Thank you and good evening.

Let me begin by congratulating the Ukrainian Museum of Canada for 60 years of serving, preserving and leading the Ukrainian Canadian community. I trust you have had a useful conference. I attended the afternoon sessions and was impressed at the degree of commitment to the future directions of our museum. My topic for this evening is Ukrainian Canadian Culture in the Age of the Internet.

My intention is to explore several disparate pieces of the Canadian cultural scene, within a context of the Ukrainian Canadian discourse.

Several questions should guide our analysis. These are questions you have asked before. Practical questions like: (a) What is the direction of the Ukrainian Museum of Canada to be as we move towards the year 2000. (b) What kinds of resources are necessary for survival and expansion? (c) Who is the target audience for which we are putting in all this work? Who are the workers, the volunteers, the leaders who will plan and implement the vision? Theoretic questions like What is the role of the museum in the age of the Internet?

I can’t promise to answer all of these questions, but together, we can take some first steps. And of course, in your deliberations today you are already exploring these issues.

For the next 20 minutes, my approach and language will be postmodern; my examples will be Ukrainian Canadian; our direct application will be to the Ukrainian Museum of Canada as representative of a Canadian Heritage Museum. We shall begin by providing a detailed unpacking of our target audience. Perhaps that might help focus on some of the problematic issues. We shall consider a variety of factors which impinge on a strategic analysis. Finally, we shall look at the Internet as symbolic of contemporary technological advancements, and attempt to place the Ukrainian Museum of Canada within that discourse.

I said my approach will be postmodern. The postmodern critique of society argues that culture is plural, that multiple paradigms co-exist, juxtapose on one another and interact. Postmodernists believe that knowledge is local, historically determined, and relative.

If that is the case, then, Ukrainian Canadians and probably everyone in this room, are, by definition, postmodernists. Because, the term postmodern, at its simplest level, means "multiple conflicting discourses." In other words if you grew up understanding that Christmas could be held twice, December 25 and January 7, and it didn’t really bother you, then you are a postmodernist. Or perhaps, when you were young and went to school, you were taught at home and in Ukrainian classes that the greatest poet was Taras Shevchenko. Then you went to school and found out that your teacher never even heard of Taras Shevchenko. If you could and are able to reconcile these multiple discourses, then you are, again, postmodernist. If you are able to stand up and loudly sing "Shche Ne Vmerly Ukraina", then , without missing a beat sing "O Canada, we stand on guard for thee." you are behaving in an acutely postmodern way. In short, the postmodern condition recognizes multiple meanings, and realizes that there is no "transcendental signified" ...no one best way. Ukrainian Canadians have always known that. For generations already.

Who is the target audience for the Ukrainian Museum of Canada. One is tempted to brush off this question with a quick response: the Ukrainian Canadian community. But what contemporary analytical theory tells us is that this response is not good enough. Instead, the term "unpacking"; is used to take apart and present a detailed analysis. When this is done fully, what should happen is that we gain a new respect for where we are, and why things are unfolding as they are, and what we might do about it.

To unpack our audience we might ask first "Who built our Ukrainian Canadian institutions?" Some broad strokes: people of rural farm background. First and second generation Ukrainian Canadians. Families were larger than they are today. A family unit consisted of a farmer (male) and his wife (considered only a helper). To realize how much women were considered as not real people, we only need reflect that here in Saskatchewan, women received the right to vote provincially on March 14, 1916. That is exactly 80 years and two days ago. To continue. People believed in self help and community help. There was no government support, then. There was no CPP. There was no unemployment insurance. There were no senior citizen homes., There was no health care. People were not mobile. And our community was essentially ignored by the broader Canadian community. We did not fit into Canadian society. Again how long ago was this? Not back into pre-history, but within the life spans of individuals in this room!

These people built this museum with "nickels and dimes". They gave mostly time, they gave labour, they gave what little money they had. These people make up only the first part of our audience analysis.

