| First Ukrainian Church in Canada by John Panchuk [message #603] |
Tue, 10 June 2008 15:56 |
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 ukrainka
Messages: 527
Registered: November 2007 |
Senior Member |
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RURAL CHURCHES AND SCHOOLS represent the earliest landmarks of Ukrainian settlement in Canada. Official immigration correspondence of the period referred to such settlements as "Ruthenian" or "Galician" colonies. Church building committees were formed in several colonies in advance of the arrival of any Ukrainian resident priests. An agent of the Dominion Lands and Immigration Department wrote to Ottawa as early as the summer of 1896 to send "one or two priests with the next batch of emigrants," asserting that "This is a highly important matter to the colonists and should receive early attention."
In the fall of 1897, the Canadian government succeeded in getting Rev. Nestor Dmytriw, a Ukrainian missionary priest from Pennsylvania to visit the Ukrainian colonies in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Being the first Ukrainian priest to visit them, his services were eagerly sought by the settlers of both the Ukrainian Greek Catholic and the Ukrainian Orthodox faiths. The pioneers' experience with the local French and Polish Roman Catholic priests did little to satisfy their spiritual needs and the ethnically reIigious-traditions of the Ukrainian families. Two or three additional Ukrainian priests arrived from Ukraine to cater to the religious needs of the Greek Catholic or Uniate settlers during 1898-1900. The Orthodox settlers mainly from Bukovina, had to be satisfied with the Russian Orthodox priests whose paramount mission in Canada was to Russify the Ukrainians.
UKRAINIAN PIONEERS had neither the time nor the means to build churches during the initial years of settlement from 1891. Early religious services were held in the farm homes of the settlers or under the open sky. A couple of roadside chapels were built in 1897, but these were not churches in any sense of the word. The Greek Catholic church in Edna-Star near Edmonton, Alberta, although started by Rev. Dmytriw in 1897, was not actually built or completed until the latter part of 1899. The Greek Catholic church of the Holy Ghost in Stuartburn, Manitoba was started in 1898, but was not completed until 1900. The St. Michael's Greek Catholic church near Dauphin, Manitoba was built in 1902, contrary to an alleged construction date of 1897 as claimed by some.
Examination by the author of this article of historical data, Dominion and provincial records, history books, memoirs of pioneers, almanacs, newspapers and other periodicals failed to turn up any evidence of a Ukrainian church having been built in Canada prior to 1899. According to the best evidence on the subject, St. Michael's Ukrainian Orthodox church near Gardenton, Manitoba is the first Ukrainian church built in Canada. It was completed in the spring of 1899.
St. Michael's Ukrainian Orthodox Church built in 1899 is two miles west of
Gardenton, Manitoba. Photo Manitoba Archives ca 1915.
Attachment: church.jpg
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