Editor’s note
Andrij Makuch passed away suddenly on 18 January 2019. He had worked for over 30 years at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) as a manuscript editor of the print edition of the Encyclopedia of Ukraine; senior editor of www.EncyclopediaofUkraine.com; research co-ordinator of the Kule Ukrainian Canadian Studies Centre; and associate director, research and publications, of the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium. Members of the Canadian Association of Slavists knew him as a regular presenter at our conferences and as the long-serving secretary-treasurer of the affiliated Canadian Association of Ukrainian Studies. Jars Balan, Director of the CIUS, offers the following appreciation of his longtime friend and colleague.
1. Andrij Makuch (Photo: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies)
I first learned of Andrij’s sudden passing coming out of a meeting with Faculty of Arts officials to discuss administrative issues concerning the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. My initial reaction was naturally one of disbelief, but his brother Nestor assured me over the phone that the terrible news was true. Immediately after informing the staff that Andrij had been unexpectedly taken us from a couple of months shy of his 63rd birthday. I started thinking back to my last communications with him, by phone and email, and to the beginnings of our relationship 43 years earlier.
I originally met and got to know Andrij in 1976, when with a friend from Toronto I showed up at the recently established Koskovych House (or Institute, as it was more formally known) in the Norwood District of Edmonton, looking for a place to “crash.” A “heritage home” in a part of the city where a lot of Ukrainians once lived – meaning it was a fire-trap with obsolete wiring, an old gas stove, a porch with a battered chesterfield on it, and almost no insulation in its walls – it was already on its way to becoming a leading hub of activist Ukrainian life in Western Canada. I believe that residents at the time included the founding Koskovych members, Andrij and his brother Nestor, David Lupul, Myron Bodnaruk and Danylo Myhal, who were later joined by myself, Mykola Maluzynsky, John Jaworsky and others who camped out for varying lengths of time or moved in permanently. It was kind of a Ukrainian Canadian version of Animal House, where on a Sunday morning you’d wake up to find various males snoring on the Salvation Army couches or passed out on the floor, being in no shape to make their way home – assuming they had a home to go to. Needless to say, we had the time of our lives, and the Koskovych House model subsequently inspired several other co-operative houses, among them Chorna Khmara, Pekky Syna and Dim Polubotok.
While not all of the residents of Koskovych House were university students, the core members were, and under the leadership of the Makuch brothers, their fellow founders and new recruits, Koskovych became a veritable hive of activity focused around the publication of the newspaper, Student, and on the activities of the Ukrainian Students Club at the University of Alberta. Andrij, of course, was in the thick of everything, having since childhood lived his Ukrainian heritage while growing up in Lethbridge and Victoria.
At the time the struggles of the dissident movement in Soviet Ukraine were a major concern, especially for those of us who were the politicized children of the postwar “Displaced Persons” immigration. Among the many memorable visitors to Koskovych House was Leonid Plyusch, who partied with us after his Edmonton appearance on a post-release tour of Canada. The Koskovych Institute was also where us Studentiks plotted the paper’s big exposé on Valentyn Moroz, whose dubious behaviour after coming to Canada was scandalizing all but his most loyal supporters, though no one wanted to acknowledge there was a problem. Another memorable character was Taras Kaznisty, a sailor from Zhytomyr who had jumped ship and literally swаm to freedom in Newfoundland, before making his way to Western Canada like so many Ukrainians before him. Author Myrna Kostash likewise attended Koskovych bashes, adding a touch of celebrity to some of our gatherings, which often took place in a haze of marijuana smoke.
Canadian multiculturalism was another important issue in the 1970s, as was the state of the organized Ukrainian-Canadian community and Ukrainian culture in Canada. Student provided us with a vehicle for engaging in all of these discussions, and a platform for challenging the “old guard” thinking of the mainstream Ukrainian community, which we took great pleasure in tweaking at every opportunity. Putting out the paper was a team effort, requiring not only authors to produce original content, but also graphic artists, layout specialists, and proofreaders, as well as people to do marketing, distribution, and fundraising. It was a big and time-consuming endeavour, and our work sessions at the Student office – situated first at the corner of 97th Street and 118 Avenue, and later on the fifth floor of what subsequently became The King’s University – were sometimes hard to distinguish from the legendary parties at Koskovych House. And Andrij was a quintessential team player, contributing to all facets of the operation while at the same time serving as the president of the U of A’s Ukrainian Students Club from 1975 to 1977.
