Culture
In 1954 the Serb Youth Club in Toronto was formed, and its folk-dance group Stražilovo became one of the first highly successful dance groups in Canada.
Toronto’s folk-dance group Hajduk Veljko (founded in 1964) danced at the Montreal Olympics in 1976 and at Expo ’86 in Vancouver, and Toronto’s Oplenac (1973).
From the early 1950s to 1984 the Serbian Cultural Club St Sava was active in Toronto, publishing eight volumes in Serbian dealing with Serb history.
In 1968 the Serbian Orthodox Church of St Michael the Archangel hosted the "Belgrade" pavilion of the Toronto Caravan cultural festival, organized by the late Colette Sekulovich (née Leroy) which displayed many Serbian cultural artifacts, showcased Kolo dancing and other performance arts and gave the people of Toronto a chance to taste Serbian delicacies. The annual festival ran for over 30 years winning, in 2001, the Zena Kossar "Best Pavilion Award".
The Serbian Heritage Academy (SHA), formed in Toronto in 1981, has organized academic conferences, exhibits, and lectures. In 1984 it installed a bronze plaque at the University of Toronto’s Medical Sciences Building honouring Canadian doctors and nurses who had worked as volunteers in Serbia during World War I.
Serbian Cultural Association Oplenac was founded in 1987 in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. Serbian folk dancing has been a major activity in SCA Oplenac since its inception as a non-profit organization. All proceeds from the events organized by SCA Oplenac go to the preservation and presentation of Serbian culture and tradition in North America. In 2012 it reached the company consisting of 8 large ensembles, Choir and Orchestra as well as a large recreational ensemble. They established Drama school for children that performs theatre plays on Serbian language as well as Serbian language school. Since 2000 it was clear that the association is undoubtedly the biggest Serbian folklore group in North America http://www.oplenac.ca
The first Serb bookstore, Srbica Books, was opened in Toronto in 1990 by Živko Apić.
Read more about this topic: Serbs Of Toronto
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“The first time many women hold their tiny babies, they are apt to feel as clumsy and incompetent as any man. The difference is that our culture tells them they’re not supposed to feel that way. Our culture assumes that they will quickly learn how to be a mother, and that assumption rubs off on most women—so they learn.”
—Pamela Patrick Novotny (20th century)
“Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)