The Ukrainian Canadian community welcomes the announcement by the Honourable Stephen Lecce, Minister of Education for Ontario introducing the new mandatory learning in the Grade 10 History course about the Holodomor genocide in Ukraine in 1932-33. This new learning will elevate Canadian values, focused on embracing democracy, freedom, human rights, and the rule of law. The new curriculum will ensure all students learn about the adverse consequences of extreme political ideologies like those from Stalin’s totalitarian communist regime, designed to ensure students learn from history.
Students will also learn about how extreme ideologies enabled mass-scale political repressions through widespread intimidation, arrests, and imprisonment, along with the impact of this genocide on the Ukrainian community in Canada.
“The rise of extremism, including Communism and Marxism, are direct threats to our democracy, social cohesion and values as Canadians,” said Stephen Lecce, Minister of Education. “I am determined to strengthen education on our shared values, including by mandating learning about the horrors of state-sponsored persecution of Ukrainians in the Holodomor in Grade 10 Canadian History. This learning will help ensure students are never bystanders in the face of such horrors, understand the danger of totalitarianism, and help safeguard fundamental Canadian values of freedom and democracy over communist extremism.”
The Canada-Ukraine Foundation is also deeply grateful to the Government of Ontario for reinforcing this learning by investing $400,000 to support the Holodomor National Awareness Tour and the Holodomor Mobile Classroom (HMC) that will enable the HMC to travel to schools across the province and engage students in grades 6 to 12 through the experiential learning directly linked to the Ontario curriculum.
The Canada-Ukraine Foundation developed Holodomor National Awareness Tour and the Holodomor Mobile Classroom in 2014 to educate and bring awareness of the Holodomor to Canadians. To date, the Holodomor Mobile Classroom is the only one in existence worldwide. This unique learning environment uses cutting-edge technology to fully immerse and assist students in learning about the Holodomor in a digital classroom on wheels. The fusion of technologies and interactive content developed for this program, defines an entirely new way to conduct lessons allowing both the facilitator and students to actively engage with each other.
We are very grateful to the Donors who made the travels during this year that marks the 90thanniversary of Holodomor, happen and look forward to many more years on the road thanks to the support of the Government of Ontario.
This announcement ensures that students will learn about an unknown chapter in Ukrainian history, and that they will continue to embrace and value democracy, freedom, human rights, and the rule of law that Canada holds in the highest regard.
