OKSANA ZaKYDALSKY

Civil Servant, Ontario Ministry of Industry & Trade, and journalist, The Ukrainian Weekly

Date and Place of Birth: 1941 in Krakow, Poland

Date of Interview: November 29, 2016

Place of Interview: Toronto, Ontario

Interviewer: Sophia Isajiw

Length of Interview: 01:19:14 (raw)

(Excerpt):

I: I want to find out where you then ended up working in different organizations, you started writing, you were teaching…?

OZ: Well, when I was living in Toronto and when the kids were small, no even before the kids, I started writing for, it started when I organized a trip with my Plastunky to Ukraine. This was the first, it was a real exchange, like it was 1989. We got in touch with a group in Lviv, the professor there, the leader of the group was a professor and he wanted interchange, contact with the West. So they sent us an invitation and I took my group of Plastuny and we went to Lviv. And it was really unique. We each lived, about 14 of us, and the kids were at the age of 13, 14, 15, that age, and everybody lived in a different home, which was really, in 1989 in Ukraine that was really something. So that was a great breakthrough. And then we invited those kids, and the following year they came to Canada, the kids in whose homes we had stayed. That was the first time I ever wrote an article to The Ukrainian Weekly because it was a unique situation you know, we actually lived with people in Ukraine.

I: So how long was that for?

OZ: Well we were there for a month. They took care of us, the parents especially, they were so nervous. And it’s funny the things you learn. Because for example, of course, Sunday came, we’re going to church, of course, so we took the kids with us who had never been in church before. I mean this is Lviv, it’s not somewhere.... all kinds of things we did that they’d never done before.

I: Interesting. And so that’s the first time when you started writing for Ukrainian Weekly and then you kept it up?

OZ: Well, because I had all these contacts you know, and I knew what was going on in Ukraine and they took me to school, to teach in school because it was such a new situation.

CROSS REFERENCES:

• Oksana Zakydalsky list of articles written for The Ukrainian Weekly newspaper

• Oksana Zakydalsky, Ukrainian Canadian Congress Leadership Award

• UCC Presents Awards in Toronto (photo)

• An article on Oksana’s husband Taras Zakydalsky by Roman Senkus “In Memoriam: Taras Zakydalsky” to whom the Journal of Ukrainian Studies Volume 32, Number 2, Winter 2007 issue is dedicated since he was its editor from Jan. 2003–Oct. 2007