Vancouver

Vancouver. The third largest city (2016 metropolitan pop 2,463,431) in Canada, situated in the southwest corner of British Columbia. Vancouver’s natural harbour has made it a major port and railway terminal. Its chief industries are transportation and trade. Although Ukrainians started coming to the area around the turn of the century, their numbers remained small until after the Second World War (1,800 in 1941, 7,200 in 1951). Its first Ukrainian Catholic parish, the parish of the Holy Eucharist, was established in the suburban city of New Westminster in 1952 and became the see of a new Ukrainian Catholic eparchy in 1975. Since then three new Catholic churches (Saint Mary’s, Holy Cross, and Assumption) and one Ukrainian Orthodox church (SS Peter and Paul) have been built. A branch of the Ukrainian National Federation was organized in 1937 and became the center of cultural (choir, drama club) and educational (elementary school, lectures) activities. In 1970 it absorbed the New Westminster branch (est 1951). The local Ukrainian Canadian Professional and Business Club (est 1960) has helped to establish Ukrainian language courses at the University of British Columbia. A provincial council of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress was created in Vancouver in 1990. The area’s Ukrainian population stood at 47,620 in 1981, a figure that included many former Alberta and Saskatchewan Ukrainians. In 1991, 6,745 of them claimed Ukrainian as their sole mother tongue.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]