Saskatoon

Saskatoon. See Map. The largest city (2016 pop 246,376) in Saskatchewan, situated on the South Saskatchewan River. It is the province’s chief education, food-processing, mining, and manufacturing center. Of its residents 19,825 identified themselves as of Ukrainian origin in 1981; they constitute the province’s largest Ukrainian community. In 1991 only 5,245 inhabitants claimed Ukrainian as their mother tongue. The first group of Ukrainian immigrants arrived in Saskatoon in 1898. The earliest Ukrainian institutions were religious: the Ukrainian Catholic parish of Saint George, which in 1951 became the seat of the Saskatoon eparchy, arose in 1912, and the Orthodox Church of the Holy Theotokos’s Induction into the Temple was established in 1916. The city became an important center for Ukrainian Orthodoxy: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada (1918), the Ukrainian Women's Association of Canada (1926), and the Ukrainian Self-Reliance League (1927) were founded there. In 1963 the Orthodox parish of the Holy Trinity (est 1918) became the seat of Saskatoon eparchy. Since 1929 the city has been an important center of the Ukrainian Evangelical Baptist church, and since 1945 of the Ukrainian Mission and Bible Society. The Mohyla Ukrainian Institute (est 1916) and the Catholic Shashkevych Student Residence (est 1935), which was reorganized into the Sheptytsky Institute in 1953, have educated generations of Ukrainian community leaders. The first Ukrainian language and literature courses at a Canadian university were taught by Tymish Pavlychenko at the University of Saskatchewan in 1944, and the first Canadian Slavic studies department was formed at the university by Constantine Andrusyshen in 1945. Since 1977 the same university has had an exchange program with the Chernivtsi University in Ukraine. In 1999 the Prairie Centre for the Study of Ukrainian Heritage was established as an academic unit of Saint Thomas More College at the university. A branch of the Ukrainian National Federation was set up in 1932, and the federation’s national office was located in Saskatoon (1934–40). Its paper Novyi shliakh was published there in 1933–41. The Ukrainian Students' National Federation (1933) and the Ukrainian National Youth Federation of Canada (1934) were founded in Saskatoon. In 1939 the first Ukrainian credit union in Canada, the New Community Savings and Credit Union, was organized there. The Ukrainian Museum of Canada (est 1936) has its main branch housed in a modern structure with several exhibition galleries. A Catholic eparchial museum is also situated in the city. Saskatoon is the home of several notable Ukrainian performing ensembles, including the Yevshan Ukrainian Folk Ballet, Pavlychenko Folklorique Ensemble, and the Vesna and Lastivka youth choruses. It also hosts a Ukrainian festival (Vesna) in the spring as well as a multiethnic festival (Folkfest) in the summer. A bilingual Ukrainian-English program has been offered at Saint Goretti School since 1979.

George Foty

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]