Mr. Speaker, they did not treat being Ukrainian and being Canadian as separate identities. They recognize that being one deepened what it meant to be the other. They held on to their language, their faith and their traditions, while also becoming some of the most committed Canadians this country has ever seen. They knew that they could love where they came from and love where they were. Canadians recognize this truth instinctively because it mirrors the story of so many families who have made this country home.
By 1914, approximately 170,000 Ukrainians had made Canada their home. They established newspapers to preserve their language while learning English. They sent their children to Canadian schools while teaching them Ukrainian songs. They carried something heavier too: the memory of the Holodomor, the Soviet-engineered famine, of 1932 and 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The grief of this travesty was carried across an ocean where it was held quietly for generations and where it still lingers in the hearts of their descendants.
The fact that a community carrying that kind of loss still chose to build here, still chose to invest everything in this country, says something profound both about their resilience and about what Canada offered them. Continuing waves arrived after the Second World War, carrying the weight of further displacement and loss, but no less determined to build something beautiful. Another wave came after 1991, when independence opened a door that had been closed for generations. Most recently, since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Canadians from coast to coast have opened their communities to families arriving under circumstances no one should ever face.
Each wave made the same essential decision to start over, to rebuild, and to give their children and grandchildren something reliable when everything solid had been taken from them. That decision, made when nothing was certain and everything mattered, demands a kind of resolve that deserves more than brief recognition. Ontario and Manitoba have already designated September as Ukrainian Heritage Month. Alberta and Saskatchewan have followed suit.
Parliament is, in a real sense, catching up to what those provinces recognized some time ago. Federal recognition carries a unique weight, and it matters that this House adds its voice to what the provinces have already affirmed. When we designate Ukrainian heritage month federally, we are not just recognizing a community. We are inviting the entire country to see their story reflected in our shared Canadian story.
Every May, communities across Canada mark Vyshyvanka Day, a celebration of Ukrainian culture and identity expressed through the embroidered shirts that have become a symbol of heritage and resilience. In Toronto, thousands gather at Nathan Phillips Square. In Edmonton, families fill Churchill Square. In Winnipeg, the celebration has grown into one of the city's largest cultural events. That is the spirit September heritage month should aspire to match.
Someone can walk through Cambridge on any weekend and they will see that same spirit. They will see people who have been here for generations standing beside people who arrived recently, working on the same fundraiser or coaching the same team. There are firefighters, police officers, teachers, innovators, builders and workers. People do not focus on their differences. They focus on building the community together.
That is what Cambridge does, and from what I see, it is what most Canadian communities do when given half a chance. The spirit of showing up, pitching in and not making a production of it is one of the most genuinely Canadian things I know. It exists because generations of people from different places brought their best and added it to something larger than themselves. That is the community I am proud to represent. That is the foundation that Bill S-210 is, in its own way, asking us to honour.
I have met with farming families in North Dumfries who have worked the same land for four generations, watching the world change around them while holding on to a deep connection to this country and their community. They still gather for Easter dinner, whipped up from their family recipes handed down through generations. They still know the songs their great-grandmother sang, but they are also innovating with precision the sustainable farming practices their great-grandmother could not have imagined.
Being that deeply rooted, combined with forward momentum, deserves recognition alongside the stories of those who crossed an ocean to build life here. These stories do not all follow the same path, but they share something: a decision made at some point to commit, to stay, to build and to trust that the place they chose would be worth it.
This is how heritage months can carry real potential and how they can also carry a real risk. The potential is that they give communities a legitimate occasion to bring forward stories that might otherwise find no voice, stories that, once told, have a way of changing how people see each other and how they understand the country they share. The risk is that we stop at the declaration, that we mark it on the calendar and move on, having made a gesture without doing the harder work of actually listening.
Canadians notice the difference between genuine respect and political convenience. What I hope Bill S-210 produces is something genuine: community gatherings and conversations in community centres, in church halls and around kitchen tables that would not happen without this invitation to begin them.
There is the grandfather who arrived with almost nothing and who built something their grandchildren are still proud of, and the young person who is only beginning to understand what their family community gave up so they could have a better future. These stories exist in every riding in the country. September gives us a reason to find them and bring them forward, and that is worth supporting.
I would encourage every member in the House, as September approaches, to do more than issue a press release. Members should find a story in their riding that they did not already know; sit down with someone from the Ukrainian community or from any community whose history they had not yet taken the time to understand; ask them what they brought when they started over; ask them what they sacrificed to get here; and ask them what they pray their grandchildren will remember 50 years from now.
Those conversations are worth more than anything we can pass in the chamber. If Bill S-210 opens the door for more of those conversations to happen across Canada, it will have accomplished something that lasts past September and past this Parliament.
September is a good time to start listening.