Who has written about us
UA FEST has never bought an advertisement and has never had a paid member of staff. Everything below happened because a newsroom decided a volunteer festival in a town of 12,000 was worth the column inches. This page is the thank-you, and the record.
Each entry links to the publisher's own page. We quote one sentence and send you there — the words and the photographs belong to the newsroom that made them.
- CTV News Ottawa
- Inside Ottawa Valley
- Hometown News
- Ottawa Road Trips
- The Millstone
- CKCU 93.1 FM
- Linda Seccaspina
- 107.7 WOW FM
- The Lanarkist
- Lanark-Leeds Today
- West Carleton Online
CTV News Ottawa
the CTV television newsroom for Ottawa and the valley
Report from the day·
Ukrainian Festival returns bigger than ever
Ukrainian Fest Lanark County is back with food, music, a craft market, workshops and plenty for the kids.
CTV News Ottawa, 11 September 2026 CTV News Ottawa put the festival on television two days before the gates opened, in the slot where people decide what to do with their Sunday. Thank you — a weekend segment reaches the families we can never reach ourselves.
Inside Ottawa Valley
daily news for the Ottawa Valley, part of the Metroland group
Listing··Tara Gesner
Dragon boat racing, Ukrainian Festival and the Community Tattoo: Carleton Place and area bursting with fall festivals and events
Riverside Park in Carleton Place will transform into a vibrant hub of Eastern European culture on Sunday, Sept. 13, as the annual UA FEST (Ukrainian Fest Lanark County) 2026 returns for a full day of music, food, and community connection.
Inside Ottawa Valley, 11 September 2026 Tara Gesner put the festival in the headline of her September roundup and then gave it a section of its own, under a subhead she wrote herself: “Record-setting Ukrainian tapestry headlines UAFest 2026”. She has the zones, the free admission, the date the European record was certified and the detail that Canada is the fifteenth country to hold the cloth. Thank you, Tara — this is the second September running that you have made room for us.
Hometown News
Carleton Place, Perth, Smiths Falls, Mississippi Mills and the Rideau Lakes
Feature··Heddy Sorour
Carleton Place first North American stop for Ukraine's 160-metre Rushnyk of Unity
On Sunday, Sept. 13, Carleton Place will become the first community in Canada, and the first in North America, to host the Rushnyk of Unity – Rushnyk of Victory, a 160.5-metre embroidered cloth created by Ukrainian communities across 13 European countries.
Hometown News, 9 September 2026 Heddy Sorour asked her own questions and wrote the piece that answers the one everybody keeps asking: why a cloth stitched across Europe is being unrolled in a town of 12,000 instead of in a capital city. Four days before the gates open is exactly when a reader decides whether to make the drive. Thank you, Heddy.
Hometown News
Hometown Happenings — the weekly weekend guide
Listing··Linda Seccaspina
Hometown Happenings: Between the fair, the festivals and the food, you're going to need comfortable shoes
Bring your appetite, dancing shoes and enthusiasm to the Ukrainian Festival Sept. 13 from noon to 6 p.m. at Riverside Park.
Hometown News, 9 September 2026 Linda Seccaspina writes Hometown Happenings now, and she put us in the weekend the whole county was already reading about. One sentence, in the right column, in the right week. Thank you, Linda.
Ottawa Road Trips
Laura Byrne Paquet's weekly guide to Ottawa, Eastern Ontario and the Outaouais
Listing··Laura Byrne Paquet
79+ fun events in and around Ottawa, September 7 to 13
Ukrainian Fest Lanark County is a one-day celebration at Riverside Park in Carleton Place on Sunday, September 13. You can enjoy Ukrainian food, dancing and music; shop for crafts and treats in the vendors market; and enjoy some family fun. Admission is free.
Ottawa Road Trips, 8 September 2026 Laura Byrne Paquet reads every event in the region so her readers do not have to, and she gave us our own subhead — “Celebrate Ukrainian culture in Carleton Place” — among 79 things to do that week. Her list is where a lot of Ottawa families plan their Sunday, and a 45-minute drive has to earn its place on it. Thank you, Laura.
Hometown News
Hometown Happenings — the weekly weekend guide
Listing··Linda Seccaspina
Hometown Happenings: There are fairs to visit, pies to eat and absolutely no reason to stay home
Come spend the day at Ukrainian Fest Lanark County and enjoy the wonderful combination of music, delicious food, culture and community!
Hometown News, 3 September 2026 Ten days out, Linda Seccaspina listed us among the county's fairs and pies and took the trouble to print the details that decide whether a family actually comes: free admission, free parking nearby, accessible washrooms, wheelchair and stroller friendly, rain or shine. Those lines do more work than any poster. Thank you, Linda.
