Danylo Luciuk was buried in Kingstonbut never, truly, left Ukraine. Dedicated to his homeland’s liberation he insisted Ukraine would, someday, recover its rightful place in Europe. With the Soviet Union’s collapse, in 1991, his faith was confirmed, even as his foes and other know-it-alls were proven wrong. Of course, today's Ukraine is not the country my father pined for. It is not, yet, free. He was reading the latest Internet reports from there only minutes before he died. Tato never gave up.
Born in Volosiv, a western Ukrainian village, Danylo scarcely knew his father, Dmytro, a conscript and POW who returned home years after the Great War. His mother, Evdokiya, was left alone and poor. So Danylo was schooled by a local Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest and a village teacher. From them he learned that only force of arms could free Ukraine. So he joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, first fighting Poles, then Soviets, and, finally, the Nazis. Betrayed by a Communist sympathizer, Danylo was in a cattle car being transported to the Soviet east, in late June 1941, when the Luftwaffe bombed the railroad. He escaped, aided, ironically enough, by a Polish train conductor.
Danylo spent the war years covertly provisioning units of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. When the Russians returned that made him a marked man, his only hope was to go into exile. He found asylum in a Displaced Persons camp, nearMunich. There he met Maria Makalo, a secretary and courier for the nationalist leadership. Danylo first spotted her near the English Gardens. Since his role was providing security for OUN headquarters, he approached her. They soon grew close. They would remain happily together until she died, in February 2010. InCanadathey would have two children, christened Lubomyr – meaning ‘Lover of Peace’ - and Nadia, or ‘Hope’ - for love, peace, and hope is what they found in Canada, for which they both remained, to the end, so very grateful.
In the DP camp Danylo learned watchmaking. In Kingston“Danny” found a fair boss and good work at Brock Jewellers. But he never forgot Ukraine. He set up the Kingston branch of the Canadian League for the Liberation of Ukraine, in 1953, in the living room of our home on Nelson Street and he was, for many decades, a most meticulous secretary-treasurer for St Michael’s Ukrainian Catholic parish and, later, the Ukrainian Canadian Club. His service to the Ukrainian hromada was recognized when he received the Mykola Mikhnovsky Medal of Merit, in March 2010.
Danylo hoped to live to 100, just as our remarkable parish priest, Father J C E Riotte, had. Perhaps because his life was so bound up with the careful measurement of time, Danylo actually did better, living 101 years, or 36,961 days, or 3,193,430,400 seconds, a good share of time on earth, if not always ‘good times.’
A few days before he died, his granddaughter, Kassandra, delivered happy news. She had just been accepted into the PhD program of theUniversity of Toronto’s History Department. The next day, however, he lamented whether he would live to her graduation. I reminded him he had said much the same thing when she started her Honours BA at Queen’s, and then got her MA there. Besides which, I said, who could say if either of us would even be alive by tomorrow? Wasn’t sharing welcome news in the here and now better? He laughed. He agreed knowing something for certain trumped worrying about what the future might hold. My last conversation with my father turned out to be a good one. I am consoled.
As I drove to the funeral home a few days later - thinking myself stoic, manfully in charge - I was overwhelmed, suddenly, with a near-paralyzing grief. I turned on the radio, praying for distraction. On came a song I’ve never heard before, by an artist I didn’t recognize, sung in a country/blue grass style I don’t find appealing. Yet its words pierced my anguish – “I am gone now…but there are still wrongs to right, battles to fight…. so carry on, carry on.” That’s what Danylo did. He righted wrongs, then carried on.
As we buried our father we sprinkled earth from Volosiv over his casket. Now he rests in peace, in Canada, and in Ukraine.
This is an abridged version of the eulogy delivered by Professor Lubomyr Luciuk at his father’s funeral, in St Mary’s Cathedral,Kingston,Ontario, on Thursday, 20 February 2014.
