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Danny Evanishen is a Canadian of Ukrainian descent, a world traveller and a writer. He was born on February 17, 1945 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Danny graduated from the Nutana Collegiate Institute, Saskatoon in 1962, and then attended the University of Saskatchewan between 1962 and 1968 where he received degrees in both drama and education, while also being a writer and poet for the university’s student newspaper The Sheaf along with membership in other student organizations. Danny was also a member of a variety of cultural groups during this time, including the Mohyla Ukrainian Institute, CYMK (of which he was a president in 1964-65), and the dance group Yevshan and Lusia Pavlychenko's group, Saskatoon (1964-68). With Yevshan he danced in a Saskatchewan Jubilee movie in 1965, at Expo 67 several times, at the Canadian National Exhibition and for Queen Elizabeth in Ottawa in 1967. With Mary Tkachuk's youth choir he sang and played guitar in Toronto, Ottawa and Montréal at Expo 67, all in 1967.

Shortly after graduation, Danny began teaching English and art in Australia and New Zealand, but returned to Canada in 1971 to work as a Forest Officer in Yukon and British Columbia until 1978. During this time he briefly worked as an editor and publisher at a newspaper in Ross River, Yukon. In 1978, he became an owner and operator of a movie theatre and the manager of a freight co-operative in Salt Spring Island, BC. He also began pursuing freelance writing, which he continues to this day. From 1991 to 1993 Danny worked as a freelance forest fire suppression in BC. Since 1991, he has worked as a writer/publisher. Danny also worked at a mine in the Australian desert, fixed yachts on the Spanish island of Ibiza, repaired Volkswagens in Nigeria, tended bar in Canada, Spain and New Zealand, played guitar in a restaurant in Australia, drove a van in England, and crossed the Sahara in an old army truck.

Danny Evanishen's father stimulated his interest by translating some stories he found in an old Ukrainian book handed down by his father; his mother provided one story and encouraged him; and his niece and sister did the artwork. When Evanishen started to investigate, he discovered thousands of Ukrainian folktales. Danny started collecting stories in 1991. In 1994, he started going to Ukrainian and multiethnic festivals to collect stories there. He was interested in collecting stories of two types: Ukrainian folk tales and funny Ukrainian pioneer stories. With time, he started collected stories from descendants of pioneers. Danny would record verbal stories and would also invite people to send them to him by email, on paper, floppy disk, cassette, audio reel, fax, video, 8mm film. In 1994, he sent an announcement about collecting stories to many newspapers. If at the beginning of 1990s he would collect 2-3 stories per year, in 1999 he collected near to 40.

In 1993 he founded “Ethnic Enterprises, Publishing Division” to publish these stories, and his own writings around the character Vuiko Yurko which had received an award in a writers’ contest shortly after being published. Since then Ethnic Enterprises has published over twenty books containing stories of Danny’s own creation, and of Ukrainian folk tales he has collected and translated.

Composer George Fiala (b. 1922, Kyiv, Ukraine, d. 2017, Montreal, Canada) was born into a family of amateur musicians, and he enrolled in a preparatory school for the Kyiv Conservatory in 1934. He subsequently studied at the Kyiv Conservatory with Borys Liatoshynsky and Lev Revutsky, received his doctorate from the Akademische Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, where he studied with Wilhelm Furtwängler, and completed post-doctoral studies at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels. In 1949 he settled in Montreal.

As a composer, Fiala combined the traditions of Ukrainian music, German Neo-Romanticism and the twelve-tone techniques of the New French School. He produced more than 150 works, including symphonies, concertos for piano, violin and flute, quintets, quartets, trios and sonatas for strings and winds, solo piano works, choral pieces, art songs, an operetta, a ballet and a liturgy. His works have been performed by virtually every orchestra in Canada, and commissions on Ukrainian subjects constitute an important part of his output.

Author of the “Composers of the Ukrainian Diaspora” articles, Taras Filenko has degrees in ethnomusicology from the University of Pittsburgh (PhD, 1998) and Historical Musicology from the Ukrainian National Academy of Music (Kand. Nayk, 1989). From 1998 to the present, he has been on the faculty of the Duquesne University, City Music Center, Studio Piano, Core Musicianship. His publications include Світ Миколи Лисенка, UVAN, NY, 2009 (409 pp.), The World of Mykola Lysenko, Ukraine Millennium Foundation, Edmonton, 2001 (540 pp.), Yakiv Yatsenevych and His Time, in progress, UVAN, NY, (110pp.).

