MARTA TROFIMENKO

Lawyer

Date and Place of Birth: 1933 in Krosno, Poland

Date of Interview: August 26, 2016

Place of Interview: Toronto, Ontario

Interviewer: Zoriana Kilyk

Length of Interview: 01:24:58 (raw)

(Excerpt):

Interviewer: Did you feel any discrimination when you came to Canada?

MT: Discrimination, yes. Both here [in Canada], and in America. But it is hard for me to say because we were in PLAST and we were so happy, strong, proud, and when we would sit in the streetcar, there were about 10 of us in our group, we would ask the driver if we could sing a Ukrainian song. We sang all kinds of PLAST songs. And people would walk by, look, we would be in our uniforms, and there was no discrimination then; we did not feel it, it was quite the opposite. People would say 'that's nice, that's nice.'

But I noticed that when we would go to any decent shops when needed, although we did not go there often, they would treat us like...so that we wouldn’t maybe do something bad, or so that we did not touch the clothing too much. So I think there was a little bit of discrimination here, but not a lot. I know that in America there was discrimination because we met a man who was told to get off the sidewalk into the wet, where there was water running along the sidewalk onto the street, because some Americans were coming. Irish-Americans, in fact. Yes, I forgot what his name was, because we met him later, much later in a banquet in Pittsburgh. But not here, no. I wouldn't say so.

CROSS REFERENCES:

• Martha Trofimenko and husband loan his father’s collection of Petro Cholodny the Elder artworks to The Ukrainian Museum, New York

• Martha Trofimenko at presentation of 'Trofimenko Memorial Prize,' University of Delaware