In search of Saint Nicholas

St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church keeps faith stories alive

Feast Day - December 6

By TED FITZGERALD
Special to the WCR
Ukrainian Cultural Village

The little St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic pioneer church was thankfully saved for posterity as a memorial to the faith of those early parishioners. Accessible to the public and staffed by animator/guides in period (1928) costume, it welcomes thousands of visitors each year to the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village east of Edmonton.

In design, St. Nicholas is just beyond the minimum for an Eastern church. Additions to a basic "house" have created a traditional three-fold plan with narthex, or porch for non-parishioners, nave for the people attending Mass, and the sanctuary reserved behind a flower-trimmed iconostasis screen, for the clergy. Three cupolas also serve to stress the influence of the Holy Trinity on the church.

Decoration in the building includes processional banners and icons. Treasures of the church though are paintings by famed church artist Peter Lipinski. Created on canvas because of the difficulty of portraying subjects on wooden siding, they show St. Nicholas and St. Basil on the nave walls. A heavenly portrayal of the Holy Trinity in the centre of the nave where in a wealthier church the central dome would be, dominates the tiny interior.

Namesake of the church is St. Nicholas (Mykolai), fourth-century bishop of Myra in Asia Minor (Turkey). He attended the Council of Nicaea, was jailed during persecutions and has left a legacy of stories about his charitable acts.

He's become the archetypical model for Christian charity and has been honoured through the ages and around the world. He's the patron saint of Russia, seamen, children and travellers.

To fully appreciate the long life of the little church, visitors must imagine themselves 100 years ago at a place 83 km due east in the Innisfree district. Here, some of the thousands of turn-of-the-century immigrants settled, calling their new home Buchach after their old country village in Ukraine.

First Masses were celebrated at the home of Harry Hlus in 1905, and irregularly by priests from Mundare in local residences. Within six years, parishioners contributed their money and labour to build the New Buchach Range II Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Ukrainian Catholic Church, also called St. Nicholas. In 1913, a traditional bell tower was added and, as the parish prospered, the important iconostasis was installed.

St. Mary's (or Hlus') church continued to be served by fathers of the Basilian Order until after the Second World War. The first local person to enter the priesthood, Demetrius Greschuk, was ordained in the church in 1950.

A victim of its small size and age, the little structure was eventually replaced by a larger, multi-domed edifice in 1959. The old church was sold in 1975 for one dollar and moved to the village. It's available in perpetuity to Buchach parishioners for religious services.

Alberta's parklands are spotted with hundreds of jewel-like, usually domed, little first and second generation Byzantine churches with histories similar to that of St. Nicholas.

But as times change and people move to the cities, an uncertain future awaits many of them. The grounds of most are accessible to the public. Hlus' church is one of many highlighted in tour guides to historic churches published by Lamont County in the Kalyna Country Tourism area.

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