Ukrainian Edmonton - Description

Ukrainian Edmonton Project
The project is designed to document the experiences of Ukrainian Canadians who lived in the city of Edmonton between 1930 and the early 1950s. This oral history project seeks to enrich our understanding of the culture of one of the largest urban Ukrainian communities in Canada at the period of its formation.

The name “Ukrainian Edmonton” implies not only exploration of the Ukrainian community as such, but the community in its city context; in other words, it is an exploration of the city and city life from the Ukrainian perspective.

The project is initiated by the Ukrainian Pioneers’ Association of Alberta and is currently being carried out by Andriy Chernevych, a Ph.D. student of Ukrainian Folklore at the University of Alberta.

Time to Document
Memories disappear once and for all as individual eyewitnesses pass away. That is the reason why timing for oral history research is a major factor. The people who can remember the times of 1930s-1940s are currently in their eighties, and most of them have never fixed their experiences in writing or any other permanent form. In this regard, it seems imperative to try to preserve at least some part of the rich heritage accumulated by this generation and provide future researchers and general public with a unique source of historical information.

Value of Oral History
As research material, oral histories have characteristics not often found in textual records. They help shed some light on history and culture of social groups that left bihind relatively few archival records, which is often true about ethnic minorities, including Ukrainians in Canada. Oral histories have potential to reflect on ‘shadow’ aspects of historical reality - everyday life culture, personalities, and insider details - everything that amounts for immediate social context. Finally, and perhaps most important, oral history material reveal not only what people did but also how ‘they felt about it’, their attitudes, motivations and meaning behind the actions. Historical facts are worth little without the fabric of social context and meaningful relations.

Chronological Framework
The 1930s and 1940s was the period when city growth halted by the Depression lead to stabilization of the population and formation of local ethnic enclaves and their cultures. The period ends with rapid urban development of the 1950s’, connected to the Oil Boom, and partial dissolution of the downtown core of the Edmonton’s Ukrainian community as many of the residents moved to other parts of the city. Those changes coincided with the post-war Ukrainian immigration (so called ‘third wave’), which brought a number of newcomers to Canada’s largest urban centres and cultural changes.

Some of the interviews will inevitably reach beyond the outlined framework as they touch upon the 1920s or 1950s-1960s. These 'digressions' only enrich the interview discussions as they put the focus period and people's lives in historical perspective.

Research Focus
The project focuses on three primary areas:

Ukrainian community
This area deals with community institutions, groups, activities, ethnicity, cultural identity, mass media, kinship, language, traditions and other aspects that define the local Ukrainians as a real and 'imagined' community.
Everyday life culture
This includes a broad range of cultural manifestations such as diet, transportation, occupations, family life, recreational activities and much more.
Urban landscape
This area explores the urban geography and its relationship to personal experience. In other words, we look at how people remember the city and what meaning they attach to individual places and structures.

Method of Inquiry
The project follows the methodological guidelines of the Local Culture and Diversity on the Prairies Project, with its emphasis on personal interviews, application of research questionnaire, multi-media documentation, systematization of data, and attention to a broad spectrum of cultural manifestations.

Oral history interviews conducted for this project adhere to the principle of voluntary participation, and involve no concealment, no monetary incentive. The participants would normally sign a consent form (“Interview Agreement”) that outlines goals of the project, voluntary participation, and potential use of the recording. The participants reserve the right to remain anonymous.

The interviews are conducted in series – several interview sessions with the same participant(s) over a period of time. This approach allows for in-depth discussions on a broad range of topics, the possibility of reflection on the part of interviewees, and re-adjustment of methods and techniques. Besides, it helps to build relationship of trust between the researcher and participant, which is key to an effective interview.

The project makes use of several types of questionnaire that are used selectively or in combination to achieve the best results:

‘Orientation questionnaire’ is used for the initial stage interview series; its goal is to collect basic biographical information, identify topics for in-depth discussion, and establish rapport;
‘Urban Culture in Depth’ is used to document the local urban culture in its variety and includes topics such as technology, careers, popular culture, food ways, services etc.
‘Mapping the City’ questionnaire deals with urban geography and connects experiences with concrete physical spaces. In some cases, participants are asked to mark a historical city map identifying places of significance;
‘Family Album’ method targets private photographs and preserves digital images that reflect local urban culture. The image files are accompanied with oral comments of the participants who identify individuals, place, date and provide contextual details for each photo.
‘Family artefact’ method documents vintage objects as specimen of material culture and family heirlooms, the images of the objects are supplemented with audio-recorded comments.
‘Historical Photos’ is a supplementary method that triggers one’s memories regarding prominent places and structures. The participants are shown prints of historical photographs and asked to identify the image and discuss it.

Intellectual control over the materials is established through systematization that involves assigning unique accession numbers to electronic files and textual records, creation of a spreadsheet that contains information on participants and details of the interviews (such as duration, date, methods used etc.), keeping field journal, and creation of interview finding aids (indexes) that facilitate access to specific information.

Interview Methodology
The purpose of the oral history interviews is to obtain qualitative/descriptive information, which presupposes the method of unstructured interview. In fact, we attempt to make the interviews as informal as possible and allow the participants to take initiative and address the issues that are important for them. Such flexibility allows the researcher to ‘catch’ issues that were not part of the original design and develop the questionnaires as the project progresses. Most questions are open-ended and seek not only facts but also subjective interpretations of the reality.

The interview are sometimes referred as ‘discussions’ because the interviews are viewed as communication process, a ‘two-way street’, where both side contribute to the outcome. As a researcher, I would make comments, ask impromptu follow-up questions, share personal information or a story from my own experience. Lengthy off-topic discussions are usually deleted unless they have some relevancy to the main subject.

If a participant indicates that certain stories or remarks are sensitive, the researcher shuts the recorder off. If such a requests comes afterwards, the indicated segment is deleted from the original recording.

Recording Technique
The interviews are recorded on a professional digital Marantz recorder (PMD-660) in WAV (uncompressed) format, which guarantees high-quality sound. The high standard for audio quality makes the recordings suitable for a variety of applications including broadcast.

Photography is another essential part of the project. The researcher will photograph participants, artefacts, city landscape on constant basis and these images will be added to the project materials. The family photographs are duplicated with the help of a portable scanner in high-resolution format.

Preservation and Use
The original files will be securely preserved the Ukrainian Folklore Archives at the University of Alberta. Selected segments of interviews and photographs will be made available online to Internet users. The collection of materials and finding aids will be open for researchers, except for individual cases when access restrictions imply. All the recording are copyright of the Ukrainian Folklore Centre and special permission should be sought if the materials are to be published.

This Website
The website promotes the Ukrainian Edmonton Project and creates a research and educational resource that features updated samples of audio interviews, historical photos from private collections, a database of participants, and other materials that reflect the history of Edmonton’s Ukrainian community.

The website will be updated on bi-monthly basis with new audio recordings (stories), photographs, interview indexes. We also plan to introduce new sections related to the history of Ukrainians in Edmonton - interesting historical facts, vintage maps, bibliography, timeline and more.

Sponsors
The Ukrainian Edmonton Project acknowledges the generous financial support of the Alberta Heritage Resource Foundation. The current grant is administered through the Heritage Preservation Partnership Program.

Partners
The Ukrainian Edmonton Project closely cooperates with the Peter and Doris Kule Centre for the Ukrainian and Canadian Folklore. The present project builds on the Local Culture and Diversity on the Prairies Project and uses the Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives as the home for the long-term preservation of the collected materials.

The Project benefits from the technical support and web hosting services provided by the Text Analysis Portal for Research (TAPoR) at the University of Alberta.