Dr. Bohdan Medwidsky, 2013.Photograph courtesy of the Friends of theUkrainian Folklore Centre.
A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, on 28 March 2021 and after a long battle, Dr. Bohdan Medwidsky, the founder of Ukrainian folklore studies at the University of Alberta, succumbed to the virus. An outstanding academic leader, folklore scholar, professor, and mentor, Dr. Medwidsky will be long celebrated for his distinguished contributions and lasting legacy in the fields of Slavic studies and Ukrainian and Canadian folkloristics. At the University of Alberta, where his career unfolded for more than four decades (1971–2014), Dr. Medwidsky will be remembered for establishing the university as the world’s primary destination for the study of Ukrainian and Canadian folklore.
Bohdan Medwidsky was born in Stanyslaviv (today Ivano-Frankivsk), western Ukraine, just a few years before world was plunged into the Second World War. The experiences of that period deeply affected Bohdan as a young boy and eventually informed his entire life’s path. Born into a family of Ukrainian intelligentsia, due to his health Bohdan spent his childhood years in Switzerland, away from his family and community. During the war he remained separated from his family, unaware of their whereabouts until they were reunited in the late 1940s; by this time, he was unable to speak Ukrainian. Determined to relearn his native language and fully reconnect with his culture and history, upon immigrating with his family to Canada Bohdan took this commitment to the next level. At university, he pursued the study of Ukrainian linguistics, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Ottawa and his doctorate at the University of Toronto. Then he taught Ukrainian and Russian at Carleton University (1969–71) and accepted a professor’s post in Ukrainian linguistics at the University of Alberta in 1971.
The 1970s were eventful times in Canada, and the beginning of the 1971–72 academic year was particularly so. In the fall, Canada adopted its official policy of multiculturalism, which gave recognition to cultural diversity as a defining characteristic of Canadian society and came to serve as one of the pillars of Canadian identity. The Ukrainian Canadian community actively promoted and supported the adoption of multiculturalism in Canada, leading to the development of a unique momentum, in both academia and the community, which saw a significant increase in people’s interest in Ukrainian Canadian culture, tradition, folklore, and language. Dr. Medwidsky soon recognized the need to further the growth and professionalization of Ukrainian folklore studies. He devoted his entire career to not just building another university program of study but ensuring that it was sustainable and strategic. To realize this ambitious objective, he actively collaborated with the Ukrainian Canadian community, securing major endowments and grants in order to support the Ukrainian folklore program and its students at all levels of study, undergraduate and graduate.
The first university course in Ukrainian folklore soon followed, in 1977, and by the end of the 1980s folklore specialization became available at the B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. levels. By 2021, the year of Bohdan’s passing, over 50 students had graduated with University of Alberta diplomas in folklore studies, and several followed in Dr. Medwidsky’s footsteps, establishing themselves as academics now training the next generation of scholars across Canada. This success in the institutionalization and promotion of Ukrainian folklore studies in Canada is evidenced in a matrix of highly recognized, financially sustainable, and internationally and nationally well-reputed research offices and posts: the Peter and Doris Kule Centre for Ukrainian and Canadian Folklore (Kule Folklore Centre), the Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives (BMUFA), two endowed research chairs – the Huculak Chair of Ukrainian Culture and Ethnography, est. 1994, and the Kule Chair of Ukrainian Ethnography, est. 2004 – and, importantly, the Friends of the Ukrainian Folklore Centre, a community-based non-profit society dedicated to supporting the work of the Ukrainian folklore professors, researchers, and students. Backed by nine strong endowments, the above-listed organizations have helped the University of Alberta to achieve its reputation as one of the leading centres in the field of folkloristics in Canada and abroad. It is consoling to know that long after his retirement and despite health limitations, Bohdan was able to participate in and thoroughly enjoy the life of the Ukrainian folklore program he had built, and to witness its many successes.
