Cross of Freedom

Cross of Freedom is a Manitoba Heritage Council commemoration in Valley River, Manitoba.

Manitoba · PR 491, 8 kilometres northwest of Valley River · location approximate

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A group of Ukrainian settlers seeking free land and political freedom took up homesteads in 1896 near Valley River, Manitoba. They named their new community after their native village, Terebowla. Here in April 1897, the Reverend Nestor Dmytriw celebrated the first Ukrainian Catholic Mass on Canadian soil. After the service, he accompanied the worshippers to a site on the far bank of Drifting River where he consecrated a traditional Cross of Freedom erected by the settlers to mark the beginning of their new life in Canada. This wooden memorial stood on the site for many years. Similar symbolic crosses were erected soon thereafter in other Ukrainian settlements in Canada.

This is the Manitoba Heritage Council’s text as the Historic Resources Branch publishes it. The Branch calls these plaque inscriptions and says they reflect the time they were written; TreeAlive has not compared them with the plaques themselves, so a plaque may read differently. The Branch’s plaque list ↗

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Plaque text and location: Manitoba Heritage Council Commemorative Plaques, Historic Resources Branch, Government of Manitoba, as the Branch publishes them on its plaque pages. The text is the Manitoba Heritage Council’s text as the Branch publishes it; the pin on this page is ours, worked out from the location the Branch gives and marked approximate. Contains information from the Government of Manitoba, licensed under the OpenMB Information and Data Use License (Manitoba.ca/OpenMB)
TreeAlive is an independent project and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by the Manitoba Heritage Council, the Historic Resources Branch or the Government of Manitoba.
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Cross of Freedom

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