Feature

Office to protest the provincial govern-
ment’s decision to cut single men off relief.

When RCMP clubs ended the Post
Office occupation early in the morning on
June 19 — Fathers’ Day — the hall was
turned into a field hospital as supporters
of the hall acted swiftly to assist the
injured.

Many of them battered by police clubs
and reeling from the tear gas, the unem-
ployed came to the hall where they were
tended to, both inside the hall and outside
on the grounds. “It was like an army field
hospital — they were lined up on the
grass like cordwood,” says Chitrenky.

When the World War II broke out, the
hall itself became the target of federal
government orders.

On June 5, 1940, the Ukrainian Labour
Farmer Temple Association was banned

~

by order-inecouncil under the Defence of
Canada Regulations. Within weeks, some
36 leaders of the ULFTA were arrested
and interned in concentration camps at
Petawawa, Hull and elsewhere.

Across the country, halls were seized
and in several cases, libraries were turned
over to junk paper firms for destruction.
In Vancouver, although the police did not
move initially to take over the hall, Chi-
trenky says, “the executive in Toronto
instructed me to turn over the keys to the
police,” presumably in an effort to save
the library and other materials from des-
truction.

“IT remember going down to the police
station to give them the keys and they
looked at me as if to say: ‘What the hell
do we want with these?’ ” he relates.

The hall remained closed for some time
but by the following year, agents of the
Custodian of Enemy Property were
instructed to sell the halls. Assigning the
task to that particular agency was a gross
insult since the ULFTA had consistently
backed the war effort and had maintained
an anti-fascist position — evidenced by
the fact that ULFTA members volun-
teered for military service immediately on
their release from internment.

Unable to solicit satisfactory bids, the
government then took another insulting
step — it sold the halls to representatives
of the Ukrainian nationalist organizations,
some of which had Nazi leanings. The
move outraged ULFTA members across
the country.

“T remember one old-timer was so

TRIBUNE PHOTOS — SEAN GRIFFIN

incensed that he took a long stick and
went around the outside of the hall and
broke every window that he could reach.
Then he sat down on the front steps and
waited for the police to come,” Chitrenky
recalls.

It was following the war that the pro-
gressive Ukrainian movement was able to
regain the hall, but not until after a huge
cross-country campaign, backed by
unions, churches and dozens of other
organizations forced the federal govern-
ment to return the ULFTA halls to their
rightful owners. In June, 1945, Chitrenky
recalls, thousands of people marched from
the Yugoslav hall on Campbell Avenue
(now the Russian Hall) to the Ukrainian
Hall, filling Pender Street for most of a
block as they celebrated the hall’s return.

Since the end of the war, the hall has
been the home of the Association of Uni-
ted Ukrainian Canadians (for a brief
period it was the Association of Ukrainian
Canadians, formed in 1945 while the
ULFTA was still formally under a ban-
ning order). And although the times have
changed dramatically, the hall is still the
centre of the AUUC’s activities, says the
Organization’s provincial secretary Nadya
Niechoda.

Niechoda, who grew up in the Ukrain- ‘
ian organization in Winnipeg and has
been working in the AUUC in Vancouver
for the past 10 years, says that the hall
“isn’t the same as it was before the cold
war years, but we’re trying to find a new
field and we’re succeeding.”

Many Ukrainians who drifted away
from the hall over the years “are starting
to come back, wanting to maintain con-
tact with their roots,” she adds.

For many, the changes taking place in
the Soviet Union and the renewed interest
in Ukrainian culture are important, she
says, noting that “‘perestroika has had a
lot to do with it.”

Every year, the hall also hosts artists
from the Ukraine for the annual Folkfest
celebrations and the artists spark consid-
erable interest, particularly when they
travel to other centres in the province.

For others, it’s a desire to let their own
children have the cultural upbringing and
the close contact among several genera-
tions that the hall has traditionally pro-
vided.

Dianna Kleparchuk, the director of the
AUUC School of Dancing for the past 20
years, notes that the number of kids
enrolled in the school has climbed in the
last couple of years to about 80 students
this year, spread over eight dance groups.

Kleparchuk, who herself had danced at
the hall from the age of four, says that
there has been “a real continuity of gener-
ations” in the dance school, particularly
since the older students also work as
instructors for the pre-school and elemen-
tary school-age dancers. Although instruc-
tors are paid, she adds, “it’s not much
more than gas money — they do it
because they want to and because they

SUNDAY’S PHOTOS

PHOTO

want to pass on their heritage.”

For the top performing group, the
Dovbush Dancers, whose members range
in age from 14 to 28, there are also Oppor-
tunities to travel to dance seminars in the
Ukraine as well as to take trips to the
Saskatchewan School of the Arts.

But even the day-to-day schedule can at
the hall be rigorous. Led by instructor
Joan Kowalewich — one of Chitrenky’s
two daughters, both of whom teach danc-
ing at the hall — the group rehearses
twice a week and averages four perfor-
mances a month.

Earlier this month, the group per-
formed at a benefit for the Carpenters
Local 1928 members on strike at Citation
Industries. It’s all part of the AUUC’s
continuing cultural contribution to the
community and the progressive move-
ment.

In addition to the dance groups, the
hall is also home to the Vancouver Folk
Orchestra, the Jubilee choir and the a
cappella Lyonok Trio. And although it
can’t yet boast the same numbers as the
dance school, the Ukrainian language
school has also demonstrated the renewed
interest.

Language teacher Betty Thomas, one of
a relative few from the generation now in
their 40s who speaks fluent Ukrainian,
says that her enrolment for the Saturday
morning classes is up to about 25 kids.
Most are from families where at least one
parent is of Ukrainian background
although there are even a few whose par-
ents are non-Ukrainian.

Several have been with her for a
number of years and “are able to hold a
conversation.” But even for some of the
younger ones, the knowledge of several
words “helps bring the generations closer
together, since they can say a few words
to their grandparents and even understand
a few things here and there,” she says.

“Twenty years ago, no one was much
interested in learning Ukrainian but it’s
become a lot more important lately to
find out about your heritage,” she says.

As to the future of the hall, Thomas is
optimistic that it will continue to be an
important centre of activity. “But it can’t

Just be a community centre,” she emphas-
izes, ‘it has to have a progressive direction.
It’s important to have a place where peo-
ple share their heritage — but also share
some common ideas and particularly a
working class philosophy.”

Kleparchuk notes that many people
come back to the hall because “they like
the comradeship and the fact that people
look out for one another. And people do
share a certain political philosophy — an
interest in the peace movement and things
like that.”

In that, there is a tradition that goes
back 60 years and more. “It won’t be the
same in the future as it was in the ‘30s, or
the way it was before we came through
the cold war years,” says Niechoda. “But
there will be a Ukrainian Hall.”

Sa cai ak Sas ae rs eae

Photos, clockwise from
bottom left: Hundreds of
supporters throng the street
outside the hall in 1945 after a
huge campaign forced the
federal government to return it
from war-time seizure:
Ukrainian language teacher
Betty Thomas with some of
her students; AUUC chair
John Chitrenky outside the
hall, December, 1988; the
Yalenka Dancers in Saturday
morning rehearsal; Dianna
Kleparchuk, director of the
AUUC’s School of Dancing.

Mo Ais Gy Bae Sh

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