The nation on the Catwalk: Traveling memories of belonging in the Miss Kiev Pageant in Winnipeg (1979–1984)

Abstract

This article examines how ethnic, national, and diasporic belonging were negotiated through the Miss Kiev pageant in Winnipeg. Drawing on 27 contestant entry forms from 1979 to 1984, preserved in the Sylvia Todaschuk fonds, it analyzes how young Ukrainian Canadian women enacted Ukrainianness not only as cultural continuity but as a strategic mode of civic positioning within Canadian public life. Situated in the context of Canada’s post-1971 multicultural turn, the pageant is read as both a site of diasporic memory and a platform for asserting recognition within broader national narratives. Employing thematic and critical discourse analysis, the essays are approached as microhistorical texts shaped by inherited narratives, institutional logics, and generational responsibility. The article demonstrates that Canadian multiculturalism was not merely reflected in these performances but actively reinterpreted from below, revealing both its enabling rhetoric and its structural limits in mediating difference and belonging.