Ridne Slovo Ukrainian School

Since the unprovoked invasion of sovereign Ukraine by Russia in 2022, USF-BC has granted monies to enable Ukrainian displaced children attend and participate in a variety of cultural and Ukrainian language activities with their Ukrainian Canadian peers at the Ukrainian school, Ridne Slovo. Previously, the school received a USF-BC grant to be able to continue its excellent and varied curriculum throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Holodomor: The Ukrainian Genocide

Donation of the research book, Holodomor: The Ukrainian Genocide 1932-1933, editors Oleh Romanyshyn and Orst Steciw, given to UBC, SFU and UVic university libraries and to the Slavics department at UBC was supported by USF-BC. The book provides detailed information of how the Soviet regime under Stalin murdered millions of Ukrainians by starvation in an attempt to erase the existence of the Ukrainian identity and spirit and to collectivize all farmland.

Canadian settlement by Ukrainians

Reproduction of the 14 Museum panels from the BC Royal Museum depicting Ukrainian immigration to Canada was made possible with a grant from USF-BC to the Ukrainian Community Society of Ivan Franko in Richmond. These panels are excellent resources available to be borrowed by other groups to inform our community of Canadian settlement by Ukrainians and the enduring impact that Ukrainians have had on Canada and all Canadians.

Ukraine in WWII

USF-BC contributed to Yurij Luhovy’s project of the restoration/digitization of “Ukraine in WWII: History and its aftermath”. It is vital Ukrainian Canadian record of the presentation made by various Canadian and American scholars in 1985, at a conference in Toronto, to counter Russian’s disinformation against Ukrainian Canadians and Ukraine. It is being safeguarded and is most relevant today with Russia’s war against Ukraine and the destruction of historical archives.

SUSK Congress in Vancouver 2023

SUSK, the Ukrainian Canadian Students’ Union held a Congress in Vancouver in 2023 with support from the USF-BC and various other organizations.

Soviet Ukrainian Dissidents in Canada

Yurij Luhovy, an award-winning producer and editor, received a grant from USF-BC for the restoration, digitization and safeguarding of unique recordings of many former Soviet Ukrainian dissidents speaking in Canada in 1970’s-1980’s. Valentyn Moroz, Nadia Svitlychna, General Petro Hryhorenko and other dissidents provided firsthand knowledge of gross violations of human rights by the Soviet regime and how Ukrainian Canadians actively worked in their defence.

USF Partner Grant

USF-BC granted author Nikki Manzie monies towards her research project “The Land Speaks”. She is tying together the Ukrainian Canadian immigrant experience and culture with the culture of the Indigenous peoples in the Canadian Prairies.

Ukrainian library in Victoria

The Ukrainian Library at the Ukrainian Cultural Centre in Victoria has expanded and gone to online cataloguing and lending which is especially useful for post-secondary students. USF-BC’s grant enabled the Library to have part time staffing for a year.

That Never Happened

USF-BC co-hosted the screening of "That Never Happened", a documentary revealing the Canadian government’s WWI internment of 5000 Ukrainians, some being women and children. As “enemy aliens”, they were stripped of their property and forced to work in difficult conditions. Our guest speaker, Andrea Malysh from the Canadian First World War Recognition Fund, and Dr. Sarah Beaulieu, an archeologist featured in the documentary, shared personal insights with the audience.

Recovery Room Documentary

This multi-award winning documentary directed by Adrian Luhovy captured viewers’ hearts and minds. It illustrated the devastating human toll of the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine, however, Luhovy also demonstrated injured Ukrainian soldiers’ resilience and never ending hope for the future, as well as the compassion of the Canadian medical team volunteers in Ukraine. The Foundation co-hosted the screening in October 2018.

Taras Schevchenko School

The Foundation continues to give grants to the Taras Shevchenko School in Vancouver. The school has offered Ukrainian classes to adults for over 30 years, with materials prepared to meet the needs of students at beginner, intermediate and advanced levels.

