CANADA COURIER

by Christopher Guly

The suffering historian

Late one night a couple of months ago, I received a phone call. The man at the other end had obtained my telephone number from my mother in Winnipeg.

The caller identified himself as Michael Ewanchuk and he asked whether I had read any of his books. I confessed that I hadn't. He promised to send me one: "William Kurelek: The Suffering Genius."

Mr. Kurelek, who died of cancer 20 years ago at age 50, was one of the Ukrainian community's greatest gifts to Canada. His prairie scenes, filled with rich Ukrainian imagery, have earned Mr. Kurelek legendary status for their unique visual signature.

If I had the financial resources, I would pursue purchasing a Kurelek original. As an art lover, I certainly rank him among the greatest canvas masters of all time.

But, Mr. Kurelek lived a troubled life. Suffering from depression that led to a nervous breakdown, he spent several years in a London psychiatric institution during the 1950s where he underwent shock therapy. When he turned 30, Mr. Kurelek underwent a spiritual awakening and converted to Roman Catholicism (he grew up in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church).

To his enviable credit, Mr. Ewanchuk had snagged a comprehensive interview with Mr. Kurelek in Winnipeg, two years before the artist died. That interview is included in Mr. Ewanchuk's book in a question-answer format.

Discussing his feelings of being ostracized as a young man in Manitoba, Mr. Kurelek said "I got more and more pressure to be sociable, normal ... people were saying that I was sickly and disgraced them socially ... When I went to England finally to get my depression and my art attended to, I found the English very kind to me. A kind of gentlemanly tolerance which they had and which the Canadians didn't have. Whether they were of Ukrainian or English origin they were - life was so rough - still in a type of pioneer stage, they hadn't refined their sensibilities. I think today, if I were growing up as a boy in Canada, life would be easier."

Mr. Ewanchuk also includes a series of love letters Mr. Kurelek, then living in Winnipeg, wrote to Natalie Bilenky-Byrne in 1949, 13 years before Mr. Kurelek married Jean Andrews in 1962 and raised four children.

There's also a wonderful chapter in Mr. Ewanchuk's 124-page book that draws a comparison between Mr. Kurelek and English artist William Blake, who died 100 years before Mr. Kurelek's birth. Both men were angst-ridden, spiritually driven men.

Mr. Ewanchuk, 89, has a little bit of angst himself.

He has had to publish the Kurelek book, like the other eight he has written, himself. Among the others: a chronicle of the 1897-1910 migration of Ukrainian laborers to Hawaii and "Spruce, Swamp and Stone: A History of the Pioneer Ukrainian Settlements in the Gimli Area." Mr. Ewanchuk is now working on another book, which will look at the Ukrainian settlements east of the recently flood-ravaged Red River.

Though "Spruce, Swamp and Stone" made it through 14 reprints and sold more than 5,000 copies, the author has had trouble getting people to read his Ukrainian Canadian chronicles. "Ukrainians don't read, dog gone it," said Mr. Ewanchuk recently in a telephone interview from his home in Winnipeg.

"But I think the younger generation is beginning to get anxious about knowing more about their history. But even then, a lot of them want to know whether their father's name is mentioned in one of my books."

Still, he adds that many also write to him asking him questions about some aspect of Ukrainian Canadian history. "If anybody knows anything about settlements, I do," boasts Mr. Ewanchuk.

Few (like me initially) know much about the Winnipeg author.

Born in Gimli, Manitoba, Mr. Ewanchuk spent the late 1920s living in Detroit, where he was active in the community. Had he remained in the United States, he says he might have taken up an offer to become editor of this newspaper.

Instead, Mr. Ewanchuk returned to Canada, and obtained his bachelor's and master's degrees in education from the University of Manitoba.

He became a teacher and carried his profession with him into the second world war, when, as a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force, he was assigned to organize a training center in New Brunswick. Mr. Ewanchuk also taught math and English to service personnel before returning to civilian life.

He retired from the air force as a flight lieutenant in 1946, and was appointed the first permanent school inspector in Manitoba. Mr. Ewanchuk spent the first seven years of that assignment working in rural areas, before being posted to Winnipeg, where he remained inspector for two decades.

Now, Mr. Ewanchuk is pursuing Ukrainian Canadian history with as much vigor as when he policed the math and science curricula in Manitoba schools. The same frustrations endure; it's tough getting people to study or read.

But even more important, Mr. Ewanchuk wants Ukrainian Canadians to remember their past and the people who shaped it so richly - like William Kurelek.

"I worry that he's going to be fast forgotten," says Mr. Ewanchuk wistfully.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, June 1, 1997, No. 22, Vol. LXV

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