Ukrainian community leaders roast one of their own, Bill Kereliuk (01/26/97)

Ukrainian community leaders roast one of their own, Bill Kereliuk

by Andrij Kudla Wynnyckyj
Toronto Press Bureau

TORONTO - Vasyl "Bill" Kereliuk, a fixture on the Ukrainian Canadian scene, was given a "roast" in anticipation of his 80th birthday at the downtown institution with which he has been most closely associated, the St. Vladimir Institute.

Mr. Kereliuk has been one of the Ukrainian Canadian community's "rainmakers" for as long as many can remember, through his ongoing involvement in the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and in the Ukrainian World Congress (and its previous incarnation, the World Congress of Free Ukrainians, WCFU).

Born in Insinger, Saskatchewan, on January 30, 1917, to a pioneer family, Mr. Kereliuk was called up to the Royal Canadian Air Force bomber squadron in 1941. While not flying submarine surveillance missions and air drops of Yugoslav partisans, he served as a liaison officer between the RCAF's Balkan Air Force headquarters and the so-called Russian Air Force Group. At war's end he was back in Canada as one of the North West Air Command's liaison officers for Lend-Lease shipments to the USSR.

It was in this capacity that Mr. Kereliuk acted as interpreter for Dmytro Manuilsky on the latter's return from the San Francisco United Nations organization meetings, where the erstwhile commissar acted as head of the Ukrainian delegation.

After war, he was posted as central section commander of the "Alaska Highway" telephone system stretching from Edmonton to Fairbanks, Alaska.

In 1949 Mr. Kereliuk was in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, as training coordinator for NATO air defense navigators, and in 1951 he was assigned to the Directorate of Air Intelligence in Ottawa, where he served as the director of its foreign languages school. For the succeeding 12 years, Mr. Kereliuk was frequently called upon to act as a translator and interpreter in talks between Canadian and Soviet government officials and aircraft design teams.

Active in the hotel business since three years before his retirement from active duty in 1963, Mr. Kereliuk subsequently moved to Toronto when he was asked to serve as the administrator of the St. Vladimir Institute's newly opened student residence in 1969.

Over the years, Mr. Kereliuk occupied myriad posts in the city's So-Use Ukrainian credit union and was active within the influential Ukrainian Self-Reliance League, the western Canadian-based Ukrainian Orthodox national organization. He was a long-time member of the WCFU Presidium (from 1973) and vice-chairman of its Famine Commission. He is currently president of the Ukrainian Orthodox Order of St. Andrew.

During the roast itself, held on November 30, 1996, and attended by about 200 people, veteran activist Alla Shklar served as master of ceremonies, marshaling a distinguished list of speakers who brought out a collection of chestnuts from the past, and put them into the fire - "mild, medium and hot," according to the program.

RCAF Brig. Gen. Joe Romanow (former deputy chief of staff at NATO Headquarters in Germany in 1971-1974, and a high-ranking Canadian National Defense official) recounted Mr. Kereliuk's cool handling of a hair-raising crash landing at an air force base in Windsor, Ontario.

Peter Smylski, another fellow member of the Ukrainian Canadian Servicemen's Association and a veteran St. Vladimir's activist, recalled that one could "expect anything from that Saskatchewan stubble-jumper."

UWC President Dr. Dmytro Cipywnyk said Mr. Kereliuk's ambition was quite evident "in his decision to be born in rural Saskatchewan." Dr. Cipywnyk praised the honoree's "obsessive compulsive behavior" that proved quite useful around the WCFU's offices. On a more serious note, he paid tribute to Mr. Kereliuk's tireless efforts in support of the International Commission of Inquiry on the Famine of 1932-1933.

The UWC's current chief financial officer, Bill Sametz, thanked Mr. Kereliuk for his assistance in reducing the budget deficit of the international umbrella organization, after having presided over the slide into debt.

Ihor Bardyn, president of the Chair of Ukrainian Studies Foundation, for whom Mr. Kereliuk also often acted as treasurer, rode the honoree for having retired so many times - "First in 1963, then in 1974, then in 1984, then in 1988 ... May you live to be 100 years old, with an extra year to repent, and retire."

Eugene Hontscharuk, now a member of St. Vladimir's board of directors, recalled being "the first, together with [Ukraine-based consultant] Boris Balan, to break a window at the institute" and Mr. Kereliuk's angry concern that they not bleed on the new carpet.

Dr. Eduard Burstynsky, professor of linguistics at the University of Toronto and St. Vlad's activist, read a tribute from Mr. Kereliuk's colleague Walter Iwanycky, and then offered his own spicier commentary drawn from experience in the institution's corridors of power.

"What Kereliuk doesn't know ain't knowledge," Dr. Burstynsky quipped. He added that volunteers who work at St. Vlad's fund-raising bingos commonly taunt those who become overly obsessed with detail by saying: "You're becoming another Bill Kereliuk."

Ukrainian Canadian Professional and Business Federation President Raya Shadursky, UCPB Association Toronto branch President Olya Kuplowska and Canada-Ukraine Chamber of Commerce President Gerald Fedchun regaled the audience with tales of student high jinks in the St. Vlad's residence's early years of hippies and "creature caretaking."

Mr. Fedchun's toast of thanks for Mr. Kereliuk's contributions to the institute and to the Ukrainian Canadian community in general prompted a generous standing ovation.

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