The Millstone
volunteer-run, ad-free community newspaper for Mississippi Mills
Community page·
Carleton Place is the first in North America to host this 160-metre record
An embroidered cloth 160.5 metres long, stitched by communities across 14 European countries, will be shown outside Europe for the first time on September 13, at UA FEST in Riverside Park.
From the announcement the festival sent in, which The Millstone published. Three years after printing the announcement of our very first festival, Almonte's volunteer paper did it again — in full, within days, under a headline that says plainly what is happening. The Millstone still sells no advertising and still pays nobody. Going first once is generous; going first twice is a newspaper that means it. Thank you.
CKCU 93.1 FM
Carleton University community radio, Ottawa — Monday Special Blend
Community page··Nathanael Newton and Maria Hawkins
Pride parade, naloxone training, Ukrainian Festival in Carleton Place
An embroidered cloth 160.5 metres long, stitched by communities across more than a dozen European countries, will be shown outside Europe for the first time on Sunday, September 13, at UA FEST in Riverside Park.
From the announcement the festival sent in, which CKCU published with the episode. Nathanael Newton and Maria Hawkins gave the rushnyk airtime on Monday Special Blend and put the festival in the episode title, next to the Pride parade and naloxone training — community radio doing precisely what it exists to do. They also posted the full announcement on the playlist page, which is how a volunteer festival ends up with a permanent record of a morning on air. Thank you both.
Linda Seccaspina
Carleton Place writer and local historian
Community page··Linda Seccaspina
Let's Sign Gary Strike's Flag for his friend Gene Nowiski
Some projects are made with fabric, thread and signatures. Others are stitched together with memories, friendship and a little piece of someone's heart.
Linda Seccaspina, 27 August 2026 Linda Seccaspina has been writing Carleton Place's memory down in public for years, and this post is one of the reasons we keep reading her. It is about Gary Strike's Canadian/Ukrainian Friendship Flag — a flag he began filling with signatures, could not finish, and has asked her to complete. Behind it is a friendship that started in 1948, when a Ukrainian family arrived in Canada and their four-year-old son became the first best friend of a two-year-old boy from here. Linda is bringing the flag to Riverside Park on 13 September so people can sign the Ukrainian side. Thank you, Linda — a festival can put on a stage, and it still cannot manufacture a story like that one.
Hometown News
Carleton Place, Perth, Smiths Falls, Mississippi Mills and the Rideau Lakes
Feature·
European record-setting embroidered cloth to make North American debut in Carleton Place
A 160.5-metre embroidered cloth created by communities across Europe will be displayed outside the continent for the first time during UA FEST in Carleton Place this September.
Hometown News, 6 August 2026 Hometown News was the first newsroom anywhere to carry the rushnyk story — they ran it the day after we sent it, and their opening sentence is a cleaner statement of the fact than the one in our own release. That matters more than it looks: a European record arriving in a town of 12,000 sounds like a press release until a paper the county actually reads has put its name on it. Every outlet we have written to since has been able to see that somebody local checked it first. Thank you to the Hometown News desk for moving quickly and for getting the number, the date and the claim exactly right.
Hometown News
Hometown Happenings — the weekly weekend guide
Listing··Laurie Weir
From PorchFest to petting zoos: Hometown Happenings your weekend guide close to home
Celebrate Ukrainian culture through food, music, and community at this year's Ukrainian Festival in Lanark County.
Hometown News, 11 September 2025 Laurie Weir's Hometown Happenings is the column half of Lanark County plans its Saturday around, and in September 2025 she put us in it — between the Carleton Place Farmers' Market and PorchFest, with the Kids of Ukraine Project named as where the money was going. A listing in a trusted weekly guide moves more people through a gate than any advertisement we could afford, and we could not afford one. Thank you, Laurie.
107.7 WOW FM
myFM, Arnprior — What's Good in the Valley
Interview··myFM News / 107.7 WOW FM News Staff
What's Good in the Valley: 'Phenomenal' expected to continue at Saturday's Ukrainian Festival in Carleton Place
It began as a simple neighbourhood event to help a Ukrainian emigre family get settled in Lanark County.
107.7 WOW FM, 11 September 2025 107.7 WOW FM sat down with festival director Olga Ialovenko before the 2025 festival and asked the questions that produce a record rather than a promo: how the volunteer crew had grown past the Ukrainian community, who the day is actually aimed at, and what changed when Carleton Place town council designated UA FEST a culturally significant event. Their first line — a neighbourhood event to help one family settle — is still the truest sentence anyone has written about how this started. Thank you to the newsroom in Arnprior for treating a small-town festival as news worth an interview.
