The Politics of Multiculturalism: A Ukrainian-Canadian Memoir (review)

• Published in: Canadian ethnic studies 2007, Vol.39 (1-2), p.225-227
• Main Author: Isajiw, Wsevolod W
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Attitudes; Autobiographical literature; Community Relations; Creativity; Cultural Pluralism; English language; Ethnic Groups; Ethnicity; Federal Government; Lupul, Manoly R; Minority & ethnic groups; Minority Groups; Multiculturalism & pluralism; Nonfiction; Policy implementation; Political parties; Politics; Self Actualization; Sociology; Ukrainian; Ukrainian language
• ISSN: 0008-3496; 1913-8253; 1913-8253
• DOI: 10.1353/ces.0.0013

[Manoly R. Lupul]'s book shows what many have known - that history would not exist if it were not written down, and also that the detail of history is often written in memoirs. Lupul's memoir tells us much about the policy of multiculturalism in Canada, particularly its early years, as Lupul was intimately connected with the policy's implementation through his work on the Canadian Consultative Council on Multiculturalism. He deals with the shifts in multicultural policy under the different political parties in power, with the efforts to entrench multiculturaUsm in the repatriated Canadian constitution in the early eighties, with multiculturalism, on the provincial and urban levels, with the political backlash against multiculturalism, and multiculturalism's decline, beginning in the late eighties and into the nineties. The discussion is, of course, in terms of Lupul's personal experience, but it contains much detail, the kind that one would not find anywhere else in the literature on the history of multiculturalism. As the village community was mainly Ukrainian-speaking but the school program was exclusively in English, Lupul describes how he grew up bicultural and developed an ambivalent attitude toward things Ukrainian that persisted throughout his life. In his youth, Ukrainian issues were far removed from his greatest concerns. For a long time, he tried to keep the university and the outside world separate from the Ukrainian world. Yet, the more he tried to keep these worlds apart, the more they converged on each other. As Lupul puts it, "I was often athwart two worlds, balancing their interests and needs as best I could, not always, I fear, too successfully." Reading his memoir, we can say that at the end Lupul successfully combined the two worlds in a creative way. He did so by budding Ukrainian interests into Canadian institutions, as represented by the establishment of the Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta and by his helping to forge the policy of multiculturaUsm that injected ethnic minority issues into national concerns.