1987: A LOOK BACK: Ukrainian community in Canada (12/27/87)

1987: A LOOK BACK

Ukrainian community in Canada

The leaders of Canada's Ukrainian community spent their Thanksgiving weekend celebrating the coming to fruition of a long-awaited dream: the opening of a Ukrainian community lobby office in the nation's capital.

The office was the brainchild of the late Sen. Paul Yuzyk, who promoted the idea right up to the time of his death in 1986. After the senator's death, a trust fund was established by the Ukrainian Canadian Committee to raise money for the project.

Andrew Hluchowecky, a graduate of Concordia University, was named as the bureau's first director. Aside from managing the two-man bureau, his duties will include briefing journalists and monitoring political developments on Parliament Hill.

The opening of the bureau was greeted as a major step for the country's Ukrainian community, which has had to fight hard in recent months to defend itself against allegations of harboring Nazi war criminals. And community leaders have come under fire from their own members for not doing enough to influence public opinion and federal government decision-makers.

The office will help change that, said Mr. Hluchowecky. In addition to reacting immediately to issues affecting the community, the bureau will brief politicians and journalists on issues ranging from human rights to the Millennium of Christianity in Ukraine.

Near year's end, observers said that although it was too early to call the office an unqualified success, at least it has brought a wide range of disparate community groups together under one roof.

In other developments, a delegation of Ukrainian community leaders met with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and three Cabinet members on September 22 to discuss a list of community concerns. Among the topics discussed during the 90-minute meeting were the prosecution of war criminals in Canada, access to the prime minister and Cabinet, federal government grants and Canadian-Soviet relations.

Also, the first higher educational facility in North America to teach applied Ukrainian arts was opened in Edmonton at Grant MacEwan College on October 14 with a $100,000 grant from the Alberta Provincial Council of the Ukrainian Canadian Committee. The donation will cover the pilot stage of the project, and a fund-raising campaign has been started to raise the $350,000 needed to set up a permanent endowment for the Ukrainian Resource Development Centre.

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