Convincing a crowd of people estimated to have exceeded 1,000 to visit the Ukrainian Centre isn’t much of a challenge when you're able to deliver the goods.
“The food is delicious,” Ukrainian Garlic Food Festival co-organizer Bill Zelenczuk told Sudbury.com during this year’s event on Sunday.
“How do you attract people to this? Give them what they want.”
The annual festival has been a mainstay in Downtown Sudbury for decades, with a team of volunteers preparing various Ukrainian dishes, plus a handful from other cultures.
It’s the Ukrainian foods that top their annual sales list, which kicks off with perogies and is followed by cabbage rolls.
Pork kabobs, bread, sauerkraut, kielbasa and other dishes follow. ,
Although decades old, the festival has changed in recent years.
For one, they’ve limited its initial emphasis on garlic, and expanded to include broader Ukrainian foods.
(That said, there are still several garlic vendors, including Holla’s Produce and Greenhouse, based in Blezard Valley. Owner PAul Holla told Sudbury.com that it’s been an excellent year for garlic, which they grow in-field.)
They’ve also scaled down the event.
Whereas they used to have a team of 100 volunteers putting the event together, recent years have seen a team of 30 pull together to help make it a reality.
They used to close half of Notre Dame Avenue to make room for the event, but now spill over into Hnatyshyn Park instead.
“We had to scale it down because volunteers are hard to get now,” Zelenczuk said, noting that they began scaling it down around the time the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.
Although scaled down in recent years, he said the annual event remains an important event for the Ukrainian Centre, and serves as a key annual fundraiser.
Since the war in Ukraine broke out, the centre has raised $230,000 to help support Ukraine.
During Sunday’s event, at least one side effort also supported Ukraine, with Barbara Smatlanek hitting up people lined up for food to donate money toward the Ukrainian Humanity Fund.
Her goal was to raise $2,000 toward food, shelter and other essentials for people in Ukraine.
This joins various other local efforts, including donating tourniquets to the Ukrainian military, she said, which resulted in thank you notes coming back from army units.
Ukrainian culture was also on display in June, when the Ukrainian Festival was held at Villa Maria Campground at Richard Lake.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