Looking back, I think all of us were conscious of the fact that we were in many respects making Ukrainian-Canadian history on the territory where earlier generations of Edmonton Ukrainians had made history in the pioneer and interwar eras. Not only the Student offices were within walking distance of Koskovych House, but several churches, halls, institutions and Ukrainian businesses were part of the landscape that we regularly traversed going to and from the U of A campus. That, and the fact that the oldest and largest agricultural colony established by Ukrainian settlers in the 1890s was situated just east of Edmonton served as constant reminders that we were following in the footsteps of illustrious and colourful forbears, Ivan Pylypiw and Vasyl Eleniak among them. That the Pylypiw and Eleniak homesteads were within an hour’s drive east of Edmonton, and the Pysanka Festival was becoming a popular annual event in Vegreville, all contributed to creating a context for our lives as the baby boom generation of Canadians of Ukrainian descent. So it was no surprise that Andrij became keenly interested in Ukrainian-Canadian history, or that the MA topic which he chose to write on was the Myrnam, Alberta, farmers’ strike in the 1930s.
An important stimulus to Andrij’s scholarly interest in Ukrainian Canadiana was the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village, which was in the process of being transformed into a major provincial historic site and needed people to research the buildings that it was physically restoring. The village provided work for a small army of people investigating Ukrainian-Canadian history, and Andrij completed a detailed study of the Hlus Ukrainian Catholic Church, which was later published as a research report by the Historical Resources Division of Alberta Culture and Multiculturalism. All of these undertakings – heading the students club; working on and writing articles for Student, for which he produced a feature story on Myrna Kostash’s All of Baba’s Children; doing contract work for the Ukrainian Village; and completing his MA, laid the foundation for Andrij’s growing expertise on the Ukrainian experience in Canada. And although marriage and a job took him to Saskatoon to serve for four years as the executive director of the Saskatchewan provincial council of the Ukrainian Canadian Committee, he continued to broaden and deepen his knowledge of all things Ukrainian-Canadian, in addition to working as a sessional lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan.
Like most serious historians, Andrij gradually became a storehouse of information about many different aspects of Ukrainian life, collecting sources, documents and details about events and people that played a significant, and sometimes not-so-significant, role in the Ukrainian community in Canada. One of the subjects that always interested Andrij was the scoundrels who were a part of the fabric of Ukrainian life, especially in the Canadian West. He often said his goal was to create a “Ukrainian Canadian Hall of Shame,” where the achievements of Ukrainian fraud artists, con men, murderers and leaders of biker gangs would be properly commemorated to provide a counterpoint to the pillars of the hromada. Andrij was simultaneously an aficionado of Ukrainian-Canadian popular culture, especially music and cinema, all of which he followed closely and generously shared with fellow researchers.
Eventually, Andrij moved to Toronto in the late 1980s to work as an editor and researcher on the Encyclopedia of Ukraine project, where his particular specialty was Ukrainians in Canada. He also eventually devoted some of his time to the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium, while performing a host of other duties for the CIUS Toronto office. As always, Andrij immersed himself in the daily life of the Ukrainian community, participating on various committees and taking part in community events, as well as attending any festivals, concerts or screenings that had Ukrainian content. How sad that he wasn’t able to be in the audience at the Taragon Theatre just two months after his passing to see his impressive niece, Lianna Makuch, star in her play, Blood of the Soil … .
In 2001, Andrij became the research co-ordinator for the Ukrainian Canadian Program which I was responsible for administering, the two of us forming a tag-team in spearheading the activities and projects of CIUS in the field of Ukrainian-Canadian Studies. Although I had always interacted with Andrij over the years because of our friendship dating back to Koskovych House, I began to work closely with him on a regular basis as we personally conducted and initiated research into Ukrainian-Canadian history. Did I say that Andrij was a storehouse of information? More accurately, he could be described as a wonderful junkyard, full of all kinds of fascinating and useful facts that illuminated and brought to life the Ukrainian presence in Canada. I could always reach out to him, as I often did, for help and advice when it came to my own research, or to ask his assistance in responding to queries that both of us frequently received from other scholars, students, or members of the community. The last time that he helped me out was 10 days before he died, when I asked him to go through several issues of the English-language Soviet propaganda rag, Moscow News, which he could get access to at the University of Toronto. I wanted to know if the paper contained any articles by two American women who travelled by car with the Toronto journalist, Rhea Clyman, through the famine-stricken regions of eastern Ukraine in September 1932. Typically, he found not only five pieces for me, but other relevant articles, which he copied and sent along with a description of their contents. I thanked him by phone a few days later, when our always genial discussion typically ranged over a variety of topics in Ukrainian-Canadian studies.
Andrij Makuch had a great many friends, and I am both proud and feel blessed to have been one of them for more than four decades. Although I will greatly miss having him as a colleague, I will especially miss him as friend, who was always modest, kind and fun to be around. It’s going to take a while to get used to not getting some of his emails featuring his quirky sense of humour, which could always be counted on to brighten my day and to bring a smile, albeit often a crooked one, to my face.
Farewell, Andriju, and peace be with you for all eternity.
Until we meet again,
Jars