Archiving Diasporic Lives: Fieldwork on Memory, Recordkeeping, and Justice
What stories become preserved in archives, and whose voices remain absent? How do community archives shape collective memory? In what ways can art and everyday records serve as testimonies of displacement, resilience, and cultural continuity?
In February, CEES and Munk students enrolled in the course Violence, Justice, and Social Change in Ukraine and Beyond, taught by Petro Jacyk Post-Doctoral Fellow Dr. Karolina Koziura, explored these questions through a series of field visits to archives documenting the everyday lives of Central and Eastern European diasporic communities in Canada. Through site-specific visits to the Archives of Ontario, the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, the VEMU Estonian Museum of Canada, and St. Volodymyr Institute, students engaged directly with archival materials that illuminate the histories of refugees, migrants, and community organizations in Toronto.
These visits offered more than the opportunity to encounter rare materials. Students met archivists, scholars, and community leaders who actively preserve diasporic heritage, gaining insight into how Central and Eastern European communities have shaped Toronto’s cultural, intellectual, and urban landscape. The fieldwork highlighted the dynamic role of archives not only as repositories of the past but also as living spaces where community memory, identity, and historical justice are continuously negotiated.
The fieldwork began at the Archives of Ontario, where Ashton Osmak (CEES alumnus) curated a selection of materials from the Multicultural History Society of Ontario fonds related to the Ukrainian Canadian community. Students encountered only a small snapshot of these vast and still largely underexplored collections: photographs documenting community events, materials from the Kuryliw family fonds capturing everyday life in Sudbury’s Ukrainian community, PLAST records, and other visual traces of the vibrant cultural life of Ukrainian diasporic institutions in Canada.
The next stage of the fieldwork brought students to two prominent community archives, VEMU, the Estonian Museum of Canada, and the St Volodymyr Institute (SVI), a cornerstone of Ukrainian cultural life in Toronto. Both organizations play a vital role in preserving diasporic heritage through volunteer-driven archival work, libraries, cultural programming, and public events. At VEMU, students were welcomed by chief archivist Piret Noorhani, who introduced the extensive collections reflecting different waves of Estonian migration to Canada. Students explored materials documenting Estonian artists in exile, photographs from music festivals, and architectural heritage connected to the community’s presence in Toronto.
The following week, students visited the St. Volodymyr Institute, where executive director Daria Kowalyk introduced them to the history of the organization and its role as a cultural hub for Toronto’s Ukrainian community. The visit, curated by Oksana Hawrylak, provided a deep dive into a rich and evolving history of Ukrainian institutions in downtown. Students learned about newspapers, music ensembles, theatre groups, the SVI library, and various educational initiatives that have sustained community life for generations.
Students also explored the history of the Ukrainian Museum of Canada with Tamara Ivanochko. Founded in 1944 by a small group of Ukrainian-Canadian women, the museum was created to collect, preserve, and exhibit objects that reflect Ukrainian heritage in Canada. During the visit, students toured the exhibition Kosiv Bazaar. A Living Archive of the Carpathians from the Leonard Krawchuk Collection (on display until March 2026), which highlighted how exhibitions themselves can function as living archives, spaces where objects, memory, and storytelling intersect.
The visit concluded with presentations about two important research institutions housed at SVI. Roman Waschuk and Bozhena Gembatiuk introduced students to the work of the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre (UCRDC), founded in the 1980s in connection with research materials gathered for the documentary Harvest of Despair. Today, the Centre remains one of the primary institutions dedicated to documenting the history and memory of Ukrainian Canadians. Marta Baziuk, executive director of the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium (HREC), presented the consortium’s archival and digital resources related to the Holodomor, including the Photo Directory and the Maniak Collection. She also introduced a new free online course launching in March that invites participants to explore the history and memory of the Holodomor (more information on holodomor.ca).
The fieldwork concluded at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto, where Natalia Barykina introduced students to the university’s extensive collections relating to Central and Eastern European communities. Among the materials curated by Ksenya Kiebuzinski, Head of the Petro Jacyk Central and East European Resource Centre, were records of the Ukrainian People’s (National) Home, a vibrant cultural hub that hosted concerts, performances, and community events. Although the institution closed in the late 1980s, its archives were rescued by Toronto-based artist Natalka Husar, who later donated them to the Fisher Library. Students also explored documents from the dissident Czechoslovak publishing house 68 Publishers, founded in exile by Zdenka and Josef Skvorecky, which published almost two hundred books by Czech writes living abroad. Additional materials included leaflets and posters documenting Canadian responses to the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s; original illustrations by Leonid Denysenko depicting life in displaced persons camps; ink portraits of Ukrainian refugees from the Mannheim DP camp, and materials from the Pashkievich collection related to Belarusian history.
Drawing on the fieldwork, students are now curating their midterm assignments, stories from the archives that highlight the complex role of recordkeeping in shaping historical knowledge and public memory. Their projects reflect on how both institutional and community-based archives preserve the experiences of refugees, migrants, and diasporic communities, while also opening new possibilities for transnational research and storytelling.
