Eugene Deslaw (real name Ievhen Slabchenko) was born on December 8, 1898 in the village of Tahancha, Tahancha volost, Kaniv povit, Kyiv gubernia, Russian Empire (currently Ukraine). Appointed to the post of Ukrainian diplomatic courier in Europe by the Directory of the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR) in 1920, he remained in Europe after the UNR diplomatic missions were disbanded. Deslaw spent the remainder of his life in Paris (1925-1939), Madrid (1939-1953), and Nice (1953-1966), where he became a prominent figure in the cultural life of the Ukrainian émigré community. He studied international law at the universities of Prague and Berlin and at the Sorbonne in Paris. In France he adopted a new name – Eugene Deslaw – and married a local woman. During the interwar years Deslaw became involved in French avant-garde cinema, making a notable contribution to the genre. He directed the following short films: La marche des machines (March of the machines, 1928), La nuit electrique (Electrical nights, 1929), Montparnasse (1931), Revelation (1948), and Vision Fantastique (Fantastic Vision, 1957). After the invention of the sound film in the late 1920s, Deslaw lost no time in experimenting with this technique in his movie Robots. A highlight in his career, came in 1938-1939, when the 1936 French feature film La Guerre des gosses (The Children’s War, a.k.a. Generals Without Buttons) directed by Jacques Daroy, with Deslaw as his assistant director, won the 1938 National Board of Review Top Foreign Language Film award and then launched New York City television's first International Film Festival. In the 1950s Deslaw began working on French television and ended his career there as an archivist.
Deslaw’s accomplishments extend beyond the sphere of filmmaking. He was very active in Western Europe as a propagandizer of things Ukrainian. During the war he became involved in the Ukrainian Red Cross to help Ukrainian refugees. After the war he continued helping Ukrainians in the DP camps by getting them jobs so that they could avoid deportation to the USSR. In the 1950s Deslaw began collecting Ukrainian materials and archives. In 1954 he compiled a Ukrainian film archive in Nice and organized a display of Ukrainian ceramics in Cannes. A decade later, in 1964, he completed a manuscript Dyplomatychna Istoriia Ukrainy (Diplomatic History of Ukraine). Unlike most Ukrainians who lived in the West after the revolution, Eugene Deslaw (Ievhen Slabchenko) made a name for himself outside Ukrainian circles. Deslaw died on September 10, 1966 in Nice, France.
For more information about Deslaw see Jaroslaw Zurowsky “Ievhen Deslav: A Forgotten Ukrainian Filmmaker” in Journal of Ukrainian Studies IX (2) (Winter 1984), 87-92.

William Ewaskiw (Vasyl’ Ivas’kiv) was born on October 3, 1908 in Ternopil, Crownland of Galicia, Austro-Hungarian Empire (currently Ukraine) to Tetiana Havrylyshyn and Mykhailo Ewaskiw. Shortly thereafter, the Ewaskiw family immigrated to Canada and settled in Winnipeg’s North End immigrant quarter. William was educated in local schools. In 1936 he married Kathleen Peterson and found employment as a guard at the Provincial Gaol in Headingley, Manitoba. He spent the next 37 years working in various capacities for the provincial correctional and security services.
In the mid-1920s he started his life-long association with the Canadian Ukrainian Institute Prosvita (CUIP), located at the corner of Pritchard Avenue and Arlington Street in the North End. He served as secretary in 1930-36, and as president in 1947 and again in 1950-53. In this capacity, he championed the ideals of good Ukrainian Canadian citizenship. He was one of the organizers of the CUIP’s first athletic committee, which in 1925 established the Canadian Ukrainian Athletic Club (CUAC). He organized winning sports teams such as the All Stars Football Club; youth groups such as the Young People’s Club; and he promoted and managed the Institute Prosvita Dramatics Club, producing annual vaudeville revues during the 1930s and 1940s. Ewaskiw was a member of Blessed Virgin Mary Ukrainian Catholic Church parish, the St. Nicholas Mutual Benefit Association of Canada, and the Manitoba Government Employees Association. William Ewaskiw died on October 7, 2001 in Winnipeg.

