Jacyk Center reaches 10th anniversary milestone (04/23/00)

Jacyk Center reaches 10th anniversary milestone

by Geoff McMaster

EDMONTON - The Peter Jacyk Center for Ukrainian Historical Research has much to be proud of now that it's reached its 10th anniversary. One of the most important projects ever undertaken in Ukrainian studies, the translation of Mykhailo Hrushevsky's 10-volume "History of Ukraine-Rus'" into English, is well under way with great success. Two volumes of the series, the second just released, have met with international acclaim, recognized as exemplary works of scholarship. And the Peter Jacyk Center is now regarded as perhaps the top research institute of its kind in the world.

"Essentially this is the only purely Ukrainian historical research center in North America," said Dr. Paul Bushkovitch, a Yale University history professor visiting the University of Alberta campus recently to celebrate the publication of Volume 7 of the history. "With the Hrushevsky project, they've come up with something that is really quite remarkable."

Dr. Bushkovitch, who writes on Ukrainian history of the 16th and 17th centuries, says Hrushevsky's work is crucial to understanding Russian history. "If you don't know the Ukrainian situation very well," he says, "you're wasting your time."

Yale is in the process of starting a Ukrainian studies program, says Mr. Bushkovitch, and is looking to the University of Alberta for help and advice. "The Peter Jacyk Center is absolutely essential ... they have all the information, they have the contacts, they know who is doing what in Ukraine and what in America - we rely on them very heavily."

According to the center's director, Dr. Frank Sysyn, the university's reputation in the field has become so strong that Ukrainian students from Ukraine have come here recently to do graduate work. Doctoral student Andriy Zayaryuk, for example, says the center's resources were "an important factor" in his decision to come here to study representations of Ukrainian peasantry in Galicia's popular press of the 19th century. Only Harvard can match the reputation of the Peter Jacyk Center, he noted.

"The center is important because it provides infrastructure," he said. "There are also a lot of scholars who don't teach directly in the department but with whom you can communicate."

Mr. Jacyk himself couldn't be happier with the center's accomplishments of the past decade. Born in 1921 in western Ukraine, Mr. Jacyk was only 17 when the Russians invaded his hometown. In 1949 he ended up in Canada with only $7 in his pocket and no knowledge of English, but convinced Canada was a "constructive" country. He worked his way through a number of menial jobs and eventually became one of Toronto's most prominent builders.

Throughout his life, however, he remained steadfastly devoted to the belief in "more education, less confrontation," supporting academic programs at Harvard, Columbia and the universities of Toronto, London and Alberta. In 1989 he donated $1 million for the establishment of the historical research center, which quickly became $3 million because of the 2-to-1 matching grant program then in effect in Alberta.

"I am not a historian; I am a builder. But I understand the need for historical values," Mr. Jacyk explained. "Nothing but production counts, and we have production - this I appreciate very much. I am connected to Harvard and Columbia, but no group works so productively as this one. I believe Ukrainian studies at the University of Alberta are the strongest in the world after Ukraine."

Reprinted with permission from the University of Alberta Folio, January 21, Vol. 37, No. 1.

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