Inside Ottawa Valley
daily news for the Ottawa Valley, part of the Metroland group
Listing··Tara Gesner
Embrace the season: 6 fall festivals worth travelling to the Ottawa Valley for
Ukrainian Fest Lanark County is back in Carleton Place this Saturday, offering an intimate look at Ukrainian culture through live music, traditional dances, workshops, authentic cuisine, interactive sessions, and crafts.
Inside Ottawa Valley, 9 September 2025 Tara Gesner named the six autumn festivals she thought were worth driving to, and she put us second — between the Arnprior Poutine Feast and Carleton Place Pumpkinfest. Standing in that company, in a paper that covers the whole valley, is how a three-year-old festival stops reading as new. Thank you, Tara.
The Lanarkist
independent local news for Lanark County
Listing·
Carleton Place gears up for a weekend of family-friendly community events and celebrations
The festivities begin on Saturday, Sept. 13, with the Ukrainian Festival at Riverside Park.
The Lanarkist, 9 September 2025 The Lanarkist opened its Carleton Place weekend preview with us — first item, ahead of PorchFest — and told readers what to expect from the day in plain terms: folk music, homemade perogies and cabbage rolls, and neighbours turning up for each other while the war went on. Being the sentence a weekend starts with is a small thing to write and a large thing to receive. Thank you.
Hometown News
Carleton Place, Perth, Smiths Falls, Mississippi Mills and the Rideau Lakes
Feature·
Ukrainian Festival returns to Lanark County with heart, flavour and community spirit
Lanark County's Ukrainian Festival is making a vibrant return this year, bringing Canadians and Ukrainians together through music, food, tradition and connection.
Hometown News, 3 September 2025 This is the piece that carried the whole 2025 festival to the county: the food, the artisan market, the business speed-dating, the Kids of Ukraine Project, and the line our organisers had been saying to each other for two years — that the aim is the most genuine festival rather than the biggest one. Hometown News printed it as it was said. Thank you for the room, and for describing a grassroots effort without making it sound smaller than it is.
The Lanarkist
independent local news for Lanark County
Feature··Hollie Pratt-Campbell
Lanark County Ukrainian Festival returns with food, music and tradition
Lanark County's Ukrainian Festival will return this fall, bringing together Canadians and Ukrainians through food, music and cultural traditions.
The Lanarkist, 26 August 2025 Hollie Pratt-Campbell wrote the first proper feature of the 2025 season, three weeks out, when a festival most needs one. The Lanarkist has also covered the wider story this county has been living — the twinning agreement between Smiths Falls and Zolochiv, for one — which is why a Ukrainian festival reads there as local news instead of as somebody else's culture. Thank you, Hollie.
Lanark-Leeds Today
myFM, Perth — Lake 88.1
Report from the day··Bob Perreault
Ukrainian Festival draws big crowd in Carleton Place
A Ukrainian children's choir gave an inspiring voice to the event and a traditional unrolling of the Ukrainian flag brought cheers from participants.
Lanark-Leeds Today, 23 September 2024 Bob Perreault came to Riverside Park on the first day of fall in 2024 and filed from inside the crowd, which is a different thing from filing from a listing. He wrote down the children's choir, the flag unrolling that brought the field to its feet, and where the money went — mental-health rehabilitation for children and families in Ukraine. It is the only contemporaneous report of that day by anyone outside our own committee, so it is now part of how the festival remembers itself. Thank you, Bob.
West Carleton Online
independent, subscriber-funded news for West Carleton, across the river from us
Community page··Special to WC Online
Lanark County hosting first Ukrainian Festival
Five days before the first festival had happened at all, West Carleton Online carried the news to its readers on the other side of the Mississippi. The story sits behind the membership that pays for the paper, and that is a fair trade for a newsroom still reporting a region most others have left. Thank you for taking a chance on an event with nothing to show yet.
The Millstone
volunteer-run, ad-free community newspaper for Mississippi Mills
Community page·
The 1st Lanark County Ukrainian Festival, November 5
Our festival started as a fundraising garage sale of Gloria Bradley to help a Ukrainian family at their very start in Carleton Place.
From the announcement the festival sent in, which The Millstone published in full. The Millstone takes no advertising and is run entirely by volunteers, and in October 2023 it printed the announcement of the very first festival exactly as we sent it — 500 guests expected, an arena in Carleton Place, a garage sale as the origin story. Nobody was famous, nothing was proven, and a newspaper gave it a page anyway. Everything on the rest of this list follows from newsrooms like that one deciding a thing was worth printing before there was any evidence it would work. Thank you to Almonte's volunteer paper for going first.
Add yours to this page
Published something we have missed, or filing one now? Send the link to press@uafest.ca and it goes up here. Photography, the fact sheet, boilerplate and the people who will pick up the phone are on the press kit. Interviews are available in English and Ukrainian — +1 (613) 621-1261.