By Archpriest Robert Anderson
Historical Overview
The history of our Church in Canada began with the arrival of Wasyl Elyniak and Ivan Pylypiw in Montreal on September 7, 1891. They had both come from the village of Nebyliv in the district of Kalush. They left Montreal and traveled by train to Winnipeg, Manitoba, a journey of approximately 2300 km.They fortunately were able to find work in Gretna , Manitoba. Western Canada had a lot of land, but needed people to settle there. Elyniak and Pylypiw made arrangements for their families to join them and then went west to Alberta (approximately 1500km west of Winnipeg); Elyniak to near Chipman and Pylypiw to near Edna-Star. The two families were able to homestead (Вони дістали діяньку землю із уряду) and to begin building their new lives in Canada.
Soon others began to arrive and Father Nestor Dmytriv, the first priest to visit, arrived in Winnipeg from the United States and served the first Divine Liturgy in Canada in the home of Wasyl Kzionzyk in Terebowlia( now Valley River) on April 12, 1897. On August 1, 1897 Fr. Dmytriv organized the first parish in Manitoba in the Stuartburn area.
As time went on, more and more immigrants arrived and settled in the agricultural land of the Prairie Provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta—although at the time, only Manitoba was a province, the others still being in the North West Territory).
Within a matter of a very few years, more priests visited from the United States, but they did not take up permanent residence in Canada. The first ones to come with the intention of staying were some Basilians and Sister Servants of Mary Immaculate from Galicia. They established themselves near Beaverlake(now Mundare), Alberta on November 7, 1902.
By 1904 the number of Greek Catholics from the Austro-Hungarian Empire had grown considerably and their spiritual needs had to be provided for. As a result, in order to help these new settlers, Fr. Achille Delaere and a few other Belgian Redemptorists changed from the Latin to the Byzantine rite. This marked the beginning of the Greek Catholic branch of the Redemptorist order.
In 1905 the Sister Servants of Mary Immaculate opened our first all-day school in Winnipeg and another in Beaverlake in 1911.
Aware of the situation of his people in their new land, the Servant of God Metropolitan Andriy Sheptytsky visited the communities in Canada from coast to coast in 1910 and again in 1921.
In 1912 Metropolitan Andriy consecrated Nykyta Budka and sent him to Winnipeg as the first bishop in Canada. In 1929, Bishop Basil Volodymyr Ladyka, who had been pastor in Edmonton, was consecrated as the second bishop of Canada.
It was also in 1921 that Father Josaphat Tymochko, the first priest born and educated in Canada, was ordained.
In 1948 the Church was divided into the exarchates of Eastern, Central and Western Canada with Bishops Isidore Borecky,Andrew Roberecky and Neil Savaryn made exarchs of these places. In 1951 the Province of Saskatchewan became a separate exarchate.
In 1956 Archbishop Basil Ladyka died and was succeeded by the first Metropolitan of Canada, Archbishop Maxym Hermaniuk. It was at this time that the exarchates became eparchies and that the Vatican began using the term Ukrainian (Ucrainus) instead of Ruthenian (Ruthenus) in its official correspondence and documentation. This was done at the previous request of Bishop Ladyka.
In 1968, Cardinal Joseph Slipyj visited all the main centres in Canada and celebrated the Divine Liturgy in Winnipeg with all of our bishops from North America and many Latin bishops present.
In 1974 the eparchy of New Westminster was established for British Columbia and the Yukon Territory and in 1981 Holy Spirit Seminary was established in Ottawa with Father Joseph Andrijishyn as the first rector.
Immigrations
There have been four waves of immigration of our people to Canada; the first from the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1891 until the beginning of World War I consisting of about 170,000 people. The second immigration was from 1922-1939 (mostly 1927-1929) after the Ukrainian Republic had fallen and it was partitioned between Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. Most of these people came from Galicia and Bukovina. Like the people of the first immigration, the immigrants of the second wave were also farmers; but by the time they arrived in Canada, all the good land had been taken or was very expensive. As a result, many of these people began to seek employment in the cities. This wave of immigration numbered about 68,000 individuals.
The third wave of immigration from 1946-1961(mostly before 1952) was mainly from the regions of Western Ukraine, with the Catholics coming from Eastern Galicia. Occupied by Poland since the fall of the Ukrainian Republic, these people found themselves caught between the Nazis coming from the West and the Bolsheviks from the East. They woke up one morning to find that they were living behind the Iron Curtain. This immigration consisted of about 37,000 people. Unlike the previous immigrations, many of these newcomers were educated or had specialized skills and crafts.