There is a second audience which needs unpacking. The Ukrainian Canadian of today. Canada is in crisis. According to Stats Can we all work longer hours at our jobs than we did ten years ago. We do it for economic necessity. We do it for equality. We are tired, stressed out and worried. The family unit is changing and shifting. Two working parents is the norm. Single parent families are common. Blended families exist where individuals have been married, divorced and re-married. We range from first generation Ukrainian Canadians to fourth and fifth and even sixth generation Canadian born. There is intermarriage, and interfaith. Our children are left alone. They are unsupervised. They learn their values not from family, but from television cartoons (basically violent and basically American), from television drama (basically violent and basically American). They learn values from day care and from peer groups who represent other interest groups.

Of course, this is not a fact of Ukrainian Canadian society alone; rather it is a direct reflection of Canadian society. Add to this that the various generations all have their own discourses, their own practice, their own unique place in society. Look at the chaos which results:

First, we can identify the so-called Young Urban Professionals, better known as the YUPPIES, spanning the ages of 40-55. They were the original fast-trackers with the motto "He who dies with the most toys wins" Today, they are trying to hold onto their jobs, and at the same time worry about whether their kids will even get a job. The Baby Boomers, those born just after ww2 are reaching 50 now and have their concerns as the economy plummets. Generation Xers is the term for those from 25-35 who are directly worried about careers which do not materialize, and holding onto any job they can. The Double Income No Kids group (DINKS) provide a different pressure on society, since this group is high profile and moving rapidly with no kids to worry about. The Sandwich generation find themselves sandwiched in a double bind. They need to support their children, or perhaps have just finished that task, only to find that they must now support their aging parents. And out of work Generation X-ers are returning to live at home. And at the upper level are the snowbirds, worried about the health system and their pensions as they spend more and more money outside of Canada every year.

Now, who is left to volunteer time to a museum? Who will financially support our community? Who will give their labour and not insist on charging union rates? Who will give positive moral and emotional support?

There is still more. We are also Canadians, so our cultural and entertainment interests include going to art galleries, museums, symphony orchestras, theatre centres as well as hockey, football and the like. And these Canadian cultural institutions are also in trouble. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is struggling. The NFB has closed most of its regional offices. The Hamilton Symphony Orchestra is gone. The Halifax Symphony is in trouble. The Manitoba Theatre Centre has slipped into the red, even after a successful season highlighted by Keanu Reeves as Hamlet. The Winnipeg Jets are gone.

When our Ukrainian Museum of Canada was forming, there was not as much competition for our time and money at the Canadian cultural level. Today it is different. And Canadians today no longer go to Bingos; they go to casinos. (And guess where a major source of local funding came from? Bingo!)

So who can we count on? The original members who built our community? The contemporary mixed-up generations? The broader Canadian society with a commitment to and an interest in multiculturalism as a Canadian value? Or all of the above? Or "none of the above?"

Is this picture complicated enough? Well, there is more. In 1991, Ukraine, against all odds, declared independence. We had all dreamed about this; we had it drilled into our subconsiousness, but most of us didn’t really think it would ever happen. But it did. And along with our joy, it has caused new problems. What does an independent Ukraine mean to our existence here in Canada? Once, we were the carriers and the repository of a free Ukrainian culture. Not any more. Once we were the only supporters of a Ukrainian language. Not any more.

And a new paradox appears. If we support the reconstruction of Ukraine, as we should, and we do, then we also divert our energies and our funds which might have been targeted to the Ukrainian Canadian institutions here. Certainly money is leaving our community at unprecedented rates. What was once a trickle has become a flood. Discretionary funds which once would have been targeted for our community, are going elsewhere.

If the term postmodern is used to capture a society characterized by multiple disparate discourses, then our community is postmodern. Is it ever!

Is there anything positive which can help to lighten this picture? Of course there is.

(Exciting things are happening. Let’s look at some of them.)