Composer, conductor and music critic Mykola Fomenko (b. 1894, Rostov-on-Don, Russia, d. 1961, New York, USA) was raised in a large family by a widowed father, who encouraged his son to pursue a “practical” profession. Fomenko began studying piano only at age 17. During the First World War he fought in the Caucasus. In 1929 he graduated from the Kharkiv Conservatory, where he studied composition and conducting. He was music director and conductor of the Kharkiv Music and Drama Theatre, until he was dismissed for refusing the join the Communist Party. Subsequently he worked at the Mystetstvo publishing house. Following the Second World War he was a displaced person in Europe until he immigrated to the United States in 1951. There he taught at the Ukrainian Music Institute of America in New York and worked for the Ukrainian section of Voice of America.

His output as a composer consists of more than 100 works, including two symphonies, a piano concerto, chamber works for strings, solo piano pieces, several operas, incidental music, choral works and art songs.

A renown artist and photographer, David Goberman was born in 1912 in Minsk. He studies in the Leningrad Academy of Arts. He is especially famous for his photographs of Jewish tombstones and Hucul ceramics. In 1950s he travelled across Ukraine and Moldova and photographed material culture, cemeteries, everyday life, and people.

Gordon Gordey (Master of Fine Arts, Master of Arts, Bachelor of Education) was a key builder in the evolution of the Ukrainian Shumka Dancers of Canada. In his forty years with Shumka, Gordey transitioned from a dancer, to a librettist/writer, and to a stage director, conceiving twenty-five original dance works for Shumka from 1992 to 2012. His works set a benchmark for Ukrainian dance in Canada and have toured across Canada, Ukraine, and over 20 cities in China. Gordey also served as Shumka's Artistic Director and Chief Executive Officer for 12 years. Gordey is privileged to be a Honourary Lifetime Member of the Ukrainian Shumka Dancers.

In his creative career outside of Shumka, Gordey studied ballet with Ruth Carse, founder of Alberta Ballet, spent 20 years as an Arts Consultant with the Department of Culture in Alberta, and worked for 13 years as a Human Rights Officer with the Alberta Human Rights Commission. He has been teaching Drama for 37 years at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton. For Alberta's Centennial in 2005, he conceived and produced Celebrate Alberta as part of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II's official welcome to Alberta's Centennial event, which included 1500 performers. In the same year, Gordey was recognized as one of the most influential people in the development of theatre in Alberta in the publication: Theatre 100. In 2006 he received the Hetman Award for Outstanding Contributions and Dedicated Service in Promoting Ukrainian Heritage and Culture in Alberta. He continues to serve the Ukrainian Canadian community as a National Board Member of the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko.

Below is an autobiography provided by Gordon Gordey.

"I was born in 1948 into the farming community of Innisfree, in northeast central Alberta. My great-grandparents, George and Magdalena Gordey arrived in Canada on June 2, 1900 emigrating from Borivsti, Bukovyna in present day Ukraine. Unlike the predominantly Ukrainian settlement prairie villages in northeast central Alberta, Innisfree was ethnically diverse. In general, everyone who lived north and west of Innisfree was of Ukrainian heritage and everyone who lived south and east of Innisfree was of British heritage. The village was a hub of Canadian diversity of the era, even though no-one was aware of this at the time.

Growing up my parents, John and Emily Gordey, hammered home over and over again to me: “Bud' kul’turna l’udyna– Be a cultured person”. There was no caveat that being “cultured” meant that part of me that was Ukrainian. It was an inclusive guidepost for life. This phrase stirred my imagination. From a young age it made me reach for a higher ground. I read everything I could from Canadian war stories, to every classic of British and American literature and to Dostoyevsky, when I was only 14 years old. I stood as close to the stage as I could at Ukrainian weddings and learned to sing the wedding songs. I listened to dance bands of Metro Radomsky and Jimmy Watsko stir my emotion for Ukrainian music with their wonderful singing violins. Church services filled my imagination with myth, magic and mystery. Folk superstitions kept me awake at nights after visits to Baba K. who poured wax onto the water, whispered incantations, and cured me of my fear of roosters.

Grade school whizzed by with academics, participation in all school sports, and singing in the rock band, The Rivals, in the 60’s. In 1965 I experienced a pivotal event that would lead me into the world of Ukrainian dance. I attended a summer cultural program, Osvita, at St. John’s Institute where I was instructed in Ukrainian dance by a fiery young Shumka dancer named Gerald Metrunec. Like me, he was from rural Alberta, the town of Myrnam, and had come to Edmonton to join the Ukrainian Shumka Dancers and go to University. Within 10 days he used my background in athletics to drill into me the basics of Ukrainian dance. That fall, upon my return to Innisfree, I knew more about Ukrainian dance than anyone in my community, and was tagged to teach Ukrainian dancing in the town of Vegreville. My survival as a dance teacher with limited pedagogy depended on my creativity, my knowledge of music, and the drive to excel in dance that Gerald Metrunec had instilled. In 1966 my family moved into Edmonton and I joined the Ukrainian Shumka Dancers. Edmonton became my cultural oasis. I also immersed myself in ballet, jazz, theatre studies, choirs, musicals, and operatic singing lessons. Like-minded friends like the musically gifted, Gene Zwozdesky and the top male ballet and Ukrainian dancer of the day, Orest Semchuk inspired me to adhere to the guidepost of “Be a cultured person.” The Drama Department at the University of Alberta was at a high point of fine art at the time and filled my thirst for learning and practicing world theatre and art.

