Salt and Braided Bread: Ukrainian Life in Canada

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

The centenary of Ukrainian settlement in Canada will be celebrated in 1991. With this handsome volume, salt and braided bread, the ritual greeting Ukrainians extend to guests, is offered not only to members of the Ukrainian community but to all Canadians of all ethnic origins. It is a welcome to a distinctive and robust lifestyle, as many glowing photographs of people, places, monuments, and artifacts attest. But this is no mere folkloric souvenir collection of painted eggs and embroidery, charming though they may be. Here, under the headings The Maritimes, Québec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, the history of Ukrainian settlement is recorded. Here are the stories of early desperate struggles for survival; of good times and bad; of many heroes and heroines, and one or two villains; of religion, politics, and the arts; of a cultural heritage that has flourished through generations of patriotic devotion to the Canadian motherland. A fine celebration of the enormous and invaluable accomplishments of the Ukrainian Canadian community.