Generational connection through culture

Garden City

North Kildonan

As another school year wraps up, Ukrainian parents and students reflect on year of language, culture, and community in school.

Manitoba Parents for Ukrainian Education (MPUE) is an umbrella organization that supports parental associations at schools providing the English-Ukrainian Bilingual Program.

It helps to organize field trips, year-end parties, and collaborate with teachers within the 11 schools across Manitoba offering the bilingual program.

“Learning Ukrainian at school is actually really cool,” said Sofia Thullner, a Grade 7 student at H.C. Avery Middle School (10 Marigold Bay) in Garden City.

Next year will be her final year in bilingual education, as the program only runs until Grade 8. In elementary, students speak both in Ukrainian and English throughout the school day. By middle school, only certain subjects are taught in Ukrainian.

“The most important part for my parents was speaking, feeling, and living Ukrainian, and they succeeded. I have a responsibility to pass that,” said Kristya Matwichyna, first-generation Canadian, Ukrainian speaker, and Thullner’s mom.

“(Hearing that) makes me feel important,” Thullner said. “It feels important to learn Ukrainian.”

“I think it’s important to make sure kids know where they come from,” Matwichyna said. She’s the only Ukrainian speaker in the household.

“Having a community makes language acquisition easier,” she said.

“(In) 2022, after the war started, it’s like we’re reliving what my mom had to do to keep her culture alive,” Matwichyna said.

While Thullner and Matwichyna were born in Canada, the program also helps to serve Ukrainians uprooted by the war.

“I feel grateful to teach in the program that once helped my own family feel welcomed, connected, and at home in Manitoba,” said Svitlana Bganka, a Grade 4 and 5 bilingual instructor MPUE director at Oak Bank Elementary.

Bganka, and her daughter Oryna, left Ukraine shortly after the war started. She said the bilingual program was a lifeline for their family.

Seeing generations of Ukrainian Canadians proudly preserving their heritage gave a sense of hope and belonging, Bganka explained.

“I feel truly blessed to teach my native language and share Ukrainian traditions, culture, and values with the next generation,” she said.

“Unless you’re entrenched in the Ukrainian community you might not know something like this exists,” said MPUE board director, Tanya Nawolski.

The bilingual language program has been around for close to 50 years and serves over 700 kids across six school divisions, according to Nawolski.

On June 19, MPUE celebrated its year-end graduation party for Grade 8s completing the program.