“One egg can hold two yolks!”
That’s what the babas tell their grandchildren in Vegreville, Alberta, home of the world’s largest Ukrainian Easter Egg. But year-by-year Vegreville has become more divided by two slightly different forms of conservative nationalist Catholicism — until the babas began to wonder if even Vegreville’s egg is big enough for two kinds of folks?
Tanis Hryniv is a spunky Ukrainian Catholic girl whose widowed father has always encouraged her dreams — even if a successful launch for her new Vegan perogies would mean losing her to Edmonton. Metro Juba is a round-headed Ukrainian Orthodox boy whose mother declares he has “the soul of Taras Shevchenko.” So Tanis and Metro grew up thinking their worlds were as different as pompushki and paska bread — until the day Metro found himself helping lovely, round-headed Tanis out of a difficulty at the Tim Hortons, and soon Metro and Tanis begin to wonder if ‘the other yolk’ is really so different after all.
But Metro’s widowed mother has always expected him to marry Marsha, the sincere, round-headed girl-next-door — while Tanis’s father, who is also widowed, might be happier to lose her to the big city than to the Orthodox church. And what about Risha, the sensuous, round-headed girl who’s been sneaking ‘across the back lane’ to the United Church, where everyone has their own communion cup; but they’re small and the wine is non-alcoholic, so, why?
A story about the beauty of first love, the tragedy of synthetic religious factionalism, the weight of history, and the abiding wisdom of the babas — under the shadow of the Egg…
duncan thornton, his blog 