The Slovak Canadian Heritage Museum in Oshawa, November 2011

The Slovak Canadian Heritage Museum (SCHM) opened in Oshawa in 2010 with the aim of making audiences ‘aware of Slovak heritage in Canada through the exhibition of heritage artifacts.’ The museum (which had previously been located in Markham, a town to the West of Toronto with a long history of Slovak settlement) opened in Oshawa in a former furniture store, originally belonging to a Mr Michna, a Slovak immigrant who came to Canada in 1924. Of the new location (about 30 minutes to the East of Toronto), museum director Margaret Dvorsky says “it’s a good place to start, the city fathers are happy we are here.”


Museum president Margaret Dvorsky and Jaromir Lukac at the SCHM



Visitors to the museum can try their hand at weaving and a number of other traditional needle crafts. On display are items of bobbin lace, embroidered folk costumes (kroje) and fabrics which have been traditionally printed using wax and indigo dye.


Some of the textiles on display at the SCHM

As well as running the museum itself, Margaret, Jaromir, and other members of the SCHM committee organize an annual Slovak Heritage Festival. They packed Recording Voices & Documenting Memories off with a copy of the very first program for the Slovak Heritage Festival in 2004, which included a bilingual Slovak-English map of the festival site in Markham, ON:


Extracts from the first Slovak Heritage Festival program, 2004

More information about the Slovak Canadian Heritage Museum (including a number of particularly lovely photo galleries) can be found on the organization’s website, at http://www.schm.ca/. The museum is staffed by a corps of volunteers and open from Tuesday through Sunday at 485 Ritson Road, Oshawa, Ontario L1H 5K1.

Holúbky making for the Cleveland Slovak Festival, September 2010

The Cleveland Slovak Festival has been held annually over the Labor Day weekend since 1971. Last year, it took place at St. Anthony of Padua Church in Parma, Ohio. Festivalgoers enjoyed a number of accordion bands, Slovak folk dance performances, Zlatý bažant beer and hearty portions of Slovak food.

Ahead of the festival on September 4, I joined the twenty-some volunteers preparing holúbky for the festival. Holúbky (which literally means ‘pigeons’) are stuffed cabbage leaves traditionally made, according to those at the festival, in the eastern Zemplín region of Slovakia. Here’s a photo guide showing how to make the perfect stuffed cabbage leaf:



First of all, you need to boil your cabbage. This makes the individual leaves more pliable so you can wrap them easily around the stuffing later on. At the festival, the hearts of each cabbage were then used in a tomato/cabbage-based sauce served over each of the holúbky. From my understanding, this is something of an optional flourish; holúbky can be served plain as well.



This photo of a fraction of the boiled cabbage leaves piled high gives you an idea of the quantities of holúbky being made for the festival.



Next up is the stuffing: the recipe used at the Slovak festival called for pork and beef to be mixed with rice and seasoned with salt and pepper. Onions sautéed in butter were also added to the mixture and worked in, as you can see, using a good deal of elbow grease.



With the leaves and the stuffing now prepared, it was time to make the holúbky themselves. To do so, small meatballs were prepared (as shown on the front right of this picture) and then wrapped in cabbage leaves (as shown on the front left).



Finally, the end of the cabbage leaf needs to be tucked into the roll so that the filling stays firmly in place. If the cabbage leaf is too long, then Mary Lesko (pictured) suggests you should cut it down so that it fits better. The scraps of cabbage left over became part of the holúbky sauce.

At the festival, the holúbky sold like hot pigeons and I didn’t notice any left at the end of the day. According to festival founder Paul Brunovsky, who spoke to the NCSML’s Recording Voices & Documenting Memories, food and drink have proven to be a major part of the event's allure since it was founded 40 years ago:



This year, the Cleveland Slovak Festival will be held on September 4th, again at St. Anthony of Padua Church in Parma, Ohio. The NCSML will be there with information about the museum and Slovak products for sale.