Building History: The archives of the Manitoba Eastern European Heritage Society 

Thursday, February 27, 2025 2:30 pm   

University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections  

3rd Floor Elizabeth Dafoe Library   

Register for the event.  

Documenting Manitoba’s disappearing Ukrainian church history

Due to a concern over the increasing loss of Manitoba’s Ukrainian Byzantine-rite churches, University of Manitoba professors Drs. Stella Hryniuk (Department of History), Roman Yereniuk (Department of Religion and Theology, St. Andrew’s College), and Basil Rotoff (Department of City Planning, Faculty of Architecture) came together to form MEEHS in 1983. The focus of their research was documenting the architecture, art, and history of these buildings.  

 In 2008, MEEHS donated their collection to the University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections. The fonds consist of material relating to their work and research about the history of Eastern European communities in Manitoba. Out of the 240 churches they identified as still standing in 1983, they have compiled research material on 150 churches. Since the collection was donated to the Archives, almost 5000 slides have been digitized and placed in UM Digital Collections. 

Collection donation allows for new research opportunities  

Dr. Yereniuk notes “for researchers, the collection offers an opportunity to write studies and compare parallel works in other provinces, especially Saskatchewan and Alberta, on topics such as icons, iconographers, liturgical practices, feast days, architects (both grassroot and professional), and aspects of the religious life of Ukrainians in Canada.”   

Dr. Hryniuk highlights that descendants of Ukrainian immigrants in Manitoba could benefit from learning about the churches in areas where their families lived. She states there is a possibility for academic research “on village society in Manitoba; especially in the earliest settlements of Ukrainians in Manitoba (1891-1945).” 

Although not all communities have equal access to electronic media, information in general is more available to more people than in 1918, when that flu pandemic hit. Ironically, though, some of today’s records are more fragile and fleeting than those produced in 1918.

How will our institutions capture the fleeting records of the COVID-19 pandemic in order to ensure that governments, policymakers, planners, and historians can examine what happened, what went right and what went wrong? How will the voices of ordinary people, including racialized communities, be preserved so that we all remember and honour them?

A recent report for the Royal Society of Canada examines this complicated situation. The report was authored by three UM faculty and staff–Faculty of Arts history professor Esyllt Jones, archival studies professor Greg Bak, and senior scholar Shelley Sweeney (Archives and Special Collections)–as well as history professors Ian Milligan (Waterloo) and Jo-Anne McCutcheon (Ottawa).

“Remembering is a Form of Honouring: Preserving the COVID-19 Archival Record,” released at the end of February, discusses the dire situation for Canada’s archives, having suffered financial cuts and funding stagnation since the 1990s, while being confronted by the ever-growing onslaught of electronic records.

The report recommends policy changes in three key areas: funding and support for memory institutions; gaps between preservation capacity and current digital record production; and preservation of, and access to, valuable scholarly research into the societal impact of COVID-19.

The goal of the report “was to begin a conversation about priorities for archival preservation, the need for greater equity and justice in our preservation practices, and ways to safeguard the existence of historical records that will allow us in future to bear witness, with fairness and truth and in a spirit of reconciliation, to our society’s response to COVID-19.”

Read more: Remembering is a Form of Honouring: Preserving the COVID-19 Archival Record

*About the cover image: Photographer Morgan Wedderspoon’s pandemic walks series builds on her practice of collecting found objects spotted on the ground, snapping phone photographs of found objects.

Arthur was one of a set of twins born to Thomas Glendenning (T.G.) Hamilton, now remembered less for his prominence as a Manitoba school board trustee, member of the legislature and a physician than his family’s investigation of psychic phenomena.

A previously existing interest was transformed by the tragedy into a committed investigation through séances and mediums into telekinesis, teleplasm and trance states.

The enquiry was continued past T.G.’s death by Lillian and other members of his family and the wider Winnipeg community. Hamilton House, still standing on Henderson Highway in Winnipeg, was the meeting place for a circle of Spiritualist mediums.

The Hamiltons were recognized internationally for their experiments and investigations, part of the second wave of Spiritualism that arose following the large number of deaths of the First World War.

The Hamilton family fonds held by the UM Libraries Archives & Special Collections include many photographs and document the enquiry into life after death led by T.G. in Winnipeg during the period 1918-1935.

In addition to the rich and extensive photographs and documentation of the original Hamilton donation, the Archives holds the Janice Hamilton fonds, which includes the baby books of the Hamilton twins, Arthur (1915-1918) and James (1915-1980).

Read more about the Hamilton connection or check out more of the UM Libraries Archives & Special Collections Psychical Research and Spiritual Collections.

Part 3 of the UML Archives series A Brief History of Pandemics will explore the 1957 influenza pandemic.

>>Read all of the stories in our Pandemics history series by UML Archives.

This story drew from University of Manitoba Libraries archival collections including the Hamilton Family fonds and the Janice C. Hamilton fonds.