A tour bus is travelling around Canada educating students about the Holodomor Ukrainian genocide.
The genocide of 1932 to 1933 saw millions of Ukrainians die of famine.
“By looking at the Holodomor as a genocide, you’re also bringing up the issue of why does a genocide occur,” said Rona Dzerowicz of the Holodomor National Awareness Tour. “A genocide usually occurs because of who a person is verse what the person has done. With the Holodomor genocide in Ukrainian, people were targeted because they were Ukrainian.”
The tour bus is an interactive classroom and it shares the stories of survivors of the famine.
An organizer with the tour said they hope it will make high school students want to become activists against racism.
“They are our future and our future depends on them,” said Dzerowicz. “We can only lay the ground work for what they can do by telling them what has happened, why it's happened, they can then prevent it from happening again.”
The bus has already toured through Ontario, Manitoba and will be travelling around Saskatchewan for three weeks.
"It’s important for students in our province to get an understanding and an appreciation of what took place in that part of the world,” said Don Morgan, Minister of Education. “We have one of the largest percentages of Ukrainian population in Canada and I think its part of the heritage that we should respect and appreciate."
