Barrie marked its second Ukrainian Festival Vyshyvanka Day with celebration and reflection Sunday afternoon.
The downtown’s Meridian Place was filled with people experiencing dance, music and song, along with exhibits, food vendors, arts and crafts, and the Vyshyvanka, an iconic, embroidered Ukrainian symbol of heritage, history and resilience.
Lesya Plawiuk said a Vyshyvanka can be an embroidered blouse, dress or shirt, some made by hand, others by machine, of various design, some traditional, some modern.
“Mine is very old,” she said. “This blouse is about 80 years old.”
Its importance, however, goes far beyond the years.
“It’s very significant to the Ukrainian community now because of the situation, in Ukraine, with the war,” Lesya Plawiuk said, referring to Russia’s full-scale invasion of her nation in 2022. “What Russia’s trying to do is to completely annihilate and destroy our cultures, our heritage, our language.
“This (Vyshyvanka) is something symbolic that represents our identity, who we are and it tells everyone that we’re different, we’re hanging on to every shred of our identity,” she said. “We’re not letting them take it from us and destroying it.”
Roman Plawiuk, Lesya’s husband, and a chief festival organizer, represents the Ukrainian National Federation of Canada, which he says has been in this country for about 90 years.
“It (Vyshyvanka) all stems from our angst about the war and feeling pride in our culture and wanting to come together as a community, to celebrate our ethno-code, as we say,” he said. “It’s one of the things that ties us together. It has a lot of symbolic meaning.
“We’re just proud to celebrate who we are,” Roman said. “There’s not many opportunities where we get to be able to celebrate who we are and what we’re all about.
“Every region of Ukraine has its own kind of unique style.”
Roman said his federation helps the Ukrainian newcomers settle in Canada, to better integrate them into the community.
“Sometime it’s good if they can talk to each other, share their life stories, get help from each other,” said the longtime resident of Barrie-Innisfil.
Since its launch in March 2022, the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel has provided a temporary safe haven to more than 220,000 Ukrainians now in Canada, says the federal government.
For more on the Ukrainian National Federation of Canada, Barrie and Simcoe County Branch, visit unfcanada.ca.
