News Archive

On Sunday May 14, 2017 the Orpheus Choir of Toronto will host their season finale, Identities, featuring renowned soloists Andriana Chuchman, soprano, and James Westman, bass-baritone, together with the Vesnivka Choir and Toronto Ukrainian Male Chamber Choir (Kvitka Kondracki, Artistic Director) and the Orpheus Concert Orchestra at 3:30 PM at Koerner Hall, 273 Bloor St. West. Under the artistic direction of Robert Cooper, this gala concert features the Ontario premiere of Canadian composer Larysa Kuzmenko’s The Golden Harvest. Based on a libretto by Talia Zajac, this trilingual oratorio (Ukrainian, French, English) tells the...

Outgoing UCRDC President Prof. Jurij Darewych announced that as of the New Year 2017, Prof. Nicholas Derzko now heads the UCRDC as its new President in a planned succession of leadership approved at the last UCRDC Annual General Meeting in June 2016. Prof. Darewych remains on the UCRDC Board as Past President. “Mykola” Derzko was UCRDC Vice President and has been a member for many years. Prof. Derzko is Associate Professor Emeritus in Mathematics at the University of Toronto where he lectures in mathematics with applications to management science and law. He is also a practising barrister and solicitor, and a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada...

At the year-end UCRDC Board Meeting on December 5, 2016 in a festive holiday spirit, members shared their joy in congratulating long-time member Oksana Zakydalsky, who on November 22 at a UCC Toronto meeting was presented theUkrainian Canadian Congress Leadership Award of Excellence for her significant contribution to the broader Ukrainian community and the betterment of Canada. Oksana Zakydalsky is a valued UCRDC Board Member who has contributed since 1988, collecting and archiving documents, developing educational materials and writing numerous press releases and...

My godmother, Nina, told me the truth. When I shared it with my history teacher, he said she was mistaken, or had lied. I was upset. I asked my parents who was right. They gave me a book, Russian Oppression in Ukraine, which included firsthand accounts about the Great Famine of 1932-33 in Soviet Ukraine. I still have that very same green-covered volume. My first encounter with it was brief. I slammed it shut, shuddering at the black-and-white photographs inside – the remains of famine victims being heaved into a cart, the bodies of raped-then-murdered women jumbled on a bed, a massacred community’s corpses...

On April 13, James Bezan, Member of Parliament for Selkirk-Interlake-Eastman tabled in the House of Commons, Bill S-226, “Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (Sergei Magnitsky Law).” Bill S-226, was introduced to the Senate of Canada by Senator Raynell Andreychuk and was adopted by the Senate on April 11. “I am proud to table my colleague, Senator Raynell Andreychuk’s Bill S-226, Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (Sergei Magnitsky Law) in the House of Commons. In May 2016, I tabled similar Magnitsky-style legislation Bill C-267,” said MP Bezan. Bill S-226 will make amendments to the Special Economic Measures Act and...

Dr. Oleh Antonyshyn is the 2017 recipient of the Ochrymovych Humanitarian Award, also known as the “Helping Hands” Award from Ukrainian Canadian Social Services – Toronto (UCSS-T). Dr. Antonyshyn was presented with the award at a gala banquet in his honour on April 30, 2017 at the Old Mill. Victor Malarek, an award-winning journalist, who was the first recipient of the award in 2010 was a guest speaker. Dr. Antonyshyn, an internationally renowned plastic surgeon, is being recognized for his extraordinary humanitarian efforts in providing medical care and treatment to those ravaged by war in eastern Ukraine. He has...

Ottawa – yesterday at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa Etobicoke Centre MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj in his capacity as Chair of the Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Friendship Group attended the signing of the historic Canada-Ukraine Defence Cooperation Arrangement between Canadian Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan and Ukrainian Defence Minister General Stepan Poltorak. The signing of this agreement will help develop further Canada-Ukraine mutual cooperation in arenas of defence policy, defence research, development, and production, and military training and education. At yesterday’s ceremonies and this...

Feigning concern for the efficacy of Ukraine's foreign policy is a good approach to reach an audience that otherwise would not bother to read obvious disinformation. There are serious flaws in Andreas Umland's recent article in “New Eastern Europe”: Misrepresentations ...the ultra-nationalist, ethnically cleansed and monistic one-part state that the Bandera faction envisaged, at least until the early 1940's, would have itself amounted to an illiberal and totalitarian dictatorship. The OUN was a national liberation movement. At its first congress in 1929 it did not adopt any resolution regarding the form of government of a future state. When the OUN began to address the issue of a...