Oshawa

Oshawa. A city (2018 pop 166,000; metropolitan pop 379,848) on Lake Ontario 52 km east of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 1986 there were 4,000 residents of Ukrainian origin in Oshawa. General Motors Corp has been the major employer there since 1918. Ukrainians were attracted to Oshawa by jobs in the automobile industry. A Prosvita reading society was established on the initiative of Yu. Kalynka in 1917, and by 1921 it had bought its own hall. In 1934 the society was reorganized into a branch of the Ukrainian National Federation (UNF). In the following year two affiliates of the federation were formed, the Ukrainian National Youth Federation of Canada, which set up a flying school (1937–9), and the Ukrainian Women's Organization of Canada. The UNF is still active in Oshawa and comes under the local branch of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. There are two Ukrainian parishes, one Catholic and the other Orthodox, each with its own church.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]