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Harasymiw Introduction

While studying at the University of Saskatchewan in the early 1960s, Eugene Harasymiw resided at the Petro Mohyla Institute where he made lifelong friends with many Ukrainian Canadian activists including myself. We lost track of each other until the advent of the Deschenes Commission and the John Demjanjuk case in the mid-1980s when I was in Montreal. The Internet facilitated communication. When I arrived in Edmonton in the summer of 2000, he facilitated my integration into the Ukrainian community via membership in the Ukrainian Self-Reliance Association (USRA, or TYC in Ukrainian mnemonic) and the Ukrainian Canadian Congress - Alberta Provincial Council (UCC-APC). We worked very closely together on the issues affecting the Ukrainian community, especially denaturalization and deportation (d/d).

Listed below are 7 categories within which his material is archived on this www.willzuzak.ca website:

[1]  It is ironic that the first two and the last of the 128 articles in "Eugene Harasymiw Letters" dating between 10Mar1998 and 15Aug2004 are as relevant today as when they were written. The first letter refers to the abortive attempt to establish a "Holocaust Museum" in Ottawa, which has now [2012] morphed into the CMHR white elephant in Winnipeg. The second letter deals with Anne McLellan hiring Neal Sher (former head of the OSI responsible for the John Demjanjuk show trials) to "assist" the Canadian War Crimes Unit with their denaturalization and deportation efforts of Canadians. The last letter to UCC-APC supports the UKAR website of Dr. Lubomyr Prytulak and decries efforts to have a link to it removed from the UCC-APC website.

[2]  Many of the 20 articles in the Odynsky (Oberlander) files also appear amongst his letters in [1] above.

[3]  On 14Feb2003 (his birthday), he submitted a brief to the  Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration regarding Bill C-18 on behalf of the Ukrainian Self-Reliance League of Canada. He accuses Bill C-18 of creating two-tiered citizenship and spouting lofty ideals which ring hollow. He lists 7 flaws in the proposed legislation and proposes 6 recommendations. Following his submission he answered questions from members of the panel.

[4]  I specifically became involved in the 27Nov2000 federal election to try to have Anne McLellan defeated (and failed). We printed and distributed a pamphlet titled "Justice, Fairness and You" and placed it as an advertisement in the Edmonton Examiner. As an active member of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Eugene was instrumental in issuing a 13Nov2000 Press Release titled "Two Tiered Justice Minister Must Go".

[5]  In response to the 28Aug1992 Constitutional Accord which promoted the English and French languages but ignored the languages of other ethnic groups in Canada, Eugene Harasymiw and James Jacuta created an ad-hoc group called "Canadians All!" to protest the discrimminatory wording in this section of the Accord. I volunteered to publicize this issue in the Montreal area.

[6]  The April 2012 visit of Patriarch Filaret of the "Ukrainian Orthodox Church Kyiv Patriarchate" to Canada created a huge controversy, when Metropolitan Jurij at the behest of Patriarch Bartholomew forbid Ukrainian Orthodox clergy and parishioners from meeting with him. An ad-hoc group called "Brotherhood for the Revitalization of Ukrainian Orthodoxy in Canada" called a 17Jun2012 meeting in Toronto to discuss the issue and recorded the discussions on videotape. Between 16:00 to 21:00 minutes in Part 2 of this video, Mr.Shewchuk refers to the analysis of the Charter of the UGOCC originally done by Eugene Harasymiw, which mandates that the bylaws of the church can only deal with temporal (legal) matters and must be separated from spiritual matters decided by the parish members and church hierarchy.

[7]  "Justice Defiled" is a book on the d/d issue that Eugene was preparing which was cut short by his untimely death.

The uncompromising stance of Eugene Harasymiw on the d/d and other issues detrimental to the Ukrainian community was sometimes at odds with the "politically correct" elite. In fact, he explained to me his refusal to accept an award for his contributions to the Ukrainian community with the comment: "They expect me to accept an award from people that I do not respect?" His unexpected death from cancer, presumably from complications of a simple prostate operation, was a huge loss to the Ukrainian community. We miss him.

Will Zuzak; 2012.09.27