Second Chance Documentary

The production of Second Chance, a documentary by young director Adriana Luhovy, was supported by USF-BC. In October, 2017, the Foundation co-hosted the screening of this moving portrayal of how orphaned children in Ukraine attending camps sponsored and staffed with Canadian and Ukrainian volunteers learn to push on with the challenges they face and help each other.

“SPADOK” Archive Project

Archives of the Ukrainian community in British Columbia have been catalogued, scanned and digitized through the archive maintaining program Spadok. USF-BC’s financial assistance has made early archival records, publications, letters and other documents from the Ukrainian Canadian Congress of BC available through Spadok’s website.

USF-BC’s generous support to the University of British Columbia allowed for Ukrainian language courses at the 3rd and 4th year levels to thrive for seven years. USF-BC also made possible the inclusion of Ukrainian at Simon Fraser University’s Language Training Institute.

Ukrainian Language Schools

Both the Ukrainian Heritage Language School, the Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian Language School in Vancouver and other schools were recipients of multiple grants from USF-BC. The schools offered a comprehensive program of Ukrainian language, culture, history and the arts for students from beginning to advanced levels.

Children of Maidan come to Vancouver

USF-BC and Ukrainians in Vancouver welcomed a group of 14 young students from Ukraine at a community dinner. These courageous young people presented personal accounts of their experiences in or the impact of revolutionary events that took place in Ukraine in 2014. USF-BC provided funds to host this welcome dinner. The youth participated in a summer program and ESL classes sponsored by OWL and the Vancouver Ukrainian community.

Echoes of Ukraine Series

USF-BC is funding the digitalization of Vancouver’s long-running Ukrainian community television series Echoes of Ukraine. Dancing the Dream is but one of many programs. USF-BC has also funded yet-to-be released documentary Children of Hope by Adriana Luhovy

Vakhtang Kipiani

Vakhtang Kipiani, speaker on Ukraine’s Historical Truth-July 2015, Vancouver USF-BC supported an evening with the editor of Istorychna Pravda (www. istpravda.com.ua). Mr. Kipiani’s work focuses on correcting deliberate historical untruths that permeate Ukrainian education and society

Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk, Lecture

Dr. Lubomyr Yaroslav Luciuk is a Canadian academic and author of books and articles in the field of political geography and Ukrainian history. USF-BC has funded and partnered with other organizations to bring to British Columbia’s communities interesting speakers on pertinent issues.

From Pacific to Atlantic

In 2014, USF-BC funded the Canadian première of a film montage on the history-changing events of Maidan in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Genocide Revealed

A feature length English language documentary on the 1932-1933 Famine Genocide in Soviet Ukraine when millions were deliberately starved to death by Stalin’s regime; it also describes the accompanying destruction of Ukraine’s religious, academic, cultural and political leadership. USF-BC funded the English translation and hosted Vancouver showing.

Hope's War

A novel that brings the horrifying history of wartime Ukraine to life, USF-BC supported book launches in Vancouver and Surrey, B.C.

A Hunger Most Cruel

A Ukrainian short fiction translated into English about the terror-famine that ravaged Soviet Ukrainian territories in the early 1930s. The book features selected works by three authors whose unflinching honesty and complementary perspectives on the horrific events around which narratives are constructed create a compelling set of vivid, disturbing, and haunting images of the human toll that this ideologically motivated artificial famine exacted. USF-BC supported printing of the second edition

Maria: A Chronicle of a Life

A story about a village woman’s loves, losses, and daily toil, from the emancipation of serfs in 1861 to one of the most tragic periods in human history– the 1932-33 Holodomor, or Famine-Genocide. USF-BC supported and co-hosted the book launch in Vancouver.

A day in Hollywood, Night in Ukraine

A dinner event featuring a multimedia lecture by Dr. Denis Hlynka: Based on research conducted for over a dozen years, Dr. Hlynka examined how Ukrainian themes have infiltrated the mainstream of North American popular culture. USF-BC promoted and co-hosted this dinner presentation.