Vegreville Pysanka Festival - “Trace Your Roots” display table & official launch of this blog!

I headed out to Vegreville on Wednesday, July 5th, 2023, to take in the orientation session at the Vegreville Pysanka Festival office. After this meeting, with Henriette Chomiak & Anthony Hrabok (Coordinators of the venue), we went to the Folk Arts venue to start unloading my boxes from the car. Was excited to get a closed glass display unit and a tall brochure stand which Anthony had cleaned up. Henriette and Jeannette who was helping at the table, added lots of materials to the display tables area. This reminded me of a perogy supper with different cooks adding “stuff” to the pot. It all came together, looked good and added more of a variety.

A real good idea was having two maps of Ukraine on the front table. One was in Ukrainian for recent newcomers to add a pin to where they came from. The second map was in English and was for Canadians to add a pin to where their ancestors came from in Ukraine or nearby there. Some of the Ukrainians looked at the map but could not place a pin on it because their villages/cities and homes are destroyed.

With the second map, most of the Canadians put pins in Western Ukraine and the other pins where for the families who came to Canada between the wars (WWI & WWII). This task started a lot of the conversations. One gentleman brought his ancestor’s passport, and we were able to get a PhD student from the next table, (Kule Folklore Centre, University of Alberta) to translate it.

A volunteer started using her cell phone to look up the locations of small villages on Google Maps which was very helpful. And I had Brian Lenius’ book, “Genealogical Gazetteer of Galicia” to refer to. A father was there with his two daughters and their family village is Kamenets-Podol’skiy. I have been to this place a few times and they enjoyed my stories about visiting the castle and nearby village. This father plans on taking his daughters there one day. And he was looking it up on his phone as I was talking!

One surprise was how many people came to the festival from other provinces and were inquiring about Saskatchewan and Manitoba, or via the USA, migration. Even recent newcomers were inquiring about distant relatives who came to Canada. And people arrived who knew some of my family members.

We had a good selection of the main Ukrainian genealogy books, family history books, how to get start and gaining research skills, reference books, surveyor field maps, tourist materials from Ukraine, community history books, examples of research reports from Ukraine, brochures from related organizations, handouts on getting started and upcoming events and courses (e.g., AGS annual conference), etc.

With the people coming to this table, most inquiries were from people planning on starting their family research or from seasoned researchers looking for tips and advice with researching in Ukraine and Europe. A lot of people took our business cards. My business card listed this blog on the back. During the 3 days of the festival, over 260 new visitors came to this blog.

Lessons learned:

• This table was intended to provide a service, so stay focused.
• You don’t have to put out everything that you brought.
• Listen to the people arriving at your table, on what they are asking for.
• Make sure you have enough volunteers to assist.
• Take more pictures of the exciting exchanges involving family history and stories.
• Bring more snacks and bottled water, especially with the 10-hour Saturday shift!

Vegreville Pysanka Festival
https://www.pysankafestival.com/
https://www.facebook.com/PysankaFestival/

The next “Trace Your Roots – Ukrainian Canadian Genealogy” display table will be at the “Ukrainian Day” on Sunday, August 20, 2023, at the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village near Edmonton, Alberta.

https://ukrainianvillage.ca/
https://ukrainianvillage.ca/ukrainian-day

And a vendor table at the Alberta Genealogical Society (AGS) 50th Anniversary - Annual Conference in Edmonton, on September 23, 2023.

https://www.abgenealogy.ca/
https://www.abgenealogy.ca/ags-celebrates-it-s-50th-anniversary