Welcome to the Basilian Fathers Museum

...from the past, into the present, for the future...

The Basilian Fathers Museum was founded in the 1950s, but its roots go back much further—to a French Canadian priest named Father Josaphat Jean. 

In 1910 Father Jean went to Ukraine to study the Ukrainian language and the Eastern rite. Inspired by Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytskyi, the charismatic founder of the National Museum in L’viv, Father Jean began to collect a wide variety of religious and ethnographic artifacts. These eventually found a home at the museum in Mundare.

When contacts with Ukraine were cut off by the Communist regime in the 1940s, the Basilian Fathers recognized the need to preserve the cultural as well as the religious heritage of Ukrainians in Canada.

In 1953 the Basilians founded a Ukrainian museum in the town of Mundare. Here, Father Jean’s valuable lifetime collection of religious artifacts found a permanent home alongside unique collections of Ukrainian Easter eggs, embroidery, weaving, pioneer tools and folk artifacts.

The museum also houses a private library collection and archives (not open to the public).

In 1991 the museum’s collections were moved to the current museum building—a beautiful new structure which combines elements of Ukrainian folk architecture and Byzantine church style. The new museum took the name Basilian Fathers Museum.

The museum:

• commemorates the 100th anniversary of Ukrainian settlement in Canada
• serves as a memorial to the early pioneers
• marks the Basilian Fathers’ continued dedication to the cultural and spiritual heritage of Ukrainian Canadians