For over 40 years, Bohdan Medwidsky was honoured as an academic, builder of the Ukrainian Folklore program, community activist, fundraiser and philanthropist. The Friends of the Ukrainian Folklore Centre honoured him with a celebration aptly named “An Evening with Bohdan Medwidsky,” attended by nearly 200 people. Dr. Medwidsky was born in Ukraine, spent his adolescence in Toronto, and was a professor at the University of Alberta for thirty years.
The evening program included a book launch of Proverbs in Motion, containing essays, academic articles, memoirs and greetings about Dr. Medwidsky, by him, and dedicated to him (edited by Andriy Nahachewsky and Maryna Chernyavska, CIUSPress, 2014, 348 pp.). The program also marked the 35th Anniversary of the Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives (BMUFA). A special new exhibit was unveiled at the event. The BMUFA is the largest North American repository of Ukrainian and Ukrainian-Canadian folklore materials. It houses unique collections of fieldwork materials that document traditional cultural expressions and knowledge. These ethnographic documents and artifacts, plus extensive library holdings, are valuable resources for students, researchers, teachers, and community members.
The third focus of the event was announcement of a fundraising drive for the “Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Fund,” with a goal of raising a million dollars to support graduate students studying Ukrainian Folklore. The existing scholarship endowments at the Kule Folklore Centre, including the Kuryliw Family Endowment, the Peter and Doris Kule Fellowship Fund, and the Kawulych Family Endowment, will be supplemented by this new endowment to raise capacity to new requirements: six new graduate students in Ukrainian folklore each 24 month cycle. Over $48,000 was raised for the fund that evening, with cheques written to the “Friends of the Ukrainian Folklore Centre.”
Dean Lesley Cormack remarked that “Ukrainian endowments constitute some 45% of all endowments in the Faculty of Arts. We will continue to use these endowment monies for exactly what you have donated them for. The University of Alberta will continue to be the place for Ukrainian studies, past, present and future.”
Special videos were presented with greetings from colleagues, friends and former students in Kyiv, L’viv, Toronto, Newfoundland, Slovakia, Korea and Brazil. Special thanks were expressed to MC Daria Luciw and event organizers Jason Golinowski, Larisa Cheladyn, Maryna Chernyavska, Michael Kornylo, Andriy Nahachewsky, Lynnien Pawluk, Vincent Rees, Tiffany Teslyk, and Natalia Toroshenko. Mnohaia Lita Dr. Medwidsky!