Donna Grescoe was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba on 17 November 1927 and began playing the violin at the age of five. She gained early renown for her abilities and at age 14 was described as a “genius” by British pianist, composer, and Royal College of Music professor Arthur Benjamin (1893-1960), an adjudicator at the Manitoba Musical Festival. Three years earlier, as an 11-year-old, Donna won a $5,000 scholarship to the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago (1938-1939) and also studied briefly with Mischa Mischakoff (1895-1981), concertmaster of the NBC Symphony Orchestra, in New York City. While in New York Donna performed on the Major Bowes Amateur Hour, American radio’s most popular talent show, and at the Ukrainian American Festival, part of the 1939 New York World’s Fair. In the fall of 1943, more than one year after a benefit concert organized by the publishers of the Winnipeg Evening Tribune financed the creation of the Donna Grescoe Educational Trust Fund, Donna resumed her studies in New York City. This time she spent four years (1943-1947) studying with violinist Mischel Piastro (1891-1970), a prominent concertmaster and conductor, with little teaching experience.

Donna’s professional career as a concert violinist was launched on 1 October 1946 before a sold-out house of 4,500 at the Winnipeg Civic Auditorium. Her New York City debut at Town Hall on 3 February 1947 was attended by representatives of Winnipeg’s political and business elite. A year later, on 30 January 1948, Donna performed at Carnegie Hall. She would go on a concert tour of Canada in 1948-49, and during her early career performed with renowned groups such as the Toronto and Montreal Symphony Orchestras. Despite her early success, however, she received few opportunities to perform on stage in concert. Refusing to remain idle, in 1953 she began to perform at nightclubs. She would later play at the Canadian National Exhibition and on television, including Toast of the Town hosted by Ed Sullivan in 1955. She married Bjorn Guillichsen later that same year and gave her last solo performance in 1959. She would then move back to Winnipeg and briefly perform with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra from 1974-1979. Following her concert career Donna also became a founding member of the Manitoba Conservatory of Music and Arts and, in addition, also became one of its teachers. She also commissioned fourteen musical compositions. In 1988 she would retire from teaching and also married again, this time to cellist Charles Dojack. She died in Richmond, British Columbia on 17 August 2012.

Michael Hethman (Mykhailo Het’man) was born on September 14, 1893 in Zaliztsi, Zboriv county, Crownland of Galicia, Austro-Hungarian Empire (currently Ukraine). During the Ukrainian Revolution (1917-1921) he served with the Ukrains’ki Sichovi Stril’tsi (Ukrainian Sich Riflemen). During the 1920s he immigrated to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada and became active in the conservative Ukrainian Hetmanite or Monarchist movement, which was dedicated to the restoration of a Ukrainian Hetman state under the authoritarian rule of General Pavlo Skoropads’kyi. From 1927 he was on the Supreme Council of the Ukrainian Sporting Sitch Association of Canada, a.k.a. Canadian Sitch Organization (Kanadiis’ka Sichova Orhanizatsiia), the movement’s first Canadian embodiment, and on the editorial board of the association’s Winnipeg newspaper Kanadiis’ka Sich (Canadian Siege) (1928-1930). From 1932 through 1937 he was Commander-in-Chief (holovnyi oboznyi) of the United Hetman Organization (Soiuz Het’mantsiv Derzhavnykiv), as the movement now styled itself. Concurrently he devoted himself to journalism, editing the UHO’s weekly Ukrains’kyi robitnyk (Ukrainian Toiler) in Toronto. Hethman died on February 2, 1981 in Toronto.

