My Trip to Canada

December 2nd-7th, 2004

Once again, Ignatius Productions, the company that sent me to Africa, hired me to help with another documentary. This time, the job took me to Winnipeg, Manitoba to help put together a biographical piece on a martyr of the Catholic Church by the name of The Blessed Vasyl Velychkovski.

Tim and I got on a plane in Atlanta early on Thursday morning and after a stop in Minneapolis arrived in Winnipeg around 1pm. We were initially denied entry into Canada. The first guy we dealt with in the Immigration office wasn’t going to let us in because he couldn’t understand why a Canadian crew wasn’t hired. After sitting for two hours in that office, a senior officer was convinced by our clients that we were uniquely qualified for that specific job so we were finally given special permission to enter.

There was snow on the ground, the temperature was around 3 degrees Fahrenheit with a wind child of about –10. Our client, Father John, took us to the monastery at St. Joseph’s Ukrainian Catholic Church where we would stay for the next few days. While we were in Winnipeg, we shot several interviews, poured over hundreds of photographs and old recordings, and shot a prayer service as we learned all we could about The Blessed Vasyl.

His story is a very dramatic one. He lived from 1903 to 1973 and spent much of that time either hiding from the Communist regime in Ukraine or suffering extreme conditions in Soviet prison camps. In a time when the Catholic Church was banned by the Communist government, Vasyl Velychkovski dared to profess his faith and minister to others. For such crimes as preaching the Word of God or observing communion, he was sentenced to prison. He was released from his second imprisonment in 1972 when they thought he was about to die. At this point, only Canada would take him and so he ended up joining the Ukrainian community in Winnipeg for the final year of his life.

In 2002, Velychkovski was beatified by the Catholic Church. In honor of this, Father John of St. Joseph’s had Blessed Vasyl’s body moved to a shrine at the church. There are currently efforts underway to bestow Blessed Vasyl with sainthood.

It appears likely that I may also end up editing this documentary together. The intention is for the piece to be finished by June and hopefully nationally on EWTN sometime in the summer of 2005. We’ll see how it goes.