CANADA COURIER: A Ukrainian by a different name (03/24/96)

CANADA COURIER

by Christopher Guly

A Ukrainian by a different name

Apparently, Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow likes to have fellow Ukrainian Canadian friends in high places.

From 1988 to 1994, medical physicist Sylvia Fedoruk occupied the lieutenant governor's chair in the Prairie province of 1 million people. Since 1994, it has been John Edward Neil Wiebe.

Although Canada's prime minister actually recommends the vice-regal appointment to the queen - since the lieutenant governor is constitutional representative of the crown - a provincial premier is expected to put forward a name. Old pals from their days at the University of Saskatchewan, Premier Romanow and Lieutenant Governor Wiebe have known each other for a long time - and they knew of their Ukrainian bond.

The name, Fedoruk, like Romanow, is an easy clue to heritage. With "Wiebe," it took some digging on the part of Saskatchewan's 18th lieutenant governor to uncover the Ukrainian connection. Already, the word is out.

When Ukraine's new ambassador to Canada, Volodymyr Furkalo, presented his diplomatic credentials to Governor General Romeo LeBlanc on February 14, Mr. LeBlanc was quick to point out the presence of the Ukrainian Canadian lieutenant governor from Saskatchewan in the audience.

In a telephone interview from his office in Regina, Lieutenant Governor Wiebe said he knew of his Ukrainian roots ever since he was a child growing up in Herbert, a town in southwestern Saskatchewan. Eight years ago, he learned a lot more about those roots when he found his great-grandfather's passport collecting dust in an attic.

As far as he can determine, the 59-year-old lieutenant governor's paternal great-great-grandfather, Jacob Wiebe, a Mennonite, left Holland for southern Russia in the late 1790s. He had received a parcel of land as a part of a settlement incentive from Catherine II. Jacob Wiebe married a Russian woman and raised a family in the town of Molochanks. Jacob's son, Jacob A. Wiebe, left the area and moved to the Crimea around 1850.

"Today, the region where Jacob Wiebe lived is part of Ukraine," said Lieutenant Governor Wiebe.

Eventually, the Wiebes left the Crimea for Kansas, where they lived before settling in Saskatchewan at the end of the 19th century.

After taking courses in arts, science and business administration at the University of Saskatchewan, the future lieutenant governor married a Welsh Canadian, Ann Lewis, in 1961. The two became farmers.

"Although the Wiebes were always farmers, neither my paternal grandfather nor my father worked in farming. I picked up the ball," said Lieutenant Governor Wiebe.

From 1971 to 1978, he served as a Liberal member of the Saskatchewan legislature for the Morse constituency, which incorporates Herbert. On May 31, 1994, Mr. Wiebe became his home province's lieutenant governor.

Getting to that office involved meeting Queen Elizabeth II.

"My wife and I had a wonderful experience when we met the queen," recalled Lieutenant Governor Wiebe. "We were only allotted 20 minutes with her, but, this Prairie boy must be fairly long-winded, because we spent over 35 minutes with her majesty. It was like the three of us sitting there in front of a fireplace talking."

What did the crown's Saskatchewan rep talk about with the queen?

"We're not allowed to talk about what we discuss privately with the queen outside of Buckingham Palace," said Lieutenant Governor Wiebe. "So, of course, realizing that, as soon as we got to our hotel room, I went and wrote everything down that I could remember, and now have it stored in a safety deposit box. After the queen passes away, and enough time has passed, my [three] grandchildren will be able to know what their grandpa talked to the queen about."

Despite his position of diplomatic neutrality, Lieutenant Governor Wiebe admits he's sympathetic to Queen Elizabeth's latest headaches over the divorce settlement involving the couple who were originally supposed to assume the throne. "I'm a strong family person, and believe a family is the richest blessing an individual can ever have. It's always very sad when you see a family break up such as this. The queen herself must be facing enormous personal pressure and strain. I think it's probably because of her influence that the marriage stayed together for as long as it did."

After going to London to visit the queen and going to Wales to visit some ancestral places claimed by his wife, Lieutenant Governor and Mrs. Wiebe plan to make a heritage pilgrimage to Ukraine in the next 18 months.

But even before he goes, Lieutenant Governor Wiebe is already talking like a proud Ukrainian son.

"Ukrainians are the second-largest ethnic group in Saskatchewan after the Germans," he boasted. "With the English and French at the bottom of the province's ethnic groups by population, I would dare say Saskatchewan is the most multicultural province in Canada."

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