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Authority record
Romankiw, Lubomyr
Person · born 1931

Lubomyr T. Romankiw was born in Zhovkva, Ukraine on April 17, 1931. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and his master's and doctoral degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Romankiw joined IBM in 1962, where he remains today as an IBM Fellow and Researcher at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center.

He is recognized for his research with magnetic materials, reflective displays and copper plating. Romankiw is listed as the inventor or co-inventor on over 65 US patents, including magnetic thin-film storage heads (co-invented with David Thompson in the 1970s). He has also authored over 150 articles and edited numerous volumes of technical symposia.

Several organizations have recognized and awarded Romankiw's work such as the Electrochemical Society, Society of Chemical Industry, and the IEEE. In 1994 he received the IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award, and in 2012, he was an inductee in the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Honchar, Ivan
Person · 1911-1993

Ivan Honchar was a prominent Ukrainian activist, sculptor, artist. He was born on January 27 1911 in Lyp'ianka village of Kirovohrad region (today the village is part of the Cherkasy region). He studied art, drawing and sculpture the Kyiv Art and Industrial Professional School and graduated as a sculptor-decorator. While in school, he was renting a room from Maksym Korostash, a musicologist and folklorist. There he met Klymentii Kvitka and Olena Pchilka.

Honchar created numerous sculptures and monuments in many cities and villages across Ukraine. In 1960s-80s he created art albums with photographs and descriptions of folk costumes from different regions of Ukraine, architecture, folk art. Honchar did ethnographic fieldwork, and in 1970-1993 he created 18 volumes of historical-ethnographic albums "Ukraina i ukraintsi" [Ukraine and Ukrainians] based on photographs of the beginning of the 20th century and historical and ethnographic research.

He passed away June 18, 1993. In September of that year, a museum named after Ivan Honchar was created in Kyiv. His private collection of folk art became a foundation for the new museum. In 1999, the museum was renamed the Ukrainian Centre of Folk Culture "Ivan Honchar Museum". In 2009, it became a national museum.

Klymasz, Robert Bohdan
Person · born 1936

Dr. Robert Bohdan Klymasz was born in Toronto, Ontario in 1936. In 1957, he obtained a B.A. from the University of Toronto, and later studied at Charles University, Prague (1952), University of Manitoba (M.A., 1960), Harvard University (1960-1962), and Indiana University (Ph.D., 1971). He married Shirley Zaporozan in 1963, and they have two daughters, Andrea and Lara. In 1967, he joined the Canadian Museum of Civilization and served as its first programme director for Slavic and East European Studies. Throughout his career, he has held several prestigious positions, including the executive director of the Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Centre (Oseredok) in Winnipeg, visiting associate professor in Folklore for Memorial University's Department of Folklore, visiting professor in Folklore and Slavic Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, and visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School.

In 1993, as a curator with the Museum of Civilization, Dr. Klymasz began a comprehensive study on community life in Gimli, Manitoba. Fieldwork on this project began in 1993 and continued on an annual basis every summer until the summer of 2001. The project, which became known as the Gimli Community Research Project (G.C.R.P.), was meant to offer insight on what makes the Town of Gimli a safe and prosperous town in which to live. The early work was low-key in nature, focusing on the town's life and culture, for example, attending meetings of the town's council, various public forums, proceedings of the local public law court, and meetings of the Board for the New Iceland Heritage Museum. Gradually, the fieldwork shifted to monitoring phenomena that gave Gimli its "dreamtown" quality. The final report was completed in 2002 and was entitled ""Dream Town": Art and the Celebration of Place in Gimli, Manitoba."

Upon his retirement in 2000, he was named Curator Emeritus with the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Dr. Klymasz is a renowned expert on Ukrainian Canadian folklore, having extensively written, published, and lectured on this subject. His publications include An Introduction to the Ukrainian-Canadian Folksong Cycle (1970), Ukrainian Folklore in Canada (1980), '??Svieto': Celebrating Ukrainian-Canadian Ritual in East Central Alberta Through the Generations (1992), and The Icon in Canada (1996). Dr. Klymasz also published many reviews of books and exhibitions in Canada's Ukrainian and Icelandic ethnic press. He continues to pursue his recent interests with grants from the University of Alberta (CIUS) and the University of Manitoba (CUCS).

In 2004, he delivered a paper at the Congress of Humanities and Social Sciences in Winnipeg. Dr. Klymasz was awarded the Marius-Barbeau Prize by the Folklore Studies Association of Canada (Laval University) for his studies in Ukrainian Canadian Folklore. In 2005, he completed the Archival Research Project on Walter Klymkiw, the conductor of Koshetz Choir, titled "Playing around with Choir": the Correspondence and Papers of Walter P. Klymkiw. The manuscript is held at the University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections. Between 2006 and 2008, he completed several archival research projects including A priest, a maestro, a community: epistolary insights into the music culture of Winnipeg's Ukrainian community, 1936-1944 (2006-2007), Winnipeg Papers on Ukrainian Music (2008), Nuggets from the past: quotations on the Ukrainian experience in Canada (2007), Winnipeg Papers on Ukrainian Book Culture (2009), and Winnipeg Papers on Ukrainians and Aboriginals. In 2013 a Ukrainian translation of Klymasz's 1971 Indiana University PhD dissertation was published in Ukrainian, under the title, 'Ukrains'ka narodna kul'tura v kanads'kykh preriiakh' (Kyiv: Duliby, 2013) .

