FACES AND PLACES: Manoly's memoirs: triumph and setback (11/26/06)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Manoly's memoirs: triumph and setback

For years I have marveled at the accomplishments of Canada's Ukrainian community, especially in the political arena. Ukrainians have served as Canadian governors-general, senators, members of Parliament and mayors.

Ukrainians have also impacted Canadian education, especially in the area of multiculturalism. Sen. Paul Yuzyk, for example, originated the "third force" concept - the idea that all ethnic groups, not just the British and the French, should have a place at the Canadian table.

The person who took Sen. Yuzyk's concept to the next level was Prof. Manoly Lupul, one of the leading lights in the emergence of multiculturalism as the model for Canada's true identity. Last year, the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies published Prof. Lupul's latest book, "The Politics of Multiculturalism: A Ukrainian-Canadian Memoir." As defined in his meticulously referenced 508-page chronicle, multiculturalism is essentially "the development of a consciousness of one's ancestral roots or ethnicity for creative purposes in the hope that a distinctive Canadian identity will emerge."

Manoly Lupul is a true son of the Canadian prairie. Born in 1927 in the Willingdon district of Alberta, he grew up with feelings of second-class Canadian citizenship, as well as a certain ambivalence towards "things Ukrainian."

"I liked the music and singing (especially the public performances)," he writes, "but it was easy to sense the distance between what the Ukrainian institutions emphasized and what the radio, newspapers, the magazines and the school were transmitting." Canada beckoned.

Although most of the settlers in the Willingdon area were from Orthodox Bukovyna, Prof. Lupul never really accepted his religious roots. "On Good Friday or earlier we went to confession, which even then seemed pointless," he writes. "Besides an inclination toward democratic socialism, I was also gradually moving toward a philosophy of life that was both skeptical of the claims of organized religion and drawn to the origins of human life in natural evolution ... To me, the anthropomorphic God of most Christians made no sense, and if that made me an atheist, so be it."

Later in life Mr. Lupul enrolled at Harvard in the Ph.D. in education program where he became enamored of John Dewey, a secular humanist whose ideas regarding "science rather than religion and the supernatural" fit right in with the young Canadian's emerging worldview. Dr. Dewey's pragmatism, especially his "insistence that the worth of any idea was its practical consequences," helped convince Mr. Lupul that "liberal intellectual democracies required people who could constitute their own independent intellectual authority."

John Dewey's Progressive educational ideals were once lauded by Vladimir Lenin's wife, Krupskaya, but were discarded with the ascension of Stalin. In the United States, however (and I suspect in Canada as well), Deweyism remains the dominant mindset in schools of education.

Teaching a university course titled "Issues" Mr. Lupul writes that one of its goals was "to encourage teachers to give children more than just an attitude of anti-communism. If people better understood Communism and the conditions which encouraged it," he writes, "it would be easier for politicians to cope with the Cold War in more than 'black and white' terms."

Reading between the lines of his memoir one gets the impression that Dr. Lupul's ideas about the "new social order" changed during a sabbatical leave in Ukraine and other Communist-dominated countries in 1967-1968. Witnessing the ravages of the Russification process in Ukraine he became more determined than ever to push his multicultural and multilingual agenda in Canada. His association with John Kolasky, author of "Education in Soviet Ukraine," convinced him that preserving the Ukrainian identity in Canada meant preserving the Ukrainian language.

Overcoming many governmental hurdles and setbacks, and working with politically prominent Ukrainian Albertans such as Peter Savaryn and Laurence Decore, Dr. Lupul's first major triumph was the passage of school legislation in Alberta permitting Ukrainian as a language of instruction in the public schools. Alberta's example led to similar bilingual legislation in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Another major triumph was the establishment of a publicly funded Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta in 1976. Dr. Lupul headed the institute - now the largest Ukrainian studies center outside of Ukraine - until 1986. Unlike Harvard's Ukrainian Research Institute, still mired in arcane academe and floating on the fringes of Ukrainian American life, the Canadian institute remains an integral part of the Ukrainian Canadian community.

Dr. Lupul's two major setbacks occurred outside of Alberta. Pushing for a more dynamic Ukrainian Canadian Committee (today known as the Ukrainian Canadian Congress), he supported activist Stanley Frolick for president at the UCC convention of 1980. Mr. Frolick lost to John Nowosad, 223-219. "The attempt to liberalize the Ukrainian Canadian Congress," writes Dr. Roman Petryshyn in his foreword, "had very limited success because of contrasting generational goals, differing values and styles of management, and lack of significant and dependable financial support from both the federal and provincial governments."

A second disappointment was the faculty of the University of Toronto that rejected Prof. Orest Subtelny for a position in the history department despite his superb research and teaching credentials. The position eventually went to Paul Robert Magocsi, a Ph.D. from Princeton, whose teaching credentials were minimal, but who apparently enjoyed the support of Harvard's Omeljan Pritsak. Interesting irony. Dr. Subtelny, the first Harvard Ph.D. in Ukrainian studies, did not have the full support of Prof. Pritsak, while Dr. Magocsi, who believes that Carpatho-Ukrainians (Rusyns) are not really Ukrainian, apparently did. Despite widespread Ukrainian protests, Dr. Magocsi demanded and received immediate tenure.

Although Dr. Lupul's memoirs, are a must read for Ukrainian Canadians seeking to revitalize their community, Ukrainian Americans will also benefit from a close perusal of the book. When it comes to community mores and quirks, we Ukrainian Americans have much in common with Ukrainian Canadians. Like us, they have political and religious divisions. Unlike us, they seem to be better organized and better led.

Myron Kuropas's e-mail address is: [email protected].

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