https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-veteran-who-helped-bring-30000-ukrainian-refugees-to-canada-to-be/
Veteran who helped bring 30,000 Ukrainian refugees to Canada to be honoured in the U.K.
Marika Panchuk has spent much of her life listening to wartime stories about her father, Bohdan Panchuk, and meeting people across Canada who owe their lives to him.
“Through the years people have certainly come up to me and said, ‘I wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for your father,’ ” Ms. Panchuk, 69, recalled from her home in Winnipeg. “There certainly was a bond between everyone who was there. But there wasn’t a lot of talk about details.”
Indeed, the story of Mr. Panchuk and the Ukrainian Canadian Servicemen’s Association – the group he co-founded during the Second World War – has been largely forgotten. And yet the former schoolteacher from Saskatchewan, who enlisted with the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1939 and landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day in 1944, became a key figure in helping more than 30,000 Ukrainian refugees come to Canada after the war.
The exploits of Mr. Panchuk and the UCSA were set to be recognized on Friday as part of Britain’s 75th-anniversary celebration of the victory in Europe, or VE Day. A service was planned at St. James’s Church in London to unveil a stained glass window in honour of the association, which operated out of the church’s vicarage.
The ceremony is now postponed until November because of the COVID-19 pandemic but St. James’s still plans to livestream a series of prayers on Friday to remember the sacrifices of Ukrainian Canadian soldiers. Around 3,500 veterans and their families will also receive postcards depicting the window this week to mark the occasion.
“We were disappointed we couldn’t hold the service,” said Lubomyr Luciuk, a professor at the Royal Military College of Canada who has been spearheading the window campaign along with the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation and the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain. Dr. Luciuk and the foundation have raised around $100,000 for the commemoration, called Heroes of Their Day, which will include a notice in The Globe and Mail on May 8 to recognize the 75th anniversary and the UCSA.
Dr. Luciuk, 67, has a special connection to Mr. Panchuk. His parents were among the Ukrainian refugees who came to Kingston after the war thanks to the UCSA (later renamed the Central Ukrainian Relief Bureau). Dr. Luciuk spent years researching the association and the work of Mr. Panchuk as well as many others involved in the refugee project.
“I still go, wow, what a wonderful thing those Canadian Ukrainian soldiers did,” he said. “They could have just come home. And who could blame them. Instead they decided that it was important to help other people, to help those other strangers, brothers and sisters.”
Mr. Panchuk came from humble roots. He grew up on a farm east of Saskatoon, the son of Ukrainian immigrants who arrived in Canada at the turn of the 20th century. He got a job as a teacher in 1935 in Yellow Creek, Sask., but quit four years later to join the RCAF when the war broke out.
After training as a radio operator, he was posted to bases in Ireland and England before joining an advance team for the Normandy invasion. During his time in England, Mr. Panchuk co-founded the UCSA in 1943 in the St. James’s vicarage. It became a home away from home for Ukrainian Canadian soldiers and provided a place to socialize, learn about Ukrainian culture and attend church services. The club also kept track of where soldiers were stationed and recorded the names of those who died or were injured.
“One of the reasons they liked to come to the club was because they felt a kinship, a kindred spirit with others of Canadian-Ukrainian background,“ Mr. Panchuk told Dr. Luciuk in a series of recorded interviews. “I think people appreciated our service. We had a number of softball teams, tournaments in Hyde Park, we had a dance orchestra, a choir, and all of this was voluntary. It was a cheerful place to be.”