Ivan Oziebko (Ozubko) and his wife Euphemia Harasyma, along with their two young daughters Mary and Annie, came to Canada from Stubno, Halychyna (Galicia), a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (from the territory of present-day Ukraine) in 1903. Three other relatives' families, including Ivan's father- and mother-in-law were accompanying them.
Ivan, a farmer by vocation, as well as a violin player, settled on their first homestead at Del Norte, near Innisfree, Alberta. Their family soon grew into nine individuals, including four sons (Joseph, Ivan, Vasyl and Michaeo) and three more daughters (Katie, Parascavia and Helen). Joseph, Parascavia (Jennie), Ivan (John, Jr.), and Michaelo (Mike) all eventually learned to play violin as well. Another son, Vasyl (William), who only also played violin a bit, was drawn more to the guitar and, eventually, the banjo.
In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, in order to help support the family, John, Jennie, Bill and Kashka (Katie, on the drums), formed a family musical group that played all manner of social occasions, including dances and weddings in the area. They proved to be an extremely popular depression band at a time when the need for public entertainment was deep and intense.
In the early 1940s sons John, Bill and Mike moved to Edmonton to find work. Very soon, John formed an orchestra that played regularly at the Blue Hall (a very public dance gathering place near downtown Edmonton), into the 1950s. For nearly a decade, the five-to seven-piece orchestra had no name, yet drew enthusiastic crowds to their dances because of the quality of their music. John ultimately named his group the Melody Kings in the early 1950s, and they moved to become a legendarily popular dance orchestra at the Ukrainian Centre Hall on 97th Street, and eventually at many Alberta communities.
The list of musicians who played with the Melody Kings in the early years featured John on violin and drums, brothers Mike and Jim Serink (saxophonists), Mike Ozipko (guitar), Peter Serink (accordion) and Steve Serink (drums). Over the decades some others of the many members of the band included: Bill Sabrowski (tenor saxophone), Mike Sabrowski (alto saxophone), Jim Strembitsky (saxophones), Bill Ozipko (banjo), Reuben Missal (accordion), Ed Wasyk (guitar), Eugene Warawa (saxophone), Nick Welleschuk (accordion), 'Smiling Charlie' Kaminsky (banjo) and Jerry Ozipko, John's son. The Melody Kings suddenly ended in February 1979 after more than thirty years when John Ozipko passed away from a massive heart attack just two days after the group played at the Norwood Legion.
Bohdan Medwidsky was born in 1936 in Stanislaviv in interwar Poland (present day Ivano-Frankivs'k in Ukraine) in the family of Konstantyn and Natalia (nee Lebedowych) Medwidsky. He was separated from his family at the age of 2, and grew up in Switzerland where he learned to speak French and German. When he was 12, he was reunited with his family in Vienne and that's where he first met his younger brother Wolodymyr. The family came to Canada on a ship from Hamburg to Quebec City as a post-WWII refugee in 1949. They settled in Toronto, where Bohdan's family operated a pharmacy. Both Bohdan and Wolodymyr were active in Plast, Ukrainian scouts organization. The family attended St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic church, a converted Presbyterian building, whose members were almost all also recent Ukrainian immigrants.
Bohdan attended Huron school in Toronto in his first year, then switched to Howard Park. He attended Humberside High School. He enjoyed history best among all his subjects. When he completed high school, Bohdan continued on to university. He was interested in furthering his Ukrainian studies, and chose that as his major field. He was quite committed to academics, and knew early that he wanted to continue into graduate school. His parents didn’t particularly push him to become a Ukrainianist, but neither did they discourage it.
Bohdan di his graduate studies at the University of Toronto. Toronto had a well developed Russian program, but little Ukrainian studies at that time. There were two graduate courses in Ukrainian literature, taught by Professor George Luckyj. Though Bohdan had declared a research interest in Ukrainian linguistics, he attended more classes on Russian literature than Ukrainian, and more on Ukrainian literature than linguistics. Professor Luckyj’s own research specialization dealt with Ukrainian literary politics in the early Soviet period. Bohdan’s classmate Danylo Struk pushed to be allowed to write his dissertation on a Ukrainian literature topic, rather than a Russian one, which in a way paved the way for Bohdan who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the language of Vasyl' Stefanyk's novels.
After a short teaching contract at Carlton University in Ottawa, he moved to Edmonton in 1971, when he received a teaching position at the University of Alberta. In 1977, he offered his first class in Ukrainian Folklore. Soon after, several class offerings grew into a graduate program in Ukrainian Folklore, third folklore program in Canada to offer both master's and PhD degrees. Medwidsky became the founder of the Ukrainian Folklore Archives and in 1989, established the Ukrainian Folklore Archives Endowment Fund.
Over the years, Dr. Medwidsky was very active in professional societies in Alberta, Canada, and abroad, as well as in numerous Ukrainian community organizations. In the late 1970s, he served to develop bilingual Ukrainian school programs in Alberta supported by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. He was a founding member of the Ministerial Advisory Board to the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village in 1982. Bohdan Medwidsky served on the board of the Friends of the Ukrainian Village Society, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, the Association of Ukrainian Writers Slovo, the Alberta Society for Advancement of Ukrainian Studies, the Ukrainian Pioneers Association of Alberta, the Alberta Ukrainian Commemorative Society, the Western Canadian Branch of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, and many other organizations.