Hromada

The story of any immigrant community, at its core, depicts the changing meaning of home and identity - the home and identity you leave behind; those which you build on new shores, in new places, in new ways. How any change to that home and identity changes the children who grow up into it-how, in a very real way, each new generation is built from the foundation of the home and identity the previous generation laid down.

This story is about Ukrainian Canadians, who first settled in large, often robust communities in Saskatchewan, beginning in the late 1890s. How has the Ukrainian community (hromada in Ukrainian) in Saskatchewan been changing with each generation since the arrival of the first settlers? This book describes what became of those first arrivals: How did their birthplace shape them? Where did they settle, and how? How were the relationships between different communities and ethnic groups in Ukraine translated on the other side of the Atlantic?

Even after growing into their new home, these communities faced massive rural depopulation that would impact subsequent generations and those home communities. We follow in their footsteps, tracing the new challenges they faced in cities, and how they would understand and maintain their cultural identity today. Since 2022, the arrival in Saskatchewan of thousands of individuals and families displaced by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has proven challenging, but has been supported by the existing strong Ukrainian Canadian community here.