Slavic And East European Folkloristics at the Canadian Museum of Civilization:
An Overview

Robert B.Klymasz, Canadian Museum of Civilization

In keeping with the growing recognition of Canada's multicultural profile and its concomitant

discovery of terrae incognitae, the Canadian Museum of Civilization (nee National Museum of

Canada, and later National Museum of Man), Canada's national museum of anthropology, began the

earnest collection, documentation and study of Slavic and East European folklore materials in the

early I%O's thanks in most part to the pioneering work of Kenneth Peacock. (Earlier, incidental

Slavic and East European materials appear sporadically in the Museum's collections of such figures as

M. Barbeau and L. Boulton.) From the outset these efforts emphasized the new Canadian experience.

(In any case, conditions in Eastern Europe at that time discouraged the undertaking of credible

folklore research in the homelands.) This in turn prompted the accumulation of complementary

primary data that, from a global perspective, now serve to enhance our appreciation of Slavic and East

European folklore.

In the course of these early activities, the traditional canons - whether Slavic, Baltic, Yiddish

or Finno-Ugric -- usually served as launching pads as researchers and field workers (such as J.L.

Perkowski, V.R Tilney, L. Degh, M.T.lS.M.G. Salo, B. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, and others) struggled

either to salvage pearls from the past or to cross the gaps that divided classical Old Country lore from

North American realities. After all, what does one make of such seeming aberrations as Polish jokes

that are not even delivered in Polish, or Ukrainian village harvest songs performed on the cemented

balcony of a highrise condominium in·downtown Toronto? Among the "pearls" was the latter-day

discovery of an unpublished collection of Russian incantations recorded (on paper) among Canada's

newly arrived Doukhobor immigrants a century ago by one of V.I. Lenin's more illustrious cronies,

V.D. Bonch-Bruevich. (His original field notations, located in Russian archives, are currently being

prepared for publication.)

The inital focus on oral lore (folksongs dominated this phase) soon mushroomed to include

attendant phenomena. Ritual, belief: art and material culture emerged as areas that also warranted

attention if the Museum was to mount well-researched and comprehensive exhibitions on the nation's

East European legacies. This trend is reflected in the multi-disciplinary study of a Hungarian

settlement on the prairies ("the Bekevar project") in the 1970s, two exhibitions marking the

centenaries of particular Slavic communities in Canada ("Art and Ethnicity: the Ukrainian Tradition in

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Canada" [1991] and "Spirit Wrestlers: the Doukhobors" [1996]), and the development of a national

icon collection featuring works of East EuropeanlByzantine influence by most of the country's

iconographers.

The extensional directions outlined above continue today. Foremost in this regard is the

on-going "Gimli Community Research Project" that since the mid-l990s has approached the study of

a smaIl town on the prairies as a longtenn. open-ended investigation from a variety of perspectives.

Ukrainian folk traditions constitute an important compOnent of this particular multi- and

inter-disciplinmy investigation. Similarly, a compilation of reports on cantorial traditions in Canada,

scheduled for publication later this year, includes several pieces of direct interest to Slavic and East

European folklore studies on this continent.

Although the move in favor of multi-ethnic projects continues, occasions for in-depth

mono-ethnic research still surface. For example, to salute the 150th anniversary of one of Canada's

oldest Polish settlements (Wilno, Ontario) in 2007, the Museum's Canadian Centre for Folk Culture

Studies may fonnulate a suitable project to mm this milestone. However, to facilitate any future work

in the area of Slavic and East European folklore and cultural traditions, a critical guide to relevant

areas in the Museum's collections is currendy a priority that has yet to be addressed.

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SEEFA Journal 1999, Vol. IV No. 1