First of all, who says the Ukrainian Canadian community is declining or assimilating. At one point in our history, scholars used to try to calculate how long it would take for all of the Ukrainian first and second wave to become integrated and assimilated as just Canadians. In fact, the opposite has happened. We can calculate instead that it is just a matter of time when all Canadians will be part Ukrainian and that the Ukrainian heritage will be the Canadian heritage. (Statistics Canada says that nearly 1M of us claim to be of Ukrainian heritage.)

If that is the case, then our target audience must be all of Canada. That means we need to open our doors to everyone. Not just those who speak perfect Ukrainian, or are formal members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada, but all Canadians.

We need to show where the Ukrainian contribution is an integral component of Canada. And indeed we have a vital, exciting and proud record of achievement in the Canadian historical and cultural community. Our contributions are NOT ghettoized, but are part of Canada. Painter William Kurelyk, Comedian Luba Goy, Sculptor Leo Mol, Singer Juliette, pianist Christina Petrovska, politicians like Gary Filmon, Roy Romanow, and the former governor general and the former lieutenant governor of Saskatchewan all testify to the importance of our contributions to Canada.

In addition, we have been written about by Margaret Atwood, Margaret Lawrence, Steven Leacock, WO Mitchell, and Carol Shields to name only a few.)

Let me tell you about some projects on which I am currently working, and relate them to the (the dilemma of the current cultural discontent and) the discussion of our strategic analysis. Along with my regular duties in my profession of educational technology, I regularly teach an above-load course for the University of Manitoba within the Faculty of Arts, under the auspices of the Centre for Ukrainian Canadian Studies. The course is called Ukrainian Arts in Canada. It is a bona fide university course for credit, a course which covers visual and performing arts. The course title is a misnomer: Ukrainian arts ... in Canada. It implies a direct transplanting of Ukrainian arts into Canada. The title seems to ask what happens when Ukrainian arts come to Canada. But that is the least interesting dimension. Rather we have uniquely home-grown Canadian products with some sort of Ukrainian appropriation. The kind and degree of Ukrainian influence matters: analyze in one way and we create a ghetto mentality. But turn it upside down and we have a unique and significant contribution to the culture of Canada.

An example: Ivan Franko’s stories of Drohobich are interesting to us, as is Shevchenko’s Haidamaky. So is the music of Mykola Lysenko, or the plays of Lesia Ukrainka. But surely it is more relevant to us in Canada when a Canadian author like Paul Gresco who happens to be of Ukrainian background, and happens to be the brother of Donna Gresco, "the little magic fiddler" of the 50s ... when this Paul Gresco invents a character in a novel in the English language who is a Canadian of Ukrainian background named Danilo Rudnetsky or Canadianized as Dan Rudnicky——puts him in Vancouver, and gives him the unlikely occupation of private eye. And this fictitious Danilo Rudnetsky’s struggles to understand the relevance of his Ukrainian heritage is just as complex as his attempts to solve a murder on Wreck Beach in Vancouver. When his fictitious family celebrates Easter, they inevitably get it all mixed up. His postmodern translation of the traditional greeting is not meant to be irreverent, only very typically Canadian. I quote:

What is important about this admittedly lightweight novel, called Flesh Wound, is not that it presents what the publishers call "the first Ukrainian Canadian detective", but that it places the Ukrainian Canadian dilemma into a contemporary Canadian discourse. In the course Ukrainian Arts in Canada, we are interested in that discourse. The Ukrainian Museum of Canada is also interested. We all are, because it is our discourse.

I am involved in a second project. Recently, I received a grant from the Taras Shevchenko foundation to study classical music which contains Ukrainian themes. Of course it is interesting to study our folk songs, but when one can trace Ukrainian influences on George Gershwin, Winton Marsellis, Dinah Shore, not to mention Beethoven, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky, the power of our culture takes on a new dimension.

