The Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church in Canada

The first settlers of Ukrainian origin on the Canadian Prairies were Ivan Pylypiv and Wasyl Eleniak, arriving in the fall of 1891. They and the subsequent tens of thousands were, in the main, from the Western portion of contemporary Ukraine known as Halychyna (oftentimes termed Galicia). This territory, which until the end of World War II was dominated by Polish cultural and political influences, was overwhelmingly Ukrainian (Greek) Catholic. By 1911, of the approximately one hundred twenty thousand Ukrainians in Canada, only somewhere around twenty-five thousand were Orthodox, primarily Bukovinians and under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Metropolitan of North America. Although the immigration was predominantly Ukrainian Catholic, that very community in 1918 gave birth to a uniquely Canadian Prairie creation in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church of Canada.