ANNA TROJAN

Secondary School Teacher of English Language and Literature, and Pedagogy for Faculty of Education at University of Toronto

Date and Place of Birth: 1940 in Kremenets, Ternopilska Oblast, Ukraine

Date of Interview: August 10, 2016

Place of Interview: Toronto, Ontario

Interviewer: Adriana Szczurko

Length of Interview: 1:56:26 (raw)

(Excerpt):

And I wanted a Ukrainian play the year of the Millennium of Christianity. Worked hard on it. I’m very grateful that I was able to be the Chairman for 7 years to create actually the whole project to bring Ukrainian culture, after the demise of the Iron Curtain, to Canada, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Ukrainian settlement in Canada. And we created the [“Scythian Gold:] Treasures of [from Ancient] Ukraine” Exhibit Committee. Eventually we had about 70 people there, a lot of professionals, it was incredible. And we had one of their workers from the Royal Ontario Museum as the Project Manager, we had Chuck Sutyla from the government in Ottawa. And we were going to show civilization, the birth of civilization in Ukraine, right up to the 20th Century. That means 25 thousand years. We are descendants of the mammoth hunters from the Ice Age. You feel ancient?

Yes, when I was in Ukraine when I headed the committee and I had to look at artifacts in Ukraine, there are musical instruments from that period. And I heard a tape of them being played. I saw the artifacts made out of mammoth bones. And I saw the ceramics. The first handpainted ceramics in the world were the Trypillian ones. The birth of civilization of the Indo-European family of nations was north of the Black Sea. You know where that is? Yes, we gave much to the world. The first horse to be ridden was in the steppes of the Dnipro River – the small Tarpan horse. The first plow to be used in the world was in the steppes of Ukraine. The first city was Trypillia. Outside – Mezhirichia the place was called – outside of Kyiv. Two circles of houses, on stilts. 10 thousand people already! If you go to the field museum in Chicago, or the Museum of Natural Sciences in New York, at the end of the “Evolution of Man,” the first man-made building, a hut made out of the bones of the mammoth. The tusks, creating the cupola-like effect up above, and the hips of the mammoth creating 3 layers of the bottom. And when you look carefully, you can see almost a zig-zag pattern in it.

CROSS REFERENCES:

• Husband Dr. Oleh Alexander Trojan’s online obituary 

• Anna Trojan introduces Andrew Gregorovich’s Anna Yaroslavna, Queen of France and Princess of Ukraine book at launch. Derzko, Walter. Ukrainian Echo (Homin) Nov. 11, 2011.    with photo:

• Anna Trojan, UCC Leadership Award, 2013    in photo, front row

• Anna Trojan, et. al. Translators, Volodymyr the Great: A Historical Drama in Three Acts. Limited Edition, Toronto: 1988.