The Canadian province of Ontario is mandating the study of the Holodomor genocide, announced the Canada-Ukraine Foundation. Starting in 2025, Canadian 10th-grade students will be required to study the history of the 1932-1933 man-made famine orchestrated by the Soviet regime in Ukraine as part of the Canadian history curriculum.
According to Stephen Lecce, Ontario’s Minister of Education, learning about the Holodomor will enable children to comprehend the profound impact of the deliberate famine on the Ukrainian nation. Lecce emphasized the significance of acknowledging this event as a genocide against the Ukrainian people, urging Canadians to remember this tragic part of 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,” Lecce said.
The curriculum will emphasize that the Holodomor resulted from the “brutal campaign of Joseph Stalin against Ukrainian identity and existence that claimed millions of lives.”
In addition, the province of Ontario will allocate $400,000 to the Canada-Ukraine Foundation 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.
“This is a momentous news for the Ukrainian Canadian community that lobbied tirelessly to make this brutal campaign of Joseph Stalin against Ukrainian identity and existence that claimed millions of lives, known. Canada was the first country in the world that in 2008 recognized Holodomor as genocide of Ukrainians, and now, including Holodomor in the curriculum will ensure our youth learns about adverse consequences of extreme political ideologies like those of totalitarian communist regime, in the classroom,” the Canada-Ukraine Foundation said.
The Canada-Ukraine Foundation developed Holodomor National Awareness Tour in 2014 to foster education and bring awareness of the Holodomor to Canadians. To date, the Holodomor Mobile Classroom engaged over 70,000 people across Canada and had visited more than 500 schools.
“We are very grateful to the Donors who made the travels of the Holodomor Mobile Classroom possible over the years and look forward to many more thanks to the support of the Government of Ontario!” the Canada-Ukraine Foundation added.
The Ukrainian World Congress expresses its gratitude to the Ukrainian community for its efforts to preserve and honor the memory of the Ukrainian genocide.
