From perogies to politics, Ukrainians have made an indelible mark on Manitoba's identity

From peasant farmers leaving an aging empire to modern-day information technology specialists, Ukrainians of all stripes have made Manitoba their home over the course of its history and shaped much of its identity to this day.

"Ukrainian-Canadians in Canada, and in Manitoba in particular, are an extremely vibrant and dynamic group that have contributed a lot to the cultural, historical, political and other spheres of development of Manitoba," said Yuliia Ivaniuk, co-ordinator of the Centre for Ukrainian Canadian Studies at the University of Manitoba.

In Canada, which has the second-largest Ukrainian diaspora group in the world after Russia, Manitoba has the largest proportion of people who identify as Ukrainian with more than 180,000 people. 

Over more than a century of living here, Ukrainian-Manitobans have left an indelible stamp on the identity of this province.

"Even the fact that pretty much anyone in Manitoba knows what perogies are, or is involved in some way in Ukrainian dancing, or knows what it is, is already a great sign of the Ukrainians' influence on the province," Ivaniuk said.

The first ethnic Ukrainians arrived in Manitoba from what were then provinces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 1890s, although other groups from what would eventually become known as the country of Ukraine, such as Mennonites, began arriving decades earlier.

The first Ukrainian family came to Manitoba in 1891 and settled on a farm near Gretna, where many Mennonites who spoke the Ukrainian language already lived, according to an article published in 1951 by the Manitoba Historical Society in celebration of the 60th anniversary of their arrival.

Over the next two decades, the Canadian government actively recruited Ukrainians to settle the Prairies with offers of cheap land. 

They brought many of their cultural practices with them, building Ukrainian Orthodox Churches with their distinctive bulbous spires, and establishing schools that followed their own traditions.

While farming attracted most of the immigrants during the first wave, which lasted until about the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, some Ukrainians began to take up residence in Winnipeg, particularly in Point Douglas and the North End.

They worked in the railway yards, construction projects, meat-packing plants and iron works of the booming city. 

Many of the earliest immigrants didn't actually call themselves Ukrainians, instead referring to themselves as Ruthenians, Ivaniuk says.

That would change with the second wave of Ukrainian migration to Manitoba, in the years between the end of the First World War and the start of the Second World War.

"At that time, they were coming from western Ukraine, which was under Polish rule, and they were extremely well aware of their Ukrainian identity as they were being politically suppressed back home," Ivaniuk said.