Konowal's regimental headquarters votes against trilingual memorial (09/15/96)

Konowal's regimental headquarters votes against trilingual memorial

by Christopher Guly

OTTAWA - The headquarters of Victoria Cross winner Filip Konowal's regiment in British Columbia has refused to erect a trilingual marker in his honor.

The senate of the Royal Westminster Regiment recently voted to cancel plans to unveil an English-, French- and Ukrainian-language plaque memorializing the only Ukrainian Canadian to obtain the military prize.

Instead, the regiment will install two English-only plaques in its New Westminster, British Columbia, armory next May. One will honor World War I veteran Mr. Konowal; the other will honor the regiment's other V.C. winner who served during World War II.

Col. William McKinney, honorary colonel of the Royal Westminster Regiment and chairman of the senate that voted against the trilingual memorial, told Canada's national daily newspaper, The Globe and Mail, that all public plaques in the Vancouver suburb are written in English only.

"We're not anti-Ukrainian, we're not anti-French," he said. "We're a proud Canadian regiment and have been since 1863. We're not a bigoted regiment. We are anything but ... It's just that we are 99.9 percent English in this city."

However, Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk, spokesperson for the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCCLA) that organized similar commemorative projects in honor of Mr. Konowal in Toronto and Ottawa, called the West Coast's decision an example of "racism."

The former president of the Royal Westminster Regiment Association who proposed the New Westminster proposal also expressed disappointment in his colleagues' rejection of the trilingual Konowal memorial.

Jerry Gangur said that while members of his association supported the idea, the former commanding officers who comprise the regimental senate rejected it. In voting nay, Mr. Gangur acknowledged to The Globe and Mail that "a lot of the things said really hurt."

On August 21, the Royal Canadian Legion's Konowal Branch 360 in Toronto unveiled its own trilingual plaque honoring Mr. Konowal. Both Branch 360 and the UCCLA offered to cover the costs of erecting a similar plaque in New Westminster.

Canadian Defense Minister David Collenette paid tribute to the Ukrainian Canadian war hero at the Toronto ceremony and at a similar memorial held in Ottawa on July 15.

There are plans to erect another historical marker in Mr. Konowal's home town, Kudkiv, Ukraine.

King George V personally conferred the Victoria Cross, the British Commonwealth's most prestigious medal of bravery, on Mr. Konowal in London on October 15, 1917. Mr. Konowal, then 29, became only one of 93 Canadians to ever receive the V.C. since it was established by Queen Victoria during the Crimean War in 1856.

Following his military career, Mr. Konowal worked as a janitor on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. He died in 1959 at the age of 72, and is buried in Ottawa's historic Notre Dame Cemetery, where a new upright marker, donated by Veterans Affairs Canada, adorns his grave.