{"id":153560,"date":"2025-11-25T21:35:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T21:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/153560\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T21:35:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T21:35:12","slug":"n-l-musician-receives-medal-from-ukrainian-canadian-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/153560\/","title":{"rendered":"N.L. musician receives medal from Ukrainian Canadian Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Text<\/p>\n

Listen to this article<\/p>\n

Estimated 3 minutes<\/p>\n

The audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

St. John’s musician Brian Cherwick, perhaps most well known as the frontman for speed-folk band Kubasonics, has one more accolade to add to his collection.<\/p>\n

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) has awarded Cherwick the Taras Shevchenko Medal, which the group says recognizes people or institutions and organizations for their outstanding national contribution to the development of the Ukrainian Canadian community.<\/p>\n

The UCC says it\u2019s the highest recognition the congress can grant.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople often recognize [Kubasonics] for our performances when they see our band playing. But this award takes in a whole bunch of other stuff that I’ve done over the years,\u201d Cherwick said in an interview with CBC Radio\u2019s The St. John\u2019s Morning Show.<\/p>\n

Cherwick said he doesn\u2019t typically apply for awards, but it\u2019s nice to have some of his \u201cinvisible\u201d work noticed in this way.<\/p>\n

The multi-instrumentalist and scholar said he\u2019s been to hundreds of schools across Canada, organized events and festivals, and has helped raise money for the Ukrainian diaspora over the span of his career.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s easy to see me jumping around on the stage and, you know, being really animated,” he said. “But there’s a lot of other things that I do that aren’t quite like that.”<\/p>\n

\"ABrian Cherwick has been performing and teaching music across Canada and in Ukraine for 50 years. (Mariya Lesiv\/Facebook)<\/p>\n

At first Cherwick was hesitant to travel to Toronto to accept his award, he said, but his family reminded him of how important it is to show up for his community as war continues between Russia and Ukraine.<\/p>\n

He said a building across the street from a family member\u2019s home in the western Ukraine city of Ternopil was destroyed by a Russian missile strike just last week. Reuters reports that 34 people have died as a result of the attack, but Cherwick said his family is safe.<\/p>\n

He said seeing the Ukrainian population grow and settle in Canada has been inspiring.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving this kind of award, having places where I can play music \u2026 I’m grateful that there is kind of a forum for that,\u201d Cherwick said.<\/p>\n

Download our\u00a0free CBC News app<\/a>\u00a0to sign up for push alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. Sign up for our\u00a0daily headlines newsletter here<\/a>. Click\u00a0here to visit our landing page<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-153560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}