Culture
See also: Culture of UkraineHaving been separated from Ukraine, Ukrainian Canadians have developed their own distinctive Ukrainian culture in Canada. To showcase their unique hybrid culture, Ukrainian Canadians have created institutions that showcase Ukrainian Canadian culture such as Edmonton's Yatran and Shumka troupes – among the world's elite Ukrainian dancers; or the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village – where Ukrainian pioneer buildings are displayed along with extensive cultural exhibits.
Ukrainian Canadians have also contributed to Canadian culture as a whole. Actress and comedienne Luba Goy, singer Gloria Kaye, and painter William Kurelek, for example, are well known outside the Ukrainian community.
Historically Ukrainian Canadians were among Canada's poorest and least educated minorities; but as the process of cultural integration has accelerated, this is no longer the case and Ukrainian Canadians are currently near the national economic average.
Perhaps one of the most lasting contributions Ukrainian Canadians have made to the wider culture of Canada is the concept of multiculturalism which was promoted as early as 1964 by Senator Paul Yuzyk. During and after the debates surrounding the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism Ukrainian leaders, such as linguist Jaroslav Rudnyckyj, came out in force against the notion of English - French biculturalism which they believed denied the contributions other peoples had made to Canada. Partly in response to this, Prime Minister Trudeau shifted Canada to a policy of official multiculturalism.
Read more about this topic: Ukrainian Canadian
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“It is of the essence of imaginative culture that it transcends the limits both of the naturally possible and of the morally acceptable.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)
“We do not need to minimize the poverty of the ghetto or the suffering inflicted by whites on blacks in order to see that the increasingly dangerous and unpredictable conditions of middle- class life have given rise to similar strategies for survival. Indeed the attraction of black culture for disaffected whites suggests that black culture now speaks to a general condition.”
—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)
“Cynicism makes things worse than they are in that it makes permanent the current condition, leaving us with no hope of transcending it. Idealism refuses to confront reality as it is but overlays it with sentimentality. What cynicism and idealism share in common is an acceptance of reality as it is but with a bad conscience.”
—Richard Stivers, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Culture of Cynicism: American Morality in Decline, ch. 1, Blackwell (1994)