As a scholar, Bohdan Medwidsky is recognized in the field of folklore studies for his wide-ranging contributions and publications highlighting Ukrainian Canadian folklore – especially Ukrainian oral folklore on the prairies and the history of Ukrainian folkloristics – and for collaborative projects that he initiated with many partners in Ukraine. In his scholarly work he was consciously focused on bringing together two distinct intellectual traditions, one in Western academia and the other in Ukraine, striving to bridge the gap between the two scholarly worlds and to bring knowledge about Ukrainian Canadians and their folk culture back to their historic homeland.
To make such an impressive impact in the academic domain would not have been possible if Dr. Medwidsky had focused only on folkloric research and teaching and not on the world outside of academia. So many of us who studied under him and worked with him as a colleague will remember and cherish Bohdan’s erudite knowledge of Ukrainian and Slavic cultures, his keen awareness of local and global political affairs, his passionate commitment to strong university-community relations, and his deft ability to build bridges across political divides – all for the benefit of Ukrainian folklore studies at the University of Alberta.
Dr. Medwidsky’s talents in relationship-building were unmatched, benefitting countless individuals on many levels. Rather frail in appearance, in Bohdan’s body lived an unparalleled strength and contagious spirit that could move mountains, inspire, and lead colleagues and students towards important and ambitious goals. He mentored and led with an unmistakable “Medwidsky touch,” making his unassuming ways his trademark in leadership. I remember vividly our first meeting in August 1990 in downtown Kyiv, when Bohdan arrived to Ukraine’s capital to take part in the first world congress of the newly established International Association of Ukrainian Studies. I did not know at the time that Bohdan had been instrumental in establishing the association, and he evidently did not need to present himself as a very important person. Instead of advertising himself and his work in the early 1990s on mobilizing Ukrainian studies into a global intellectual movement, he took great interest in my stories about folk architecture and other folk traditions of the Kyiv region, as I had just wrapped up a summer of fieldwork as a young research associate at the National Museum of Folk Architecture and Folkways. Medwidsky was genuinely keen to discuss this young Ukrainian researcher’s fieldwork at length, and that made a profound impact on me. When I started my M.A. studies in Ukrainian folklore under Bohdan’s supervision in 1992, I did not know that the Graduate Fellowship that I had been awarded was endowed from the Wasyl and Anna Kuryliw Fund, recently secured for the University of Alberta by Dr. Medwidsky himself. Bohdan suggested that I write a letter of thanks to the Kuryliws and I did, learning along the way important lessons of gratitude and reciprocity in university-community relations, Medwidsky style.
Bohdan personally mentored many students and young colleagues. His mentorship style was warm and subtle, and to each of us he found a unique approach, allowing his students to grow in the direction they wanted. In his office on the third floor of the U of A’s Arts and Convocation building, the desk fully covered in layers upon layers of documents, a newly arrived student could encounter visiting scholars from Europe, prairie town museum workers, or local politicians-turned-folklore-students, and they would often be welcomed to join the ongoing conversation, no matter the topic. Dr. Medwidsky’s students thrived in this environment and grew both professionally and personally.
As many of his students arrived from afar, Bohdan also made sure that they were settled, secure, and fed, so that they could focus on their studies. He would take us out and introduce us to the local Ukrainian community, he would share his friendships with us, and his friends would join him in looking after us. His mentorship was unimposing but impactful, and over the years, so many of us benefited from and appreciated his graceful presence in our lives, not only in our scholarly pursuits. It was perhaps only after I graduated with my own doctorate and followed in Dr. Medwidsky’s footsteps by entering academia that I was able to fully appreciate his impact on me as a scholar and university teacher. Alongside his incredible accomplishment of building virtually the entire field of Ukrainian folk studies in western Canada, Dr. Medwidsky launched many of us into the world of Ukrainian studies as professional ethnographers, researchers, and educators.
Bohdan’s students, followers, and admirers continue his work today, and I hope that he is still able to see it from where his blessed soul abides these days. Dr. Medwidsky, you are missed so profoundly, and by so many. Eternal memory – vichnaia pam′iat!