Dokia (Dokiia) Humenna was born on March 10, 1904, in Zhashkiv, Tarashcha povit, Kyiv gubernia, Russian Empire (currently Ukraine) to Dariia Kravchenko and Kuz’ma Humennyi. She graduated with a literature degree from the Institute of People’s Education in Kyiv in 1926. Her first literary sketch, U Stepu (In the Steppe) was published in 1924, and thereafter her prose appeared in major Soviet Ukrainian literary journals. Stalinist terror prevented her from publishing during the 1930s. In 1937 she participated in an archaeological field school at the Trypillian culture site of Khalep-ia under the supervision of Tetiana Passek. This experience, as well as Ukrainian wedding traditions, inspired Romashky na Skhylakh (Daisies on the Hill). Humenna also drew inspiration from Ukrainian archaeology and prehistory, Ukrainian folk traditions for some of her other works, including Velykyi Tsabe (The Big Shot), and Mana (Delusion). Topics of love and romance are explored in Humenna’s novel Mana. Epizod iz Zhyttia Ievropy Kryts’koi (An Episode in the Life of Europa of Crete) was also drawn from prehistory, including Greek mythology.
During World War II Humenna escaped to the western Ukrainian city of L’viv where she contributed her prose to the periodic press. Emigrating after the war, she lived in Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Austria and Germany where she began her famous tetralogy, Dity Chumats’koho Shliakhu (Children of the Milky Way), which she finished after moving to New York City. The book’s themes included a critique of 1920-1930s literary life in the Soviet Union. “Materialy do romanu Hnizdo nad bezodneiu” (Materials for the novel Nest over the Abyss) was the basis for her novel Khreshchatyi iar (Kyiv 1941-43): Roman-khronika (Decussate Ravine [Kyiv 1941-43]: A Novel-Chronicle) describing Kyiv under German occupation in the early months of the invasion. While in the DP camps she became a member of the literary and artistic organization “Mystets’kyi Ukrains’ky Rukh” (MUR).
Humenna became an American citizen in 1959. She continued to write in the United States, publishing 15 books, including Vichni Vohni Al’berty (Eternal Flames of Alberta), travel reflections after visiting Alberta, as well as contributing to journals and collections. Her main themes were feminism, prehistoric life, mythology and archaeology. Her works criticized the Soviet and Nazi regimes, and endorsed Ukrainian independence. Humenna died in New York on April 4, 1996.
For more information on Humenna and some of the works in the fonds see two articles by Myroslav Shkandrij: “Dokia Humenna’s Representation of the Second World War in her Novel and Diary” in Harvard Ukrainian Studies 32-33 (2011-2014), 665-679; and “Dokia Humenna’s Depiction of the Second World War and the OUN in Khreshchatyi iar: How Readers Responded” in East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies III (1) (2016), 89-109.

Born 23 February 1917 to Ann and Martin Kuch, Peter Kuch was an editorial cartoonist and freelance commercial artist known for his portrait and landscape works which were exhibited in solo and group shows. In addition, Kuch contributed illustrations to several local and community publications which included The Flying Ship and Other Ukrainian Folk Tales (1975) aimed at children and The Ukrainian Canadians: A History (1975), among others. He graduated from St. John’s Technical High School in 1933 and later trained for four years under Alexander Musgrove, founder of the Winnipeg School of Fine Arts. He would then go on to teach at the Saturday Morning Art School. He flew in the Royal Canadian Air Force starting in 1942 as a commissioned Flight Officer during the Second World War. After being discharged in 1945 Kuch joined the Winnipeg Free Press in 1947, working in the art department and taking over as editorial cartoonist in 1952 following the retirement of Arch Dale. He would hold the position until his death on 14 June 1980. In addition to publishing two collections of cartoons, one titled Dief: The Incredible Chief (1977) featuring material from across 25 years depicting and lampooning John Diefenbaker, his cartoons, oil and pastel, and watercolour works have been included in solo and group exhibitions in Canada, the Untied States, and across Europe. In recognition of his work he received the Citizen’s Award of Merit of the City of Winnipeg in 1970. Kuch gifted the fonds to Oseredok in 1980.

