When you look at maps of the areas around the two towns called Komarno – one near Lviv in Ukraine and one across the ocean in Manitoba, Canada – you will notice something both areas have in common. Both communities are surrounded by dots, lines and splashes of blue colour indicating water. In the warm months of the summer, this water is a perfect breeding place for the mosquitoes that gave their name to these two towns. Komarno in the Ukrainian language means “mosquito-infested”.

Today, Komarno in Ukraine is a small rural town that is a short drive from Lviv. Its traditional wooden Ukrainian church, an impressive but crumbling building of the Polish church and a few remaining stones at an old Jewish cemetery are still there to remind us of the town’s rich multicultural Galician past. Komarno was also home to a well-known rabbinical dynasty of the same name.

When Ukrainian immigrants from Galicia settled in Canada, farmers who made their home in the plains north of Winnipeg found a striking similarity to their distant home – an abundance of mosquitoes. Mosquitoes in Manitoba were as bad as they had been at home, except they were bigger and thirstier! It may have been because of these pesky insects, or possibly because of the connection to the town in Ukraine, or perhaps both, that a small community in Manitoba was named Komarno.

To mark this Canadian community, an impressive sculpture in the shape of a mosquito made of steel and stone was erected in the town of Komarno in Manitoba. Today this eccentric monument cheers residents of this small community and brings an occasional tourist to look at the bizarre shape of a giant insect.

*The subject and the final editing of this aricle courtesy of Teresa James, Vancouver, B.C.