Heart of the community

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/05/2018 (2993 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One hundred years have come and gone, but the Holy Eucharist Ukrainian Catholic Church is still going strong in the heart of northeast Winnipeg.

Founded in 1918 by a congregation of Ukrainian immigrants, the Holy Eucharist Parish has been central to the community ever since.

“This church has been a part of the community for a long time, and we want the community to share in our celebrations,” said Rev. Michael Kwiatkowski, who has been the priest at Holy Eucharist Ukrainian Church for the past decade. “We want to let the people around the parish know they are welcome.”

Early days on Watt and Montrose

In August 1918, Fathers Peter Oleksiw and Nicholas Shumsky called a meeting of local Ukrainians at St. Alphonsus Church on Munroe Avenue. With so many Ukrainian immigrants settling in and around East Kildonan, they figured they needed their own place of worship. By the end of the meeting, the Holy Eucharist Catholic Church was founded.

The congregation quickly set to finding a location for the church, purchasing the property on the corner of Watt Street and Montrose (now Larsen) Avenue for $1,200. The 100×25-foot church was completed in July 1919, and blessed by Bishop Nykyta Budka on Oct. 29 of that year.

At the time, it was the third Ukrainian Catholic Church in Winnipeg. Rev. Michael Pelech was the parish’s first priest.

Over the next 20 years, 12 priests would serve the parish before Rev. Ihor Shpytkovsky took over in 1940. He would serve the parish until 1966.

It would be under Shpytkovsky’s watch that the parish moved the church to its current location at 505 Watt St.

This church has been a part of the community for a long time.

A new home for Holy Eucharist

Following the end of the Second World War, northeast Winnipeg welcomed another wave of Ukrainian immigrants.

“The congregation grew and grew until there was no room at church anymore,” recalled Elaine Bowman, whose family have been parishioners since the church was founded.

In 1953, the church bought the land on the corner of Watt and Munroe, six blocks to the north of the former location, from the City of East Kildonan for $3,500.

“It was only a few blocks away, but I remember people at the time wondering how they would get so far away, because they didn’t have any transportation,” Bowman said. “Mostly everybody walked.”

The church, with its iconic onion-shaped domes, was designed by Very Canon Philip Ruh, a missionary priest who designed a number of Ukrainian Catholic churches across Canada. Construction began in June 1953, and was completed in 1954.

“The contractor was Steve Zulak, one of our elders in the church,” Kwiatkowski said. “A lot of parishioners used to come and volunteer. They’d come together, mix cement and lay bricks or whatever. There weren’t as many regulations at that time, you know?”

In 1966, the first of a series of frescoes were painted inside the church.

“I was getting married that year and they had the scaffolding up the week before the wedding,” Bowman recalled with a laugh. “I was so worried they weren’t going to be done in time, but they were.”

A series of beautiful stained glass windows, including eight by Leo Mol and one by Roman Kowal and 13 by Lucinda Doran of Prairie Stained Glass, have slowly replaced the existing windows in the church over the years.

In 1972, Rev. Vladimir Bozyk began his 22 years of service in the parish.

You ask anyone around here, everyone knows the church on the corner of Watt and Munroe.

“They (Shpytkovsky and Bozyk) are well known, fondly remembered,” said Kwiatkowski, who is the church’s 20th priest. “They performed the marriages, baptized their children, then married their children, you know? That’s something of a legacy.”

Room to grow and give back

Looking to the future, the church bought the land on the north corner of Watt and Munroe in 1962 and built a parish residence and an ice rink for neighbourhood kids to skate on.

“Most of our activities revolved around church,” Bowman said. “Your life really revolved around the parish. Now, it’s different.”

When a new parish residence and office was built at the corner of Watt and Winterton Avenue in the late 1970s, Holy Eucharist decided to use the old space to build a complex for seniors.

The Kildonan Horizons apartments were completed in 1977. At first, the parish ran the building, which was later taken over by the Knights of Columbus. Recently, Holy Eucharist has again taken over administration of the building in conjunction with Manitoba Housing.

“We want to continue the legacy where the seniors there have a quality building where they can live for low cost,” Kwiatkowski said.

In 1983, Holy Eucharist opened its current Parish Centre at 460 Munroe Ave.

“We host a lot of things here,” said Carlene Deptuch, office manager for the parish centre and lifelong parishioner. “We have community bingo here. Bingo’s not as big as it used to be, but the community comes here every Tuesday to play.”

“It’s like that old Cheers, thing, everybody knows everybody,” Kwiatkowski added.

“We are busy,” Bowman said. “I think maybe we do more now than before, because there’s more need.”

Along with the weekly bingo, church also hosts flu clinics, income tax workshops for seniors, and helps with neighbouring Polson School’s breakfast program.

“We run a literacy program in the summer time, for underprivileged children in the neighbourhood,” Deptuch added. “We have a knitting group, they sit there and knit hundreds and hundreds of toques and mitts and scarves for different community groups.”

Holy Eucharist has also run a successful weekly perogy program since 1967. Every Wednesday and Thursday, a group of dedicated volunteers cook and prepare thousands of perogies in the church basement. Proceeds from sales go towards church initiatives, and the weekly work bees provide an opportunity to socialize.

“You ask anybody around here, everyone knows the church on the corner of Watt and Munroe,” Deptuch said. “They might not know our name, but they know we’re here. People know who we are, whether from buying the perogies, hearing the bells, reading the catchy phrases Father likes to put on the sign. They know who we are, and that’s from being here forever.”

As the parish enters its second century, Holy Eucharist is looking to the future.

“We’d like to have a daycare, for example. There is a need for that,” Kwiatkowski said. “We’d like to grow the parish, too.”