Ukrainian Women's Association of Canada, and felt the importance of sharing modern cooking techniques to the rural Ukrainian women on the prairies.  Safe methods, sanitation, canning, preserves, entertaining, and displaying foods for bake sales or banquets - these were her lecture and presentation topics.  In turn, these women shared their fabulous recipes, lovingly passed down from generation to generation.  So the cookbook, is the product of endless hours of fieldwork among the UWAC of the day.  And with the publication of this book, community organizations could sell their wares and fund the building of many community halls, gathering places, and churches.

Truly a person with a vision, Savella Stechishin can be honored for being the first, most popular Ukrainian Cookbook writer in North America.  Since then, Ukrainian food has come out of the farm kitchen and into the supermarkets everywhere in North America.

Have you ever found another cookbook like it?  Which are your favorite recipe books?  Where can you get the most authentic recipes? I am hopeful you have some gem in your cookbook collection to recommend!

ps  I just checked Amazon and perhaps you might be amazed to know a book in new condition costs $516 and a used one for $116.  So, take care of yours - it is a collectors item!! I know my mom's is already in shreds!.

http://www.ukrcdn.com/2009/12/07/a-ukrainian-canadian-julia-child-and-more-savella-stechishin/

Seeds for the Future

Ah, the lovely smells of Autumn!  Leaves of golden yellow, fields of stubble, the harvest bounty brought home - such a time of plenty.  Time to thank, appreciate, and then put the gardening tools to sleep for a winter's rest. 

Hopefulness comes of this time.  Time to think  - well that patch of garden space really needs to rest, or...that section of the garden would be great for runner beans next year.  Ah, dreaming of next year's planting season.

I am not a seed harvester, however perhaps you could be.  I remember Baba saving tomatos for their seeds, and harvesting beans to dry some for next year's seeds.  This involved hopefulness, planning, dreams for a better tomorrow.

The bad news, however, is that there are major seed-developing companies that are already introducing "terminator technologies" into Canada so that every time you want to grow a grain or vegetable or a flower, you will have to purchase new seeds.  These seeds will produce, but will not reproduce!!!  The seed will be sterile!!!

This scares me a lot.  When you consider the accumulated agricultural wisdom of our Canadian prairie producers, and place that against the HOLODOMOR experiences of Ukrainians in the last century, our food security is a huge issue!!  Who controls our food security??

The National Council of Women of Canada (www.ncwc.ca) , and the Ukrainian Women's Association of Canada (www.uwac-national.ca) have asked the government of Canada to ban terminator seeds in Canada.  In the upcoming session of Parliament, Alex Atamanenko, NDP MP for BC Southern Interior, has sponsored a private member's bill - Bill C-434 Terminator Seeds Ban.  This is "an act to prohibit the planting, cultivation, release, sale and importation of seeds incorporating or altered by variety-genetics use restriction technologies (V-GURTS) also called "Terminator Technologies". 

Normally private members bills have little chance of passing, however you can help this one pass but flooding your MP's office with phone calls, letters and emails in support of this bill.  Be assured that the grain companies will be lobbying very strongly against this Bill.

Calgary's Annual Canada Day/Dominion Day at Heritage Park - July 1, 2012

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A lady I know has recently been awarded the Order of Canada.  She now has the honor and privilege to preside over the Citizenship ceremonies welcoming new Canadian citizens from widely different homelands.  Mrs. Orysia Sushko (editor of the Ukrainian Women's Association of Canada newspaper "Promin"), as Presiding Official spoke about the importance of active citizenship, responsibilities and obligations which new Canadians accept with the privilege of citizenship.  Administering the oath, she spoke about the equality of men and women, our shared traditions and values, obeying the laws, and protecting and enjoying our heritage and environment.  Welcoming new citizens in the name of Her Majesty, the Queen, she concluded her comments saying "From this day forward, our history is now your history.  Our laws are your laws.  Our identity is your identity.  Our responsibility to be a good and faithful citizen, loyal to Canada, is now your responsibility.  The future of Canada, our freedom, our democracy, our peaceful society, equality under the law, our properity - the future of all these things now depend on you.  As a great Canadian soldier poet, Dr. John McCrea wrote, "To you we throw the torch; Be yours to hold it high".  Be a proud Canadian - honour and respect the rights you have received at today's citizenship ceremony." (Promin - June-July 2012)

What heartwarming and positive words, from our newest Ukrainian Canadian recipient of the Order of Canada.  Congratulations Orysia and to all the most recent inductees.

Calgary will celebrate our Canada Day/Dominion Day with a great roster of performers at Celebration Field Stage in Heritage Park!  Make sure you come to enjoy the company of guests, recent Canadians, and the representatives of our First Nations, Canadians celebrating Canadian culture from coast to coast, our cultural inheritance, all at Heritage Park Historical Village this weekend!

tryzub.ca

With over 120 years of Ukrainian-Canadian-ness to celebrate - The Tryzub Ukrainian Dance Ensemble and Junior Tryzub will be performing as part of Heritage Park's Dominion Day (Canada Day) Celebrations. Tryzub will be performing on the Celebration Field Stage at 3:00pm. 
For more information, please see: www.heritagepark.ca/special-events/canadaDay.php

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