The fourth wave began in 1991 with the establishment of the Ukrainian Republic after the breakup of the Soviet Union. From 1991-2001, 23,435 individuals arrived in Canada from Ukraine. Many of these people were well educated and had professions. They have been settling in the largest cities, especially Toronto and Vancouver.
Unlike other groups such as the Greeks and Chinese that have tended to have non-stop immigration to Canada, Ukrainian immigration is marked by waves. At the time of each immigration the situation in both Ukraine and Canada was very different from that experienced by the preceding or following wave. As a result there are major cultural differences among the immigrants of each group.
The first immigration was economic and a national identity was not always clear. People often referred to themselves as being Austrian, Galician, Bukowinian, Ruthenian, Little Russian (Малоруськи), Routhainian, Gallatian and Greek Catholic. Some even claimed to speak the Greek Catholic language ( Греко-католицька мова).
With the second immigration, we see the establishment of a clearer Ukrainian identity, although this does not affect the Church which was always called the Ruthenian, Ruthenian Greek Catholic or Greek Catholic Church ( Руська Церква, Руська Греко-Католицька Церква, Греко-католицька Церква).
The third immigration was political. The people of this group were uprooted abruptly at the end of World War II. Most spent time in camps awaiting acceptance by the United States, Canada, Australia and other countries. Their elementary education was in Polish and this group developed a strong sense of national and linguistic identity which remained with them continuously. In the beginning this group was intent on returning to Ukraine and fought very had for the establishment of a Ukrainian Republic. While a few have returned to Ukraine since 1991, most have not.
As a result of their experiences, the members of the third immigration have fairly consistently considered the preservation of language and ethnic culture to be priorities.
Interestingly much of what they want to preserve is more associated with the communities which have immigrated rather than with contemporary Ukraine. The Ukrainian language, for example, has changed considerably over the years; so that communities residing outside of Ukraine often have their own dialects of Ukrainian.
The forth wave of immigration is, thus far, the smallest and these individuals have come from all over Ukraine. This is a predominantly economic immigration and many of them have little or no Church affiliation. Having been raised for the most part in the U.S.S.R., many of them feel more comfortable speaking Russian than Ukrainian and are usually quite intent on adapting to their new home. While not forgetting who they are or where they came from, they tend to be quite quick in learning English. There is great need for evangelization in this group. Those who connect with the Church are quite pious, but they are not the majority. Many who choose to be affiliated with the Church sometimes prefer the Russian over the Ukrainian Catholic Church because they feel more comfortable there.
Present Situation
In the preface to his book Eastern Christians in the New World, Bishop David Motiuk of Edmonton states: “It is with trepidation that I contemplate the future of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Canada—a Church with a drastic decline in membership, few native vocations to replace an aging clergy, whose raison d’être since the 1940s has been closely linked with the persecuted Church in Ukraine.”
According to the Annuario Pontificio, there were 201,957 members of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Canada in 1990 and 85,608 in 2007. This indicates a loss of 58% of our faithful in 17 years. Hardest hit was the Eparchy of Toronto which declined from 80,000 to 10,888 in the same time period, a loss of 86%, despite the fact that Toronto is the primary destination of the latest wave of immigration from Ukraine. For the same time period the statistics for the other eparchies are: Winnipeg, 49,350 to 29,740 (- 40%); Edmonton, 40,907 to 28,750(- 30%); New Westminster, 7,700 to 7,835(+ 2%) and Saskatoon 24,000 to 8,395(- 66%).
There are probably many causes for this situation and they are probably not the same throughout Canada. Not just in Canada, but also in our Church, there are significant differences between Western and Eastern Canada.
The first immigration was economic and went to Western Canada. These people did not have a very strong sense of nationalism, but remained in their own agricultural communities to survive and support one another. These pioneers only spoke Ukrainian for the first years. In time they began to move to the cities as the farms began to get larger and fewer and fewer people lived in the rural areas. Before long, English became more and more the vernacular of our people; so that today it is English which predominates even as the liturgical language. Most places use some Ukrainian liturgically and one parish, St. George’s in Edmonton, is exclusively Ukrainian speaking; but in most of Western Canada, the daily language of our people is English. With some exceptions, most sermons in Western Canada are given in English. Edmonton and Saskatoon have some new immigrants, but they tend to be from Bosnia and the other republics of the former Yugoslavia. Many of them consider themselves to be Rusyns.
