Hall of Fame Award (Posthumous) | 2022

Savella Stechishin immigrated to the Canadian Prairies from Ukraine in 1913. Through her writing and recipes, she played an integral role in helping to keep Ukrainian culture and identity alive within her community and others’. In 1926 Stechishin, among other women from Canadian-Ukrainian communities, founded the Ukrainian Women’s Association of Canada (UWAC). In addition to being the first Ukrainian woman in Canada to achieve a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in home economics and writing for Ukrainian women’s literary magazines, in 1957 Stechishin wrote Traditional Ukrainian Cookery, a compilation of her own recipes and ones from members of the UWAC. The book is both a food history and a history of the Ukrainian people and their traditions. Traditional Ukrainian Cookery has become an important primary source for understanding the large Ukrainian diaspora that occurred in the postwar period and how Ukrainians kept their culture alive upon arrival in Canada.