Vegreville Pysanka Festival

Natalka Sydoruk

Ukrainian festivals have become a very popular summer event across Canada, especially in the western part of the country where Ukrainians initially settled.

The granddaddy of them all, Canada’s National Ukrainian Festival was founded in Dauphin, Manitoba, in 1965 and first held in 1966.

The second was initiated in Vegreville, Alberta, located 100 kilometres east of Edmonton, in 1973 and first held the following year. This year, organizers celebrated their 50th anniversary with an exciting program and huge attendance.

As in previous years, the main attraction was the Grandstand Show, which features some of the best Ukrainian talent from across Canada – and beyond.

The Grandstand Show

This year’s festival featured special guest stars from Ukraine — the vocal quintet “Magic Voices” and bandurist Nadia Pashkovska. “Magic Voices” consisted of five members of the renowned Veryovka Ukrainian Folk Choir, which is known for singing Ukraine’s national anthem in the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament). They performed Ukrainian folk songs throughout all three days of the festival in a well-trained professional manner. The choir was founded in the 1940s by composer Hryhoriy Veryovka and has worked on preserving and arranging Ukrainian musical heritage ever since. In the 1970’s they even performed “Oy, u luzi Chervona kalyna” (“The red viburnum in the meadow”) even though it was banned by Soviet authorities. Today when Ukraine has once again been invaded by Russian troops, its has become very popular – and not only in Ukraine. The venerable rock band Pink Floyd recently recorded a version with Ukrainian singer Andriy Khlyvnyuk. The Vegreville audience would stand up in reverence whenever this anthem of the Sich Riflemen was sung.

Nadia Pashkovska may still be mastering the bandura (Ukraine’s national instrument) but her playing showed great skill and listeners responded with emotion. She studies bandura at Sydir Vorobkevitch College of Art in Chernivtsi and has performed at the Pysanka Festival before, — in 2009, with her family, sister Khrystyna and father Volodymyr.

The bandura has 68 strings and produces a tender sound. It requires years of practice and great mastery to play it well. Bandurists and kobzars, usually blind singers, who sang folk songs with the accompaniment of a bandura or the smaller kobza, roamed in Ukraine for centuries, sharing their music and epic songs called dumy, and reinforcing the national spirit. In the 1930s Soviet Union forbid the art and suppressed everyone, who was engaged in it. Many bandurists were executed.

Local Alberta artists were no less impressive. “The Ukrainian Shumka Dancers” showed off their outstanding artistry — dynamic, fresh, and interesting. Over the years they have modernized Ukrainian dance, and don’t limit themselves to classical movements — they reinvent folk dance and add touching storytelling to the dance. Recently, they created a dance performance based on the works of Lesia Ukrainka. “Shumka” has performed worldwide in China, Japan, Ukraine, and everywhere in Canada.

The “Vohon” dance collective fully justified its name — which in Ukrainian means “fire”. Their passionate performance mesmerized the audience as dancers provided a great spectacle with their hopak and folk dances from the western regions of Ukraine.

As this was the 50th Pysanka festival, all participating dance groups — “Shumka”, “Cheremosh”, “Viter”, “Vohon” and “Volya” — joined in the final hopak — performing simultaneously on the stage. Similarly, the choirs that sang at the festival (Ukrainian Male Chorus of Edmonton, “Viter”, “Dnipro”, “Verkhovyna”, and “Axios”), came together under the direction of UMCE conductor Slava Marozau to provide a majestic rendition of Ukraine’s National Anthem.

Folk Arts and Pioneer Village

Visitors to the festival had a lot of fun doing things that 100 years ago were boring everyday chores. Clothes or household appliances were not as easily available as today, especially for pioneers, who had to make their own. Blacksmithing, bread baking, milling — these crucial elements of survival for Ukrainian newcomers over 100 years ago were represented in this year's Pioneer Village. People could sneak inside a small mill and look at how it works. They could also try to forge a metal themselves or observe how a blacksmith makes a nail. Another demonstration visitors could see was traditional breadmaking which produced freshly baked buns for them to taste.

At the Folk Arts venue, people could mark their ancestral family village on the map of Ukraine, and view the historical attires of women throughout Ukrainian history, and the traditional dishes of every Ukrainian holiday. Spinning and rope making in Folk Arts attracted more adults than kids, who were preoccupied mostly with making necklaces from beads or embroidering pysankas with wax.

Another feature was the kozak camp, organized by Canada’s Riding and Dancing Cossacks from Dauphin, who opened each Grandstand Show with cannon fire. The Ukrainian Kozaks were a military formation primarily that protected Ukrainian lands in the 15th to 18th centuries. Their camps had a perfect design allowing people to stay comfortable and mobile at the same time. Food was prepared on an open fire. A very popular attraction was the opportunity to throw an axe at a portrait of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Kids and adults also had lots of fun with Pysanka games.

History of the festival

Vegreville has been an historical centre of Ukrainian settlement in Alberta, therefore the town looked for a way to preserve and share the culture of their ancestral land. Town Councillor John Huzil first brought the idea up to Vegreville’s community and the Vegreville Cultural Association was founded on November 15, 1973, to organize the Festival. At first, the festival was called the “Canadian Showcase of Ukrainian Culture” but in 1975 Vegreville got its most recognizable monument —the Pysanka. It was installed by the Vegreville Chamber of Commerce to celebrate 100 years since the foundation of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and symbolized peace and safety. The Vegreville egg was created with the help of the most modern technology at the time — Professor Ronald Resch designed the egg and all its elements on a computer program, that was made specially for the project. Artist Paul Sembaliuk constructed the monument. He also created the first mascot of the festival — the Dancing Hutsul.

The first and most popular attractions were the dance competitions and Zabava. Soon the dance competitions become hard to get into and by the 1980s up to 1200 young dancers competed, extending the competitions to two days.

Each year some new masterclasses like carpet weaving, rope making, and easter egg painting or exhibitions were added to the festival, At one point the festival had a pysanka writing competition. Winners could get up to $2,000 in prizes.

All festivals have been hosted by a Hospodar and Hospodynia. The first ones in 1974 were Chief Justice and former MP John Decore and his wife Myroslava. This year’s Hospodar and Hospodynia were Peter and Geraldine Shostak, Peter is a well-known artist who specializes in depicting scenes from his family’s pioneer days near Bonnyville, Alberta. Geraldine has taught children Ukrainian, while Peter helped to establish the Ukrainian Fully Endowed Scholarship at Pearson College of the Pacific in Victoria.

You're always welcome at the Pysanka festival, especially at the beer garden. Intrigued? Don’t miss the next festival on July 5- 7, 2024.

Edited by Marco Levytsky

Photos by Natalka Sydoruk.

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