[Shawn]

One of my best friends over the years in Japan has been a Polish-born, West German-raised recording and concert pianist. He pegged me as "at least part Polish" within 5 minutes of our first conversation. This was impressive: everyone presumes I'm Irish by looks alone, even before they learn my name. I told him something like, "Close, I'm 1/4 Ukrainian", to which he said something like, "Yeah, like I said, you're at least part Polish."

If you're Ukrainian and you're from the actual ethnic homeland (Western Ukraine / Galicia), you're basically Eastern Polish or Southern Lithuanian separated by modern borders, as my friend likes to argue. Or, as I point out, if you're Polish or Lithuanian, you're really just Western and Northern Ukrainians. Kiev did come first, after all. Either way, you're certainly Catholic, which is why the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants living in Jamaica Plain, Boston had no problems marrying an Irish guy from Hyde Park the day after he returned from Japan in 1946 (my grandparents on my dad's side).

There was a moderately-sized Ukrainian community in JP centered around St. Andrew Church from the 1890s through the 1950s, but it's pretty much thinned out by now. Nothing like what you'd find in the Midwest, or in NY and PA however, even at its peak.