Jacob Maydanyk (1891-1984), the sole proprietor of the Providence Church Goods store, and he was a remarkable artist: writer, poet, cartoonist, iconographer, and socio-political activist. Maydanyk started his artistic career as an illustrator and caricaturist in the local press. Soon after he created his main satirical character Vuyko Shteef Tabachniuk (Uncle Steef Tobacco) who featured in a humorous almanac published by Maydanyk (ca. 1918-1930). The character of Vuyko Shteef was very popular with the contemporary Ukrainian immigrants which prompted Maydanyk to publish a comic book dedicated to adventures of Shteef Tabachniuk (1930). It is argued that Maydanyk’s comic book is the first comic book to be published in Canada. It sold ten thousand copies and was republished in 1974. Maydanyk was well known in the Ukrainian community and beyond for his iconographic work. In 1977 there was an exhibit of Maydanyk’s work at Oseredok Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Center.

Cornelius (Kornylo) Prodan was born on September 11, 1888 in Huliaipole, Huliaipole volost, Oleksandrovs’kyi povit, Katerynoslav gubernia, Russian Empire (currently Ukraine). He immigrated to Canada in 1907, completed a teacher’s course at the Ruthenian Training School in Brandon, and taught in Ukrainian-English bi-lingual public schools in Manitoba prior to 1916. In 1921, he completed a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture degree at the University of Manitoba, becoming the first university-educated Ukrainian agronomist in Canada. He married Paraskeviia Malkovych in 1921 and worked as an agricultural representative (agronomist) with the Manitoba Department of Agriculture until his retirement in 1959.
In 1925 Prodan helped found the St. Raphael’s Ukrainian Immigrants Welfare Association of Canada (Tovarystvo Opiky nad Ukrains’kymy Pereselentsiamy im. Sviatoho Rafaila) and was its president for nearly all of the time of its existence. In 1931-1932 he traveled to Europe in particular to eastern Galicia, then part of Poland (currently Ukraine) as the St. Raphael Society’s representative. His experience was detailed in Podorozh do Ievropy (The Voyage to Europe, Winnipeg, 1933). For over fifty years Prodan contributed articles to Ukrainian newspapers and publications providing agricultural knowledge and information about current practices to his fellow compatriots. Cornelius Prodan died in 1973 in Calgary.

The Providence Church Goods store was founded by Jacob Maydanyk on the advice of Ukrainian Catholic bishop Mykyta Budka in 1914 in Winnipeg, MB. Jacob Maydanyk was a sole proprietor of the store from 1914 to 1979. The store relocated several times until its permanent location at 710 Main Street, Winnipeg. Maydanyk was operating the store with the help of several employees.

The store goods were supplied both domestically and internationally. The biggest domestic suppliers were located in Montreal, QC. Most international goods were imported from the USA. Specialty goods such as reproductions of fine art, textiles, books, etc. were imported from France, Italy, Germany, Czeck Republic, Ukraine and Japan.
The Providence Church Goods store had a wide assortment of merchandise ranging from candles and incense to church bells. The store was selling ready-to-buy items as well as custom made goods. Ready-to-buy small and popular items such as coal, frankincense, etc. were typically available at the store, while bigger and specialty items such as chandeliers or silk had to be ordered from the store’s suppliers. The custom made goods such as tabernacles, icons, banners, iconostasis, ecclasiastical vestments, etc. were made either by Maydanyk and his employees or outsourced to local craftsmen and artists.

