The Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village east of Edmonton will reopen Saturday with a temporary visitor centre, after the original was destroyed in a wildfire last year. “It was really sad to not have people here last year,” said Stephanie Huolt, a senior interpreter that has worked at the living museum since 2012. “The way you can take it as a positive… is that we got a lot of organizational tasks done; we got a lot of maintenance tasks done.” Despite closing for the 2025 season for safety reasons, there was plenty to do before the living museum could be reopened, primarily cleanup of the damage caused by the April 18, 2025, blaze. “We are excited to be able to reopen, but at the same time, the last 13 months have allowed us to get to the stage to be able to reopen. We feel that everyone can have a high level of experience that they’ve always had in a safe way,” said museum director David Makowsky. Although the fire did not touch any historic buildings, it did destroy an estimated 27,000 artifacts that were stored in the visitor centre each winter. The centre also housed conservation and curation spaces, offices, and the gift shop. Until a new visitor centre is built, those purposes will be served by the Silska Domiwka, or red barn, the use of which is being donated by the Friends of the Ukrainian Village Society. “It’ll work in the meantime and that’s all we care about. Eventually everything will be business as usual,” society president Gail Fenton said. Fenton’s grandparents settled in the area in 1896. She became teary when remembering walking the grounds for the first time after the fire. “It’s just a special place. The feeling around here is so unique. It’s just beautiful in the summer, especially,” she said. “Not only (does) it bring family together, it helps them to have a sense of identity where they come from,” added Andrew Boitchenko, Alberta’s tourism and sport minister, and first Ukrainian-born minister. He said of his own children, “After a visit, they tend to connect to us a little more and to their roots and heritage…. They’re now seeing and understand(ing) what we grew up in and what was important to us.” A spokesperson for Alberta’s finance ministry says rehabilitation is expected to finish in 2028. “Following the devastating fire last year, insurance approved an expense budget of approximately $14 million for Alberta’s government to undertake the necessary repairs and restoration of the site, which they will cover in full,” Juliana Rodriguez said in a statement to CTV News Edmonton. The Friends of the Ukrainian Village Society is also fundraising for cause. As for the artefacts destroyed with the visitor centre, the museum is working with digital copies that were made for training and archival purposes. “We have, for example, the raw information, we have the final products, (and) we have research that has been digitized, but it still is a loss not to have that original research at our fingertips,” Makowsky said. With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Curtis Goodrum
