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Location | East Central Alberta, Canada (Sturgeon County, Thorhild County, Smoky Lake County, County of St. Paul No. 19, County of Vermilion River, County of Two Hills No. 21, County of Minburn No. 27, Beaver County, Lamont County, and Strathcona County) |
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Type | ecomuseum |
Website | www |
The Kalyna Country ecomuseum is a heritage and eco-tourism district in East Central Alberta, Canada, named after the highbush cranberry plant, pronounced (Ka-lyn-na) in the Ukrainian language. The Ukrainian folklore states: "Without Kalyna, there is no Ukraina". [1]
An ecomuseum is a museum focused on the identity of a place, largely based on local participation and aiming to enhance the welfare and development of local communities. Ecomuseums originated in France, the concept being developed by Georges Henri Rivière and Hugues de Varine, who coined the term ‘ecomusée’ in 1971. The term "éco" is a shortened form for "écologie", but it refers especially to a new idea of holistic interpretation of cultural heritage, in opposition to the focus on specific items and objects, performed by traditional museums.
Central Alberta is a region located in the Canadian province of Alberta.
Viburnum trilobum is a species of Viburnum native to northern North America, from Newfoundland west to British Columbia, south to Washington state and east to northern Virginia. It is very closely related to the European and Asian Viburnum opulus, and is often treated as a variety of it, as Viburnum opulus L. var. americanum Ait., or as a subspecies, Viburnum opulus subsp. trilobum (Marshall) Clausen.
Kalyna Country bills itself as the "World's Largest Ecomuseum" at 20,000 square kilometers, or more than three times the size of Prince Edward Island. Its boundaries stretch across a broad area of Alberta east and north of Edmonton, including nearly all the areas traditionally considered part of Canada's first Ukrainian Block Settlement, the Edna-Star colony. The area has been described as being to Ukrainian Canadians what Cajun Country is to Cajun culture. At its peak, the area was the largest settlement of Ukrainians in the world outside of Eastern Europe.
Prince Edward Island is a province of Canada consisting of the Atlantic island of the same name along with several much smaller islands nearby. PEI is one of the three Maritime Provinces. It is the smallest province of Canada in both land area and population, but it is the most densely populated. Part of the traditional lands of the Mi'kmaq, it became a British colony in the 1700s and was federated into Canada as a province in 1873. Its capital is Charlottetown. According to the 2016 census, the province of PEI has 142,907 residents.
Edmonton is the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta. Edmonton is on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Alberta's central region. The city anchors the north end of what Statistics Canada defines as the "Calgary–Edmonton Corridor".
Ukrainian Canadians are Canadian citizens of Ukrainian descent or Ukrainian-born people who immigrated to Canada. In 2016, there were an estimated 1,359,655 persons of full or partial Ukrainian origin residing in Canada, making them Canada's eleventh largest ethnic group and giving Canada the world's third-largest Ukrainian population behind Ukraine itself and Russia. Self-identified Ukrainians are the plurality in several rural areas of Western Canada. According to the 2011 census, of the 1,251,170 who identified as Ukrainian, only 144,260 could actually speak either the modern Ukrainian language or the historic Canadian Ukrainian dialect.
Officially, Kalyna Country comprises Sturgeon County, Thorhild County, Smoky Lake County, the County of St. Paul No. 19, the County of Vermilion River, the County of Two Hills No. 21, the County of Minburn No. 27, Beaver County, Lamont County, and Strathcona County and many of the neighbouring urban municipalities, Indian reserves and Metis settlements.
Sturgeon County is a municipal district in Alberta's Edmonton Metropolitan Region, Canada.
Thorhild County is a municipal district located in the central part of northern Alberta, Canada in Census Division 13. It was incorporated in 1955. It changed its name from the County of Thorhild No. 7 to Thorhild County on March 20, 2013.
Smoky Lake County is a municipal district in north-eastern Alberta, Canada. Located in Census Division No. 12, its municipal office is located in the Town of Smoky Lake.
Kalyna berries were a popular source of food amongst the early pioneers, fur traders and natives. Kalyna Country is a year-round playground with culture as diverse as the landscape that offers it. Here the Aspen Parkland and the Boreal Forest converge, split by the scenic North Saskatchewan River Valley, all amidst thousands of hectares of prime agricultural land.
Aspen parkland refers to a very large area of transitional biome between prairie and boreal forest in two sections, namely the Peace River Country of northwestern Alberta crossing the border into British Columbia, and a much larger area stretching from central Alberta, all across central Saskatchewan to south central Manitoba and continuing into small parts of the US states of Minnesota and North Dakota. Aspen parkland consists of groves of aspen poplars and spruce interspersed with areas of prairie grasslands, also intersected by large stream and river valleys lined with aspen-spruce forests and dense shrubbery. This is the largest boreal-grassland transition zone in the world and is a zone of constant competition and tension as prairie and woodlands struggle to overtake each other within the parkland.
The North Saskatchewan River is a glacier-fed river that flows from the Canadian Rockies continental divide east to central Saskatchewan, where it joins with another major river to make up the Saskatchewan River. Its water flows eventually into the Hudson Bay.
The main attractions include:
Elk Island National Park is a national park in Canada that played an important part in the conservation of the American bison. The park is administered by the Parks Canada Agency. This "island of conservation" is located 35 km east of Edmonton, Alberta along the Yellowhead Highway, which goes through the park. It is Canada's 8th smallest in area but largest fully enclosed national park, with an area of 194 square kilometres (75 sq mi).
Bison are large, even-toed ungulates in the genus Bison within the subfamily Bovinae.
The Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village is an open-air museum that uses costumed historical interpreters to recreate pioneer settlements in east central Alberta, Canada, northeast and east of Edmonton. In particular it shows the lives of Ukrainian Canadian settlers from the years 1899 to 1930. Buildings from surrounding communities have been moved to the historic site and restored to various years within the first part of the twentieth century.
The area is also famous for the Giants of the Prairies , a series of roadside attractions (usually Ukrainian-themed).
"Giants of the Prairies" is a song by the Canadian polka band the Kubasonics.
A roadside attraction is a feature along the side of a road meant to attract tourists. In general, these are places one might stop on the way to somewhere, rather than actually being a destination. They are frequently advertised with billboards. The modern tourist-oriented highway attraction originated as a U.S. and Western Canadian phenomenon in the 1940s to 1960s, and subsequently caught on in Australia.
The museum is affiliated with: CMA, CHIN, and Virtual Museum of Canada.
Vegreville is a town in central Alberta, Canada located on Highway 16A approximately 103 km (64 mi) east of Edmonton, Alberta's capital city. It was incorporated as a town in 1906, and that year also saw the founding of the Vegreville Observer, a weekly newspaper for the region.
Fort Victoria, near present-day Smoky Lake, Alberta, was established by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1864 on the North Saskatchewan River as a trading post with the local Cree First Nations. Today, it is a historical museum known as Victoria Settlement.
The Métis Nation of Alberta (MNA) was formed in 1932 as the Métis Association of Alberta. Its primary goal was to be a political body to lobby the government on behalf of the Métis people. Its primary founding members were Felice Callihoo, Joseph Dion, James P. Brady, Malcolm Norris, Peter Tompkins. Currently the MNA has 6 regional boards. They have branches that deal with unemployment, children services, land agreements and the rights of Métis people as Aboriginal peoples in Canada.
Métis in Alberta are Métis people, descendants of mixed First Nations/native Indian and white/European families, who live in the Canadian province of Alberta. The Métis are considered an aboriginal group under Canada's Constitution Act 1982 and make up a separate and distinct from the First Nations, and have different legal rights. In Alberta, unlike in the rest of Canada, Métis people have negotiated certain lands to be reserved for them, known today as the Eight Metis Settlements. These Metis Settlements Federated in 1975 to protect existing Metis Settlement lands following the Alberta Governments dissolution, by Order-In-Council of four Metis Settlements from 1950-1960. Following legal challenges by the Federation of Metis Settlements in 1975 for the lose of natural resource against Alberta, the Crown in Right of Alberta settled out of court for a suite of legislation that would see self-government, land, and money transferred to the newly formed government of the Metis Settlements General Council (MSGC), Canada’s only Metis self-govenernment. The Metis Settlements General Council is the legislator of the Federation of Metis Settlements. MSGC is the second largest land owner in the Province of Alberta.
A block settlement is a particular type of land distribution which allows settlers with the same ethnicity to form small colonies.
Vilna is a historic village in central Alberta, Canada.
The Edna-Star colony, also called the Nebyliv colony, or the Ukrainian block settlement is the largest and oldest of the Ukrainian Canadian block settlements. Located east of Edmonton, in east-central Alberta, the boundaries of the block settlement include all or part of multiple municipal districts, within census divisions numbers 12 and 10.
Alberta has been a tourist destination since the early days of the 20th Century, with attractions including national parks, National Historic Sites of Canada, urban arts and cultural facilities, outdoor locales for skiing, hiking and camping, shopping locales such as West Edmonton Mall, outdoor festivals, professional athletic events, international sporting competitions such as the Commonwealth Games and Olympic Winter Games, as well as more eclectic attractions.
Lamont County is a municipal district in central Alberta, Canada, located in Census Division Number 10, northeast of Edmonton. The county contains 27 Townships. Its municipal office is located in the Town of Lamont.
Bellis is a hamlet in central Alberta, Canada within Smoky Lake County. Previously an incorporated municipality, Bellis dissolved from village status on January 1, 1946 to become part of the Municipal District of Vilna No. 575.
Hairy Hill is a hamlet in Alberta, Canada within the County of Two Hills No. 21. It is located on Highway 45, approximately 102 kilometres (63 mi) east of Edmonton.
Cheremosh Ukrainian Dance Company is a Ukrainian dance company based in Edmonton, Alberta and a leader of Ukrainian dance in Canada. It was founded in 1969 by Chester and Luba Kuc and named after the Cheremosh River that separates the historic regions of Bukovyna and Galicia in Ukraine. Since 1991 Cheremosh has been under the direction of Artistic Director and Ballet Master Mykola Kanevets. Cheremosh has toured throughout Canada, the United States, Scotland, and most recently a 10-show, 20-day tour of China in 2007.
The Vegreville egg is a giant sculpture of a pysanka, a Ukrainian-style Easter egg. The work by Paul Maxum Sembaliuk is built of an intricate set of two-dimensional anodized aluminum tiles in the shape of congruent equilateral triangles and star-shaped hexagons, fashioned over an aluminum framework. The egg is 31 ft (9 m) long and three and a half stories high, weighing in at 2.5 t (5,512 lb). It is the second largest pysanka in the world. The biggest one was built in Kolomyia, Ukraine in 2000.
Métis fiddle is the style which the Métis of Canada and Métis in the northern United States have developed to play the violin, solo and in folk ensembles. It is marked by the percussive use of the bow and percussive accompaniment. The Meti people blend First Nations, French, English, Celtic and other ancestry. Fiddles were "introduced in this area by Scottish and French-Canadian fur traders in the early 1800s".
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