Konowal memorial to proceed in B.C. (01/26/97)

Konowal memorial to proceed in B.C.

by Christopher Guly

OTTAWA - A trilingual plaque paying tribute to Victoria Cross winner Filip Konowal will be unveiled on April 5 in the Vancouver suburb of New Westminster, following a bitter struggle from within Sgt. Konowal's former regiment.

Last fall, the senate of the Royal Westminster Regiment - home of Sgt. Konowal's 47th Batallion - voted to cancel plans to erect an English-, French- and Ukrainian-language plaque honoring the only Ukrainian Canadian Victoria Cross winner. But when Canada's national daily newspaper, The Globe and Mail, published a story on the rejection, the Canadian Armed Forces stepped in and told the regiment the memorial would go ahead.

Jerry Gangur, the former president of the Royal Westminster Regiment Association who pushed for the plaque, is delighted. "We are going to have the minister of national defense [Doug Young] in attendance," he told The Weekly.

The trilingual marker will be installed on the outside of the regiment's armory in New Westminster. It will be accompanied by a bilingual plaque honoring fellow Victoria Cross winner and World War II veteran Jack Mahony, who also belonged to the regiment. The West Coast Konowal memorial is being paid for by the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCCLA), the Royal Westminster Regiment Association and British Columbia's Ukrainian Canadian community.

There are two other memorials dedicated to Sgt. Konowal, who received the Victoria Cross from King George V in 1917. They are in Toronto and Ottawa. Future plans call for another in Sgt. Konowal's home town in Kudkiv, Ukraine. Sgt. Konowal died in Ottawa in 1959. He was 72.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian communities of Vernon and Nanaimo in British Columbia are planning to install historical markers at the sites of internment camps where Ukrainian Canadians were held during the first world war.

For more than a decade, the UCCLA has been unsuccessful in obtaining an acknowledgment from Ottawa that thousands of Ukrainian Canadians were unjustly interned between 1914 and 1920.

On January 24, a UCCLA delegation will meet with a senior official from the Department of Canadian Heritage to ask for not only recognition, but also for the placing of a commemorative plaque at La Ferme, Quebec - site of the Spirit Lake internment camp - as well as the construction of a permanent museum at the Cave and Basin site in Banff National Park in Alberta.

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