Goberman, David
Person · 1912-2003

A renown artist and photographer, David Goberman was born in 1912 in Minsk. He studies in the Leningrad Academy of Arts. He is especially famous for his photographs of Jewish tombstones and Hucul ceramics. In 1950s he travelled across Ukraine and Moldova and photographed material culture, cemeteries, everyday life, and people.

Sluzar, Wolodymyr
Person · 1923-1976

Rev. Wolodymyr Sluzar was born in Chunkiv, Bukovyna in 1895 and immigrated to Canada in 1923. He was ordained shortly after his arrival and served in several parishes in Saskatchewan before moving to Montreal to establish the first Ukrainian Orthodox parish in Eastern Canada. He retired in 1972 and died in December of 1976. As well as being an ordained priest, Rev. Sluzar was a choral conductor, and so his personal collection of sheet music is extensive.

Rev. Wolodymyr Sluzar was born in 1895 in a small village called in Chunkiv, Bukovyna. His educated parents sent him to a boarding school in Chernivsti where his musical talents soon became evident because he learned to play the violin and loved to sing in the school choir. Soon enough, he became the school choir conductor, which became his life long hobby. By 1914, Wolodymyr was 19 years old and was recruited into the Austro-Hungarian Army. He was enrolled by his superiors in the officers training school.

After the World War I, he joined the army of Western Ukraine — the Halyts'ki Sichovi Striltsi. He became a high ranking officer and fought for the freedom of Ukraine, which ended tragically, in failure. Even under these difficult circumstances, Sluzar started collecting Ukrainian music, secular, sacred, printed or hand copied. Future wife of Wolodymyr worked at the same army headquarters where he was stationed. They met and were married in 1920 with an honour army group in attendance. The war for Ukraine was drawing to an end. The Sluzars decided to return to Chernivtsi. There, Wolodymyr enrolled at the University Faculties of Law and Theology. Bukovyna became part of Romania, and authorities were quite hostile to Ukrainian patriots. The SLuzars decided to emigrate to Canada.

Soon after arriving, Wolodymyr made contact with the newly established Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada. After some further coaching and training, he was ordained into the priesthood in 1924. In 1926, he was assigned to go to Montreal to establish a new parish. In addition to his many new and arduous pastoral duties, his love of choral music quickly led to the establishment of a church choir. There was no lack of singers. Their repertoire grew quickly since Rev. Sluzar already had a fairly large collection of Ukrainian secular and sacral music. Whenever he had to travel to other large cities, he would return with more music to add to his collection. Montreal in the forties and beyond was a hive of activity with frequent patriotic concerts organized by the local branch of the Congress of Ukrainian Canadians.

Rev. Sluzar retired in 1972 and died December 26, 1976.

Hanchuk, Rena Jeanne
Person · born 1960

Rena Hanchuk was a graduate student in the Ukrainian Folklore Program at the University of Alberta. Her master thesis entitled "The World and Wax: Folk Psychology and Ukrainians in Alberta" was published as a book in 1999 by the Huculak Chair of Ukrainian Culture and Ethnography under the title "The World and Wax: A Medical Folk Ritual Among Ukrainians in Alberta". Rena lives in Edmonton and is very active in the Ukrainian community.

Semchishen, Orest
Person · born 1932

Orest Semchishen is widely recognized as one of Canada’s finest documentary photographers. He is best known for his photographs of Byzantine churches in rural areas of Alberta of which this collection is comprised.

Orest Semchishen was born at Mundare, Alberta in 1932). A radiologist by profession, Semchishen took up photography initially as a hobby. In the early 1970s, after taking University of Alberta extension classes, he turned to documentary work and since that time has continued to work in the classic documentary tradition. Probably the most important influence on his work is the American photographer Walker Evans, although Semchishen's vision has its own distinct personality and the wide-ranging scope of his work and its comprehensiveness recalls the achievement of the great French photographer Eugène Atget.

Beginning with a survey of Alberta's Byzantine rite churches that were a part of his Ukrainian heritage, Semchishen's oeuvre has expanded to encompass rural communities, city business districts and markets, ethnic groups, fur trappers and prairie farms. In the process he has developed an increasingly sophisticated vision and technique: his prints are marvels of brilliance and tonal balance. He has compiled an extraordinary record of Canadian life, centered on the Prairies but extending across the country. Semchishen no longer produces his photographic work making this collection even more valuable.

A resident of Edmonton, Orest Semchishen's works are represented in public collections including those of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Art Gallery of Alberta, The Glenbow Alberta Institute and the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. The Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, located in the nation's capital, is Canada's only federal institution devoted solely to the collection, exhibition and promotion of the photographic medium. As such, it is the country's foremost advocate of artistic and documentary photography.