And the newest road to the future is the Internet. My third project is, through the Charney Internet Project, to place St. Andrew’s College and the CUCS on the information highway. Dr. Charney incidentally was born in rural Saskatchewan , then the NWTerritories, and left enough of a donation to begin the Internet connection.

It is absolutely essential that all Ukrainian. Canadian Community organizations do this. A World Wide Web presence is essential for future development. If you don’t have a web page, you might as well not have a telephone.

Let me tell you just one Internet story. Just over a year ago, I came to work, turned on my computer, as I always do, and waiting in my electronic mailbox was a note which at the time, I found unusual. It was unusual because of the address: alex@lavra.kiev.ua.

I know how to read an email address. alex was the persons name. ua stood for Ukraine, Kiev for the capital city, and lavra could only be the Pecherska Lavra. So somebody named Alex who I did not know, was writing to me from the Pecherska Lavra. I wrote back, asking essentially "Who are you?" Within hours, the following appeared in my email:

Za Paru Dniw, A pair of days later they wrote again:

In my mind I had a vision of 1000 year old institution, a monastery with a thousand year old mission statement to preserve Ukrainian culture And now a new breed of electronic monks are sitting in those damp caves, sending email to the world.

The point is, the Internet and contemporary technologies are having a major impact on culture. We need to keep abreast.

(We like to think that we are ahead of Ukraine. Not always. The Ukrainian Museum of Canada doesn’t have a computer science department of 12 members. Nor does even the Winnipeg Art Gallery, for that matter. )

(But things are happening fast. I developed some material for a St. Andrew’s Home page. We intend to have a fairly sophisticated site up within the next few months. I have also put on the net some information for the Centre for Ukrainian Canadian Studies at the University of Manitoba. Already, one listing of things Ukrainian on the net lists over 200 Canadian Ukrainian sites!)

It is time for me to conclude with a final question: What must our strategy be as we approach the year 2000?

First heritage museums must not dwell only in the past. Instead we must make the past visible within a contemporary context.

Second, heritage museums and institutions, if they are to be relevant into the next century, must respond to the legitimate interests of the Canadian fact. We are part Ukrainian and part Canadian. To celebrate only the Ukrainian component introduces a subtle but negative bias.

Third. Volunteers. Too often we recognize and honour those among us who are paid employees of the Ukrainian community. In so doing, we forget far too often that the real leaders of our community have always been the volunteers, those who give time and money for the love of their community. These days, the term "volunteer" has gained an unfortunate negative sense which implies individuals who can’t get a real job. It’s not true. Without the volunteer, we are nothing. All cultural institutions will only survive government cutbacks if they strengthen their volunteer base.

(Our UC community has always know this, but maybe we sometimes overlooked this in the 70s and 80s when government funding of cultural institutions was expanded.)

Fourth. All institutions today need regular retraining, re-tooling and professional development programs. We cannot sit back and be complacent and say that only others need re-tooling, but not us. From the volunteer staff to paid staff and especially the Board of Directors, we all need this. We don’t have the same values. We don’t see things the same way. Professional development is essential.

Fifth. The issue of negativity. We have an unfortunate tendancy to be negative about ourselves. Don't. Rumours hurt. We need to re-learn how to be ethical. Some stuff remains in-house, in camera, behind closed doors. We put our best face forward to our public. And more. We need to always treat every guest who comes to our door "like royalty." Too often, in too many places, people come into a place, no one greets them, no one offers to direct them. People feel like intruders, rather than guests.

Sixth. Lobbying. We must hone our lobbying skills for use with governments and with corporate Canada.

Seventh. Our heritage museums need to be strategic centers for debate and discussion and change. We are in 1996. Technology has opened up a new definition of the global village. Ukrainian Canadians can no longer live in the 20th century. We must be proud and positive about our achievements of the 20th century, and we must pass on these stories to the following generations. And then it is time to move on. 1996. 97. 98. 99. 2000. For all intents and purposes the 20th century is now over.