CFUS initiates graduate fellowship (06/29/97)

CFUS initiates graduate fellowship

TORONTO - The initiation of the Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies' Dr. Robert Franklin Clark Graduate Fellowship in Ukrainian Language and Literature was formalized here recently at a meeting between representatives of the Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies (CFUS) and the University of Toronto. The fellowship, in the amount of $15,000 annually, will be offered by the university beginning in the 1998-1999 academic year to graduate students pursuing a master's degree or doctorate in Ukrainian language or literature.

Basic funding for the fellowship was provided out of a bequest left the Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies by the late Dr. Robert Franklin Clark of Edmonton. In turn, the foundation participated in the university's "two for one" program under which funds were matched both by the university and the Province of Ontario. As a result, a fund at the $300,000 level was created, the income from which will support the fellowship. Thanks to the university's investment policy the value of the fellowship is expected to increase with time.

Dr. Clark, a physician by profession, for many years was a director of the CFUS and an activist in Edmonton's Ukrainian community. After 10 years in private practice he became executive director of the Alberta Medical Association and later senior medical advisor to the Workers' Compensation Rehabilitation Center.

For his services to medicine, Dr. Clark was given a Special Award of Merit by the Alberta Medical Association and received the Outstanding Service Award from the Edmonton Academy of Medicine. For services to the Ukrainian community, Dr. Clark was made Honorary Life Member of the Ukrainian Professional and Business Association of Edmonton.

Dr. Clark passed away in February 1965, after a prolonged illness, at the age of 60.

At the initiation of the Clark Fellowship, Morris Diakowsky, president of the Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies, remarked that the funds out of Dr. Clark's bequest provided for the fellowship were just part of what had been entrusted to the foundation. The foundation hopes to create other scholarships in memory of Dr. Clark at other Canadian universities.

"The fact that Bob Clark provided a bequest to the foundation for the benefit of Ukrainian studies at Canadian universities was an expression of his belief that such studies are important for Canada's Ukrainian community, for Canada, and also for Ukraine," said Mr. Diakowsky. "The fact that our friend and colleague on the foundation's board entrusted the foundation with sizable funds is a vote of confidence that the foundation would use those monies well to benefit a cause to which Bob was dedicated. Through the fellowship that has been created, and through those to come, his memory will remain with us."

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