Former Canadian Governor General Ramon Hnatyshyn dead at age 68 (12/29/02)

Former Canadian Governor General Ramon Hnatyshyn dead at age 68

by Christopher Guly

OTTAWA - In death as in his life, Ramon John Hnatyshyn gave Canada's Ukrainian community a national profile with a distinctly personal touch.

At his family's request, the December 23 funeral service for the country's former governor general, held at Ottawa's Anglican cathedral, followed the rites of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - the first time such a ceremony has been held for a state funeral in Canada.

The service, which lasted nearly two hours and was carried live on national television, also featured participants of various faith groups, including Ottawa's Roman Catholic archbishop and Anglican bishop, as well as a rabbi and an imam. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and two former prime ministers were among the nearly 600 people in attendance at the cathedral.

A member of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada, Mr. Hnatyshyn died in Ottawa on December 18 of complications from pancreatitis, according to an announcement released by the Ottawa law firm where he worked as a senior partner. He was 68.

Mr. Hnatyshyn described himself as an "average Canadian" and was widely known as "Ray" even when the honorific "Your Excellency" was attached to his name during his term as governor general.

Remembered as a man of great warmth and humor, Mr. Hnatyshyn "exemplified the fact that by hard work, perseverance and dedication, every Canadian, regardless of ethnicity, could reach the highest levels of civic and professional life," said Eugene Czolij, president of the Winnipeg-based Ukrainian Canadian Congress.

Mr. Hnatyshyn, whose parents were of Ukrainian descent, made Ukrainian-Canadian history on December 14, 1989, when he was named Canada's 24th governor general, which made him Queen Elizabeth II's representative in Canada and the country's de facto head of state. He was sworn into office on January 29, 1990.

Three decades earlier, his late father, John - who had left Ukraine for Canada as an infant in 1907 with his parents - made history himself when the former Conservative prime minister, the late John Diefenbaker, appointed him to the Senate, making Sen. Hnatyshyn the first and so far only Ukrainian-born member of Canada's Upper Chamber.

Fittingly, the Senate Chamber, in which Mr. Hnatyshyn would have delivered the throne speech opening a session of Parliament during his term as governor general, was chosen as the site where his Canadian flag-draped casket would lie for two days prior to the funeral.

Born in Saskatoon on March 16, 1934, Mr. Hnatyshyn, like his father, obtained a law degree from the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.

He moved to Ottawa in 1958 to take a job as executive assistant to the government leader in the Senate, a position arranged for him by Mr. Diefenbaker.

Two years later, Mr. Hnatyshyn returned to Saskatoon to resume his law practice and marry Gerda Andreasen, a dietitian, with whom he would have two sons, John and Carl.

In 1964, Mr. Hnatyshyn ran unsuccessfully for the Tories in the Saskatchewan provincial election and spent the next decade teaching law at the University of Saskatoon until he won a seat in the House of Commons as a Conservative representing a Saskatoon riding in the 1974 federal election - a victory he would later acknowledge served partly as a vindication of his father's three electoral defeats in the 1930s.

First serving as an opposition member of Parliament during the Liberal government under the late Pierre Trudeau, Mr. Hnatyshyn rose to the Cabinet within five years when the Tories won a minority government and then-prime minister Joe Clark assigned him to the energy portfolio where he embarked on a campaign to make Canada energy self-sufficient by 1990.

In less than a year, however, Mr. Clark's government was defeated in an election prompted by the Tories' loss of a non-confidence motion in the Commons over an energy tax, and Mr. Hnatyshyn, who was re-elected, returned to opposition-MP status. However, good things would soon come to him and his party.

In 1984, following Mr. Trudeau's retirement from politics, the Tories, under the leadership of Brian Mulroney, won a landslide majority in the September federal election, and Mr. Hnatyshyn was made government leader in the Commons. Two years later, he was appointed Canada's justice minister - his most influential job as a politician.

As attorney general, he successfully introduced legislation that dealt with child abuse, gave police the right to seize the proceeds of suspected crimes, gave judges the power to order convicted criminals to compensate their victims, and enabled suspected Nazi war criminals to be tried in Canada.

But while the Conservatives won a second mandate in the 1998 federal election, Mr. Hnatyshyn lost his own seat and might have ended his public career altogether had Mr. Mulroney not appointed him to the highest office in the land.

Mr. Hnatyshyn occupied Rideau Hall, the governor general's official residence in Ottawa from 1990 to 1995, during which time he not only opened the grounds to the public "but brought a human touch to the office as well," said former Ottawa mayor Jim Watson.

Following his vice-regal posting, he returned to practicing law in Ottawa.

Whatever he did, though, "he never forgot his heritage or his people," said Archbishop Yurij Kalitschuk, head of the Toronto and Eastern Eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada during his sermon at the state funeral.

"When others hid their identity and changed their surnames to fit in, he wore his heritage on his sleeve - [and] enjoyed saying that he changed his name to Hnatyshyn to get elected in Saskatoon West."

According to long-time friend and eulogist, Quebec Liberal Sen. Yves Morin, Mr. Hnatyshyn considered his official visit to Ukraine - the first by a Western leader to newly independent Ukraine and which included a stop in his father's birthplace, Vashkivtsi in the province of Bukovyna - "the most outstanding moment during his time in office."

During that 1992 visit, thousands of people from Vashkivtsi and surrounding villages spent hours waiting for the arrival of "the King of America," as some of Mr. Hnatyshyn's relatives referred to him, said Sen. Morin.

Patron of the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa, Mr. Hnatyshyn's ascension to vice-regal status made him a hero to Ukrainian Canadians. But he never let that separate himself from the rest of them. For that reason he was as loved as much as he was admired.

| Home Page |