This item contains a recording of a CEESSA Meeting held on September 14, 1976. Topics covered include:
A meeting regarding the project
The government of Alberta gave money for the project
Aim of part 1 of the project on East European groups – to write a book about historical background of East European immigration; size and distribution of their settlements. The book will be comprised of 10 chapters.
Mrs. Matejko on progress of the work: the work started on October of last year with statistics of all kinds on Central and Eastern European groups. Search in the Provincial Archives. Compiled bibliographies. The most detailed ones are on Poles, Russian Germans, and Jews. Less information on Romanians or people from the Baltic countries.
A need to find private collections of documents and cover 3 waves of immigration. Problems: some communities came in the 1880s, very early, like Russian Germans. Latvian immigrants were very rare, mostly after WWII.
Volunteers are needed to make contacts with old timers and do fieldwork. Germans are the largest community in Alberta coming from Volga region, Black Sea region, and Volyn apart from those from Reich. Mr. Sokolovsky was a research assistant last year and did a great job on Russians, Byelorussians. 2/3 Germans in Alberta are from Central and Eastern Europe.
Problems with counting Czechs and Slovaks because of the former Czechoslovakia. Dr. Horna is working on Slovaks group. Ms. Birzgalis is writing a massive thesis on Latvian community in Alberta (around 1010 people altogether). And Latvian community is very young and predominantly urban comparing to other ethnic groups.
Romanian community research – there is an old settler who was born in Romania. A student in anthropology in Calgary wrote thesis on Polish community – there is interest from outside and people want to help..
A linguist from Poland studies the changes of Polish language in Alberta. He has many interviews with life stories.
High schools now offer a course on ethnic groups in Alberta – they could use a source book from CEESSA.
Discussing that 5 ethnic groups under consideration now but possibly extending the number of ethnic groups for research.
Problems of intermixed settlements of Romanians.
Grant of $10000 for research: $5000 for research associates, $4000 – for field trips, $1000 – for typing.
Mrs. Matejco will be working on all the ethnic communities in addition to the Polish one, and she will get half of that grant money. The University is going to handle the money so that CEESSA will not have to deal with the receipts and report to the Ministry.
Mrs. Matejko used to work on the project for free but put in a lot of time and effort.
Field trips should be longer and more extensive when there is money.
Mrs. Horna will be paid only for her trips and Xeroxing.
People interested in working on 2 different ethnic communities on their own budget (one is a former student working in the Provincial Archives).
To complete the project, trips to the National Archives in Ottawa and archives in Toronto should be made + a trip to the B.C. Archives and Saskatoon – those have unique sources that must be included.
Dr. Rudnytskyi and Dr. [Lupul] were assigned to do a federal project on history of Ukrainians in Canada. The project is far from being completed. CEESSA did not touch the Ukrainian community because they already have the Ukrainian Institute working on it and various funding.
The German community is more difficult than any other one – they are spread all over the province.
Federal government project includes 20 ethnic groups. The only group that was not approached was Slovenes. Dr. Priestley was then asked to do the work on that group. Another group was Finns – someone is researching them now.
The federal government is not going to give money any more for researching ethnic communities because it already did so. But money could be obtained for compiling and publishing memoirs of the pioneers – it could become a bestseller.
Getting money from Canada Council would enable to finish the project without begging from the communities.