It is from this well-spring, “Dzerelo”, of experiences that my 40-year journey of creating original Ukrainian dance in Canada took flight." (Gordon Gordey, March 7, 2017)

Dr. Bohdan Medwidsky was on the committee for Graham's dissertation.

Ashley Halko-Addley, born September 1, 1995 in Regina, Saskatchewan, is the youngest of three children to Kathy and the late Wayne Halko. Ashley was baptized Ukrainian Orthodox at the Sts. Peter and Paul Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Melnychuk) near Tuffnell, SK.. Throughout school, she participated in Ukrainian dance and danced with the Chaban Ukrainian Dance Ensemble and Zabutnyy Dance Company in Regina, and the Cudworth Ukrainian Dance Club. While attending university for her undergraduate degree in Saskatoon, she was a member of the Solovei Ukrainian Dance Group and the Lastiwka Ukrainian Orthodox Choir. While attending university for her graduate degree in Edmonton, she was involved with the Veeteretz School of Ukrainian Dance and the Viter Ukrainian Dancers and Folk Choir (choir member).

Ashley attended the University of Saskatchewan from 2013-17, where she completed her Bachelor of Arts High Honours degree in Anthropology with a minor in Ukrainian Studies. Ashley was on the Dean's List (top 5%) each year, and in 2017, she was awarded the Most Outstanding Graduate in Anthropology from the College of Arts and Science. Ashley spent five weeks in Ukraine in 2016 studying Anthropology and language at the Ternopil National Pedagogical University, as part of the St. Thomas More College Spring Session in Ukraine program. During her undergraduate degree, Ashley received numerous awards and scholarships, including the John Russell Kowalchuk Award in Ukrainian Studies, the Ukrainian Self-Reliance Association Language Award, the Rose Semko-Hrynchuk Scholarship, the Leo J. Krysa Family Undergraduate Scholarship, and the Ukrainian Canadian Congress Saskatchewan Provincial Council Community Achievement Award in the Youth Achievement category.

Ashley was very active in the Ukrainian student movement. In her first two years of university, Ashley was a resident of St. Petro Mohyla Institute. During that time, she sat on the executive of the Kameniari Ukrainian Student Society, serving her first term as Treasurer, and second term as President. She served three terms on the executive of the University of Saskatchewan Ukrainian Students’ Association, as Mohyla Representative, Vice-President Internal, and co-President. Ashley also sat on the board of directors of the Ukrainian Canadian Students’ Union (SUSK) for three terms, as Alumni Director for two years, and as Executive Vice-President for one year. Ashley also sat on the University of Alberta Ukrainian Students’ Society executive as Media Technician.

She has worked as a Museum Assistant at the Ukrainian Museum of Canada in Saskatoon, Marking Assistant for Ukrainian language classes at the University of Saskatchewan, as Assistant Director in the two sessions: children and teens at Green Grove Camp, Wakaw Lake, as counsellor at St. Petro Mohyla Institute’s Ukrainian Summer Immersion Cultural & Language Program, as a Research Assistant at the Kule Folklore Centre, and at the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village.

Ashley moved to Edmonton in September 2017. She completed her Master of Arts in Media and Cultural Studies in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies in 2019. Ashley received the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship-Master’s (SSHRC CGS-M) in 2018. Her research topic was the Ukrainian wax healing ceremony on the Canadian Prairies.

Rena Hanchuk was a graduate student in the Ukrainian Folklore Program at the University of Alberta. Her master thesis entitled "The World and Wax: Folk Psychology and Ukrainians in Alberta" was published as a book in 1999 by the Huculak Chair of Ukrainian Culture and Ethnography under the title "The World and Wax: A Medical Folk Ritual Among Ukrainians in Alberta". Rena lives in Edmonton and is very active in the Ukrainian community.

Composer and violinist Michael Hayvoronsky (b. 1892, Zalishchyky, Ukraine, d. 1949, New York, USA) received his first music lessons from the church choir conductor in his native village. He subsequently studied music education at a teaching seminary and violin at the Lysenko Music Institute in Lviv. During the First World War he enlisted in the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen. After the war he worked as a music teacher in Lviv and as a choral conductor. Following his emigration to the United States in 1923 he continued his studies at Columbia University and co-founded the Ukrainian Music Conservatory in New York with Roman Prydatkevytch.

The majority of Hayvoronsky’s compositions are for voice: songs, choral arrangements and sacred choral works. He also composed tone poems for orchestra, music for brass band, incidental music and chamber pieces.