Kingston, Ont. Ukrainian community celebrates heritage – Kingston | 24CA News
This weekend marked the 54th annual Lviv Ukraine Folklore Festival in Kingston, Ont.
For the weekend, Regiopolis-Notre Dame Catholic Secondary School was quickly reworked right into a sanctuary for Kingston’s Ukrainian individuals to have a good time their heritage.
The hallways and partitions have been awash with Ukrainian cultural gadgets and folks filed in to soak up the nation’s wealthy arts and tradition.
“It’s our 54th annual event, so this actually makes this event here in Kingston one of the longest-running consecutive Ukrainian folk festivals in Canada,” stated Lubomyr Luciuk, president of the Ukrainian Canadian Club of Kingston.
Hundreds of individuals attended the occasion over the weekend.
There have been quite a few bits and items of Ukrainian artwork, corresponding to dancers, musicians, conventional Ukrainian meals and even distributors promoting Ukrainian toys, clothes and extra.
Luciuk stated it was heartwarming to see so many individuals collectively, celebrating the tradition.
“These are young men and women dancing in the dance group. They’re having fun. People are eating good Ukrainian food, they’re looking at the exhibits, they’re having a nice time,” he stated.
However, your entire occasion is completed within the shadow of the struggle in Ukraine, which has pushed many individuals out of their dwelling nation to all elements of the world, together with to Kingston.
“It’s very hard to see Ukrainian news. It’s like your habit to see Ukrainian news because I have a lot of friends in Ukraine, my family, my parents, my husband in Ukraine,” stated Iryna Yaroslavska, a Ukrainian refugee in Kingston.
She stated she left Slovakia together with her two younger daughters a 12 months in the past to return to Kingston in the hunt for a greater life.
What she discovered, nevertheless, was a a lot larger welcoming committee than she anticipated.
“It’s a very large community in Kingston for me. It is very important when you have support,” she stated.
Luciuk says that the struggle and its results on Ukrainian persons are nonetheless prime of thoughts for many individuals, himself included, and that the weekend’s enjoyable was nonetheless aimed toward supporting the efforts of their homeland. The collapse of a dam final week solely added to the struggling.
The rupture of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam and the emptying of its reservoir on the Dnieper River on Wednesday added to the distress in a area that has suffered for greater than a 12 months from artillery and missile assaults.
“I saw a man yesterday put $200 in the donation jar to help the flood victims. I mean, come on, this is remarkable,” stated Luciuk.
– with a file from the Associated Press
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