Historically, due to the clergy shortage, priests often visited numerous farming communities as they could; so often the only service the people were exposed to was the Divine Liturgy and they did not have a service every weekend. Sadly many of our beautiful liturgical traditions of matins and vespers, for example, were lost due to a difficult pastoral situation. In time people started going to the Latin Church, at least on occasion, and were influenced by the customs and traditions they saw there. Our Church in Western Canada remains very strongly influenced by the Latin Church, probably a bit more than in Eastern Canada, which generally tends to keep closer ties with Ukraine. One of the manifestations of this is that Western Canada almost exclusively uses the Gregorian calendar while Eastern Canada is mainly on the Julian calendar. In a few parishes, both calendars are used throughout the year, a rather stressful situation if there is only one priest.
The history and current situation in Eastern Canada is completely different from that in the west. The Eparchy of Toronto developed after World War II and, hence, was formed by the culture and concerns of the third immigration. As a result, the Ukrainian language has been considered a priority. This is warmly accepted by those who understand Ukrainian well and espouse this agenda, but it has a tendency to alienate those for whom ethnic orientation and knowledge of the language are not priorities. There are growing numbers of converts to our Church and they are not of Ukrainian ancestry. These people are all attracted by the beauty of the liturgy and Eastern Christian spirituality. We also find that there are more and more people, not of Ukrainian heritage, who marry a member of our Church. If they are not adequately served, the entire family inevitably winds up in the Roman Catholic Church. While English is used in Eastern Canada, the situation is somewhat the reverse of Western Canada. Western Canada seems to try to serve the Canadian born, while Eastern Canada tends to remain largely immigrant oriented. This is largely due to the fact that there have not been that many recent immigrants to the west and that the east has been receiving the bulk of new immigrants and was also formed by the culture and concerns of the third wave of immigration. It should be noted that from its inception, the Eparchy of Toronto, while overwhelmingly Galician in character, had always had Slovak and Hungarian parishes. For a while this eparchy also had Romanian parishes and for a number of years the Divine Liturgy was celebrated in Spanish at St. Michael’s Church in Welland, Ontario. (This was a trilingual parish, offering three Divine Liturgies, one in Ukrainian, one in English and one in Spanish.)
The Slovaks have since been given their own eparchy, but the Hungarians remain in the Eparchy of Toronto.
The Church, of course, is called to preach the gospel and there should never be any competing agendas introduced. In Eastern Canada we have, over the years, preached the gospel in Slavonic, Ukrainian, English, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian and Spanish. Western Canada was always more homogenous, using only Slavonic, Ukrainian and English. We have also used French and other languages on occasion. Regardless of the language or the culture of the group being addressed, emphasis must always be placed on the gospel. When other agendas are introduced, we wind up trying to serve both God and mammon.
It was His Beatitude Lubomir Husar who recently instructed the clergy in North America to use more English and Spanish in their ministry.
Our Church in Canada has an enormous amount of work to do. We must continue restoring our authentic traditions as instructed by Vatican II over 40 years ago and by the decree of our Synod in September of 2006 to follow the Ordo Celebrationis and the Instruction of 1996, which states that we must not attempt to be very different from our Orthodox brethren. This, unfortunately, seems to be the opposite of what was often done in the past.
We must also act upon the command of Christ to preach the gospel to all nations. Although sadly told that we could not evangelize outside of our own native territories by Rome in the past; and although this policy was reversed by Vatican II, there are still places where the obligation of universal evangelization has not yet been fully accepted.
At the present time there is great need for high quality religious instruction at all levels. A major contributor in this area is the Metropolitan Andriy Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies at Saint Paul University in Ottawa.
This instruction must filter into the lives of all the faithful through the preparation of good homilies and by providing good programs for children, older students and adults.
When Volodymyr accepted Christianity from the Greeks, it was very soon realized that the new faith would not flourish in its new home without native clergy and in a familiar language. The principles followed by the missionaries of 1000 years ago must still be followed today.
The Ukrainian Republic has 42 ethnic groups and all of these people must have the gospel preached to them. In due time, Ukrainian will become the principal language and be more universally used than it is today.
Our situation in Canada is somewhat parallel. Even among those of Ukrainian ancestry, there are significant cultural and linguistic differences, not to mention those who are of other ancestries or whose only language is English. There are more and more people in Canada who refuse to consider themselves to be any thing other than Canadian.
The task of the Church is to preach the gospel to all nations and to never allow any other goal or agenda to interfere with this work which has been entrusted to us by Jesus Christ.
(Originally written for the St. Irenaeus Mission Society in October 2009)
