CANADIAN COSSACKS: FINDING UKRAINE in FIFTY YEARS of UKRAINIAN-CANADIAN LITERATURE in ENGLISH by Lindy Anne Ledohowski a Thesis
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CANADIAN COSSACKS: FINDING UKRAINE IN FIFTY YEARS OF UKRAINIAN-CANADIAN LITERATURE IN ENGLISH by Lindy Anne Ledohowski A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Ph.D. Graduate Department of English © Copyright by Lindy Anne Ledohowski 2008 Abstract Canadian Cossacks: Finding Ukraine in Fifty Years of Ukrainian-Canadian Literature in English Lindy A. Ledohowski Ph.D., Department of English, University of Toronto 2008 Discourses of diaspora and transnationalism have begun to question previous traditional assumptions about the inevitability of ethnic assimilation by drawing attention to various kinds of hybrid identities, but I contend that, in contemporary Canadian literature, we cannot replace an outmoded model of eventual integration with an uncritical vision of ethnic persistence and hybridity. Much thinking about diasporic and ethnic identities suggests that, on the one hand, there are genuine marginalized identities worthy of inquiry and, on the other, there are symbolic ones undeserving of serious study. This dissertation focuses on the supposedly disingenuous or symbolic kinds of ethnic and diasporic identities, providing an analysis of Ukrainian-Canadian ethnic identity retention in a case study of second-, third-, and fourth-generation Canadians of Ukrainian descent who both read and write in English (not Ukrainian). Looking at Ukrainian-Canadian literature from 1954 to 2003, this dissertation argues: (1) ethnic identity affiliation does not necessarily dissipate with time; (2) ethnic identity in a hostland manifests itself as imagined ties to a homeland; and (3) lacking meaningful public and private recognition of ethnic group membership yields anxiety about subjectivity. I first argue that as multicultural policies drew attention to racial marginalization, Ukrainian-Canadian ethnic identity shifted from being an aspect of ii socio-economic disenfranchisement to becoming a hyphenated identity with links to Ukraine. I then suggest that in order to make that connection to Ukraine viable, writers attempt to locate Ukraine on the Canadian prairie as a substitute home-country. Such attempts give rise to various images Ukrainian-Canadian uneasiness and discomfort, primarily as authors struggle to account for First Nations’ prior presences on the landscape that they want to write as their own. Further, I analyze attempts to locate ethnic authenticity in post-independence Ukraine that also prove unsatisfactory for Ukrainian-Canadian subject formation. The many failed attempts to affix Ukrainian- Canadianness as a meaningful public and private identity give rise to unsettled and ghostly images that signal significant ethnic unease not to be overlooked in analyses of ethnic and diasporic identities. In these ways, this dissertation contributes to ongoing debates and discussions about the place of contemporary literary ethnicity in Canada. iii Acknowledgements Funding for this dissertation was provided by the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program, the Social Sciences Research Council of Canada, the Department of English, and the Ukrainian Studies Foundation. A debt of gratitude is owed my committee. Professors Russell Brown, Marlene Goldman, Linda Hutcheon, and Maxim Tarnawsky have offered me patience and encouragement in measure far beyond what I felt I rightly deserved. Without their guidance, I do not think I could have learned the lessons that this dissertation had to teach me. I have been very lucky in my supervisor and committee, and I feel thankful to have had the chance to work with these scholars. I am indebted to the University of Toronto’s Department of English; professors and graduate students alike have been personally supportive and intellectually challenging in equal measure. In addition to my committee, thank-you to Donna Bennett, Elizabeth Harvey, Neil ten Kortenaar, Andrew Lesk, Nick Mount, Heather Murray, Maggie Redekop, Will Robins, and Paul Stevens for their help, support, and guidance over the past few years. I must also thank fellow graduate students Sarah Copland, Kit Dobson, Darryl Domingo, Igor Djordjevic, Katie Larson, Agnieszka Polakowska, Vivian Ralickas, and Rebecca Tierney-Hynes, who joined with me in countless important personal and professional conversations. I would also like to express gratitude to scholars at other institutions; in particular, Dennis Cooley at the University of Manitoba for introducing me to the poetry of Andrew Suknaski in the first place. I thank the Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies, specifically Jars Balan and Andrij Makuch, for making resources available to me iv and for being endlessly generous with their time and knowledge. Janice