Alison Brooks-Starks asks how folks from Ukraine settled where they did in Canada – was it because the landscapes here looked like places in Ukraine?

In February, we put together a live recording of Let’s Find Out. The idea was to generate a whole season of questions about how humans and nature have shaped each other. Alison squeezed in a question about Ukrainian history to better understand her own great-grandmother’s journey immigrating to Canada.

To explore her question, we dug into a stack of academic research, including books like Storied Landscapes: Ethno-Religious Identity and the Canadian Prairies by Frances Swyripa, Places of Last Resort: The Expansion of the Farm Frontier Into the Boreal Forest in Canada, C. 1910-1940 by J. David Wood, and Community and Frontier: A Ukrainian Settlement in the Canadian Parkland by John Lehr.

We also went to the University of Alberta’s Pembina Hall to meet Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Director Jars Balan.

That inspired us to try making some juice from kalyna – aka high bush cranberry – berries using this recipe.

Further Reading:

• Kalyna Country
• Baba’s Kitchen Medicines: Folk Remedies of Ukrainian Settlers in Western Canada by Michael Mucz
• John Lehr has another article we consulted: “Governmental coercion in the settlement of Ukrainian immigrants in western Canada,” in Prairie Forum 8(2):179-194 · January 1983
• “Settling the West: Immigration to the Prairies from 1867 to 1914,” Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21
• The song Jars Balan sings in this episode is “Ой у лузі червона калина” (Oi u luzi chervona kalyna), or “Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow” by Stepan Charnetskii. Read more about it on Page 78 of Anna-Marie Koszarycz’s graduate thesis at the University of Calgary, “Collection and Documentation of Ukrainian Folk Songs in Kalyna Country Edmonton, Alberta, Canada”

This episode is made possible by support from Taproot Edmonton and the Edmonton Historical Board.

We also gave shout-outs in the episode to Overdue Finds and The Well- Endowed Podcast.

Come say hi before NorthwestFest’s May 4 screening of The Trouble With Wolves at 12 PM at Metro Cinema. Use the offer code APN2019 and you’ll get 10% off general admission.