Ukrainian festival 2011 (3) dance

Youth group

Ukrainian festival 2011 (2) Food

Grandma`s perogies

Desert

Beer garden

My dinner – sauerkraut, schnitzel and red cabbage salad

Ukrainian festival 2011 (1)

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  Last Sunday, I went to the Toronto Ukrainian festival which is billed as the largest Ukrainian festival in North America. I’ve noticed almost all of the festivals which I attended in Toronto this year have said that they’re the largest of their type so what’s going on with the rest of the continent.  On the same day, I also went to the Polish festival which also advertises itself as the largest in North America. There are so many different ethnic festivals in Toronto that they have to double up on weekends! The Ukrainian one was better than the Polish festival but then they’ve been at it for fifteen years while this is the sixth year for the Poles. There seem to be Polish perogies as opposed to Ukrainian ones although I couldn’t tell the difference in taste or appearance. The two festivals were about two miles apart so I could hike from one to the other through High Park, a large wooded area in west central Toronto.

Poster for festival

The Ukrainian Canadian community in Canada is made up of over 4 million people who trace their heritage to Ukraine and have been part of the Canadian mosaic for over 128 years. The community is well known and respected. As a result the Festival attracts diverse audiences with multi generational families not only from the GTA, but from all parts of Canada, the USA and abroad. (from festival webpage)

Icons for sale

The Ukrainian Canadian Research & Documentation Centre (UCRDC) (Ukrainian: Українсько-Канадський Дослідчо-Документаційний Центр, French: Centre Ukrainien Canadien des Recherches et Documentation) is a community center which collects, catalogs, and preserves material documenting the history, culture and contributions of Ukrainians throughout the world. UCRDC produces documentary films, such as the 2003 Between Hitler and Stalin, prepares educational materials, and sponsors lectures, conferences and exhibits on various topics related to Ukrainian issues.

UCRDC is a non-profit organization which seeks community support through various fundraising activities. The Center functions as a resource location which, according to its website, "holds an archive, a small library, oral histories (both in audio and video format), photographs, memoirs, personal archives and other miscellaneous items." (wikipedia)

More zouk

  I haven't had a musical interlude with Nouveauté zouk for a long time although this is one of my favorite musical genres. If you are unaware of this musical style then from Wikipedia:

Zouk is a style of rhythmic music originating from the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Zouk means "party" or "festival" in the local Antillean Creole of French, although the word originally referred to, and is still used to refer to, a popular dance, based on the Polish dance, the mazurka, that was introduced to the French Caribbean in the 19th Century. In Africa, it is popular in franco- and lusophone countries. In Europe it is particularly popular in France, and in North America the Canadian province of Quebec.

  This is popular as well in Louisiana among the French speaking areas. ”Ethnomusicologist Jocelyn Guilbault, however, describes zouk as a synthesis of Caribbean popular styles, especially Dominica cadence-lypso, Guadeloupean biguine, and Haitian compas” which is another excerpt from Wikipedia since there is no other information on the web. I came across it in one of my cross cultural perambulations investigating another matter. Nouveauté zouk is a recent metamorphosis of the traditional zouk where modern Rock is stylistically incorporated. Kim is one of the big stars in this particular musical genre.

Important dates in Hispanic History: 711

  One of the crucial dates that blogger Clarissa wanted her students to remember in her Hispanic civilization course was 711 so here is a video about an important event during that year to which I'm sure her mid western students can relate and especially with the hot summer this year.

Pseudoscience 3

Just to show that I’m not biased here’s a Russian dubbed video of the hollow earth theory. Supposedly there’s a gateway between the surface of the earth and a 4^th or 5^th dimension inner earth in Siberia which is guarded by fanatical FSB troopers. The last shot in the video was “inadvertently” taken by the MIR space station in 1987. A lot of weird stuff has come out of Russia over the last few decades.

Me on the Lenin hills not far from Moscow State University

Ontario Provincial Election

    On October 6, there will be an Ontario Provincial election and the Ontario Conservative Party is trying to reprise the federal election outcome by playing the anti immigrant card. Although the Canadian economy has performed much better than the American one in the last couple of years, paradoxically certain sectors of the Ontario economy have been diminished as a consequence of the strongly appreciating Canadian dollar. A little known fact is Ontario manufactures more cars than any other jurisdiction in North America including Michigan and most of these vehicles are shipped to the States. This has lead to a decrease in the workforce especially when you consider that Detroit is replacing middle class $28 an hour salaries with working poor wages of $14 an hour in America thanks to the Obama mediated agreement.   Thus the Ontario PC party wants to attract the angry, white male vote by blaming their problems on scary brown people. This xenophobic nativist attitude seems to be the path of choice for most western right of center groups these days.

   This is not a new agenda for the Ontario PC since a similar approach was presented in 2003. The Toronto Star had an article on this topic yesterday. As the paper commented:

That kind of language divides Ontarians into an “us” and a “them.” Creating divisions between struggling, unemployed workers and newer immigrants is dangerous to our long-term social cohesion. In Toronto, half of us were born outside Canada. There is no us versus them. They are us. And the faster we get newcomers into good jobs in the workforce and paying higher taxes the better for us all…Hudak’s rhetoric and the PC party’s “Ontarians need not apply” ad go too far. It amounts to a thinly veiled attack on immigrants…this is the politics of division. It is angry. It is ugly. And it’s not what Ontarians are about.