A special recognition is shining a spotlight on a Saskatoon museum celebrating Ukrainian heritage. The Ukrainian Museum of Canada has joined the Global Coalition of Ukrainian Studies, an international network dedicated to preserving and sharing knowledge about Ukraine and its cultural heritage. The milestone comes as the museum celebrates 90 years since it was founded by Ukrainian women in Saskatoon. The announcement came during a meeting in Toronto with Ukraine’s First Lady, Olena Zelenska, who is an ambassador for the coalition. Jen Budney, executive director and CEO of the Ukrainian Museum of Canada, says Zelenska helped create the coalition, which now includes more than 100 universities and institutions internationally, including Columbia University and the University of Cambridge. Budney was in Toronto for the announcement and says it was an honour to be part of the gathering and be the first museum in the coalition. “Madame Carney and Pani Zelenska, they led the proceedings. So it was a real honour and pleasure to be in the room with both these fiercely intelligent and dedicated women,” Budney told CTV News. She says meeting Zelenska was particularly emotional because the First Lady specifically recognized the work of the Ukrainian women who helped establish the museum. “The First Lady noted that we were an especially symbolic partner to the coalition,” Budney said. Zelenska specifically mentioned the genesis for the museum here in Saskatoon. “Our founders, the Ukrainian Women’s Association of Canada, had begun collecting artifacts in 1924 because they had seen at an exhibition in Toronto that Ukrainian embroidery had been misidentified as Russian.” The Ukrainian Museum of Canada was founded in Saskatoon in 1936 by members of the Ukrainian Women’s Association of Canada. They moved to their current location on Spadina Crescent in the mid 1970s. “We were the first museum in Saskatoon. We were the first Ukrainian museum in North America and potentially in the greater diaspora around the world. They were visionary women,” Budney said. The organization’s mission was to collect, document and preserve Ukrainian culture at a time when Ukrainian history and cultural artifacts were not always correctly identified or understood. The recognition is also deeply personal for museum curator Rachel Ormshaw, whose great-grandmother, was one of the museum’s original members. “It makes me kind of emotional. I think about her all the time here. Even hearing from Jen about Olena Zelenska honouring those women, she would have been so thrilled,” Ormshaw said. The museum’s work has also taken on added importance since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Budney says the addition of having Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Toronto for the gathering was also very significant. “He noted this long-standing support of Ukrainian Canadians for Ukraine, and that was very moving as well,” Budney said. The museum is also preparing to open a new textile exhibition on Saturday, showcasing the importance of weaving and textiles in Ukrainian culture. Ormshaw says one piece in particular stands out to her. It’s a large woven rug, made in Ukraine and brought to Canada. “We have a beautiful kilim, a woven rug, in this new show. It’s really large. It’s six feet by eight feet, and it’s beautiful, woven in Ukraine, brought to Canada,” Ormshaw said. The piece features a figure Ormshaw describes as a goddess of weaving in Ukraine. “It’s kind of that focus on women over and over again here and this goddess of weaving has become such a touchpoint for this weaving show.” The textile collection at the museum is the largest ethnic textile collection in North America. According to Ormshaw, the textiles are more than decorative objects; they carry stories about family, place, tradition and identity. For a museum founded by Ukrainian women nine decades ago, those stories continue to connect the past with the present and now they also connect to a growing international effort to preserve and expand knowledge about Ukraine as the country fights for its freedom and independence.