Kulyk Keefer at Guelph University has provided me with critical and creative insights along with support and encouragement throughout this process. Christl Verduyn from Mount Allison University was a thorough, generous, and insightful reader of this dissertation as its external examiner. I am grateful to the editors of Canadian Ethnic Studies , particularly editor Natalia Aponiuk, for accepting for publication an earlier version of my argument from Chapter Two. I also wish to thank Rhonda Hinther and Jim Mochoruk, the editors of New Perspectives in Ukrainian-Canadian History: Essays in Honour of Myron Momryk , and Nancy Van Styvendale, Aloys Fleischmann, and Cody McCarroll , the editors of Delimiting Citizenship: Aboriginal and Diasporic Perspectives , for including portions of my work on Andrew Suknaski, Lisa Grekul, and Myrna Kostash in books currently under peer review with the University of Toronto Press and the University of Alberta Press. Thank-you to Deborah Saidero for including an early version of my insights on Janice Kulyk Keefer’s The Green Library in a Guernica Editions volume dedicated to Kulyk Keefer’s work that is forthcoming. On a personal note, I also owe a special thank-you to Kenneth and Gillian Bartlett for too many things to count. And I have appreciated the support of my family, especially my sister Lea, who, as always, has been a pillar for me to lean on. My father, as well, has provided me with important intellectual and financial aid throughout my academic career. A final thank you is owed to Rueban, quite simply for everything. This dissertation is dedicated to my grandmother, Marjorie Dengis. v A Note on the Title The title of my dissertation, “Canadian Cossacks: Finding Ukraine in Fifty Years of Ukrainian-Canadian Literature in English,” alludes to the first collection of essays on Ukrainian-Canadians written in English by a Canadian of Ukrainian descent, William Paluk’s Canadian Cossacks: Essays, Articles, and Stories on Ukrainian-Canadian Life . Now long out of print and hard to find, it nonetheless provides an interesting starting- point for my own study. After initial immigration to Canada from Ukraine, Paluk writes, “the Canadian Cossack found that it wasn’t enough to just eat, work, and make money, though that was the reason primarily for his coming. Like a shadow, each newcomer brought with him his racial experiences, his language. And he found that he couldn’t deny this shadow, that it had followed him across the ocean, that it was part of him” (11). While the language and ideas are somewhat dated, the idea of a Ukrainian or ethnic shadow is, in part, what this dissertation seeks to explicate. vi Contents Preface – Why Ukrainian-Canadian Literature in English?................................................1 Chapter 1 – Introduction: “I’m wondering what it feels like to be Ukrainian” .................4 Chapter 2 – 1980: The Rise of a Ukrainian-Canadian Identity........................................38 Chapter 3 – Ukrainian-Canadian Pioneers: Little “Home” on the Prairie .......................94 Chapter 4 – Ukrainian-Canadian Postcolonial Guilt and Loss .......................................144 Chapter 5 – Sexy Ukrainians: Ethnicity as Romantic Desire ........................................176 Conclusion – “Not belonging, but longing” ...................................................................212 Works Cited and Consulted ............................................................................................223 vii Preface – Why Ukrainian-Canadian Literature in English? I was raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, thinking of myself (rather unself- consciously) as Ukrainian-Canadian. Growing up, I made Ukrainian Easter eggs (pysanky), ate Ukrainian foods (perogies, cabbage rolls, borsch) on every holiday, heard Ukrainian spoken in the home by the older members of my extended family, and sometimes participated in orthodox church services for Ukrainian weddings and christenings. As a Ukrainian-Canadian, I began to wonder why as an English student I had never read anything that acknowledged a strong Ukrainian presence in Canadian literature. My life outside of university was infused with a sense of Ukrainian- Canadianness in both subtle and overpowering ways, but my literary studies seemed silent on the subject of this lived reality. There were many Canadians of Ukrainian descent in Winnipeg, and many things Ukrainian have been connected to a sense of Winnipeg’s culture, even for non-Ukrainians. Tanis MacDonald’s short story “Social Studies” makes this point as her protagonist grapples with a sense of displacement after leaving Winnipeg for Toronto. She laments: I can’t begin to tell [Toronto friends] that when I was six, those whirling girls with the hair ribbons in Dauphin were princesses to me. I can’t fill their tongues with the tart sensation of borshsh