As part of the store's specialty services, Maydanyk painted more than a dozen churches. Here is a list of some of them:
Holy Ghost Ukrainian Catholic Church in Winnipeg, MB;
St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church in the Rural Municipality of Fisher, MB;
Blessed Assumption Ukrainian Catholic Church in Meleb, RM of Armstrong;
Holy Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ Ukrainian Catholic Church in Winnipegosis, RM of Mossey River;
Immaculate Conception Ukrainian Catholic Church in Winnipegosis, RM of Mossey River;
Blessed Virgin Mary Ukrainian Catholic Church in Toutes Aides, RM of Lakeshore;
St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church in Dolyny, Municipality of Harrison Park;
St. Michael's Ukrainian Catholic Church in Olha, MB;
Saint Nicholas Orthodox Church in Sandy Lake, MB;
Elijah the Prophet Romanian Orthodox Church in Lennard, MB.
The typical store's clients were parish priests and members of Parish Councils from various Eastern Christian denominations within predominantly Ukrainian communities as well as Romanian and Russian. The majority of clients were located in Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan and other Canadian provinces. There were also some international orders from the USA.

Jacob Maydanyk (1891-1984), the sole proprietor of the Providence Church Goods store, and he was a remarkable artist: writer, poet, cartoonist, iconographer, and socio-political activist. Maydanyk started his artistic career as an illustrator and caricaturist in the local press. Soon after he created his main satirical character Vuyko Shteef Tabachniuk (Uncle Steef Tobacco) who featured in a humorous almanac published by Maydanyk (ca. 1918-1930). The character of Vuyko Shteef was very popular with the contemporary Ukrainian immigrants which prompted Maydanyk to publish a comic book dedicated to adventures of Shteef Tabachniuk (1930). It is argued that Maydanyk’s comic book is the first comic book to be published in Canada. It sold ten thousand copies and was republished in 1974. Maydanyk was well known in the Ukrainian community and beyond for his iconographic work. In 1977 there was an exhibit of Maydanyk’s work at Oseredok Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Center.

In 1947 the Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Centre (Oseredok) in Winnipeg sponsored a memoir writing competition. Participants were invited to submit memoirs related to the major events of the first half of the twentieth century in Ukraine. The memoir competition or “Konkurs Spohadiv” was announced in the Winnipeg weekly newspaper Novyi Shliakh (The New Pathway) which undertook to publish the winning entry. More than 60 memoirs were entered into the competition, the vast majority submitted by Ukrainians residing in Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Germany and Austria.
The memoirs submitted as part of the competition constitute an important supplement to our knowledge of twentieth century events, especially the immediate pre-war and World War II era. They represent one of the earliest collections of Ukrainian memoirs concerning World War II, the closest in time to the events depicted. Written shortly after the war, most of the memoirs were produced by authors who had already spent about two years in DP camps. The camps were a place of intense interaction among Ukrainian refugees and forced labourers, a place where they could tell stories to each other and work out narratives together. The displaced persons were also aware that they were being screened to determine their activities during the war, and that many, especially former Soviet citizens, faced the prospect of forced repatriation to the Soviet Union.
The winning entry, Fedir Pihido-Pravoberezhnyi’s “P-iat’ rokiv: ‘Velikaia Otechestvennaia Voina SSSR,’ roky 1941-45-yi" has been published twice:
Fedir Pihido-Pravoberezhnyi. Velyka vitchyzniana viina. Politychno-vyzvol’na biblioteka, ch. 2 (6). Winnipeg: Vydannia “Novoho shliakhu,” 1954. 229 p.;
Fedir Pihido-Pravoberezhnyi. Velyka vitchyzniana viina: spohady ta rozdumy ochevydtsia. Kyiv: “Smoloskyp,” 2002. 287 p. (With an introduction and annotations by Roman Serbyn and Iurii Shapoval).
For more information about the “Konkurs Spohadiv” and an analysis of some of the memoirs see John-Paul Himka, “Ukrainian Memories of the Holocaust: The Destruction of Jews as Reflected in Memoirs Collected in 1947” in Canadian Slavonic Papers LIV (3-4) (September-December 2012), 427-442.