NyKOLAI BILANIUK BIO

Date and Place of Birth:  Apr. 27, 1962, Toronto, ON  
Mother: Marie Therese Limbach, b. Aug. 10, 1936, Bad Godesberg, Germany
Father: Petro Borys Bilaniuk, b. Aug.4, 1932, Zalishchyky, Ukraine

Nykolai’s father, Petro Bilaniuk, age 17, came to Montreal, Quebec in 1949 with this parents from a DP camp in Germany, after fleeing the Russian occupation of Ukraine. Professor Petro Bilaniuk* completed his B.A. in theology in Montreal, his M.A. in Rome and his PhD in Munich where he met his German wife, Marie. They married and he returned to Canada with her in 1961 and taught Religious Studies at the University of Toronto. Nykolai’s mother obtained a PhD in German Literature from the University or Toronto. She first learned Ukrainian from her in-laws, as they lived in the same house early on.  She spoke to her children in Ukrainian, German with her husband at first, then gradually she spoke Ukrainian with everyone.

Nykolai Bilaniuk has BASc and MASc degrees from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He works in telecommunications and network monitoring.

Nykolai met Miroslawa Melech, (a Ukrainian born in Poland) at a bikeathon in Toronto in 1983, organized by Ukrainian Canadian Congress to call attention to the Holodomor during its fiftieth anniversary.  They married in 1987 in Toronto and were both offered stipends at Carnegie Mellon for their PhD studies. In 1992 they moved to Ottawa and had two children. Nykolai is very active in the Ukrainian community in Ottawa, holding key positions in Plast over the years. His son is now stanychnyj** . Nykolai was President of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress-Ottawa branch from 2011-2014, Director of Kursy Ukrajinoznavstva,*** on the Parents’ Committee at the Ukrainian school,  National Head of the Shevchenko Scientific Society and a member of the Ukrainian Canadian Professional and Business Association.

* On June 1, 1980, His Grace Isidore Borecky, the Ukrainian Catholic Bishop of Toronto, ordained Professor Bilaniuk to the Diaconate. The Confessor of the Faith, His Beatitude Patriarch Joseph I Cardinal Slipyj, ordained him to the Holy Presbyterate on April 18, 1981; and on February 15, 1982, on the occasion of his own 90th birthday, he awarded Father Petro the silver pectoral cross. On October 14, 1985, His Beatitude Myroslav Ivan Cardinal Lubachivsky raised him to the dignity of Archpriest and Honorary Canon.

** Head of Ukrainian Youth Organization “Plast” - Ottawa
*** Ukrainian high school course

INTERVIEW EXCERPT

Date and place of interview: Dec. 3, 2019, Toronto, ON
Length of Interview: 42 minutes
Interviewer: Ihor Tomkiw
Language: English

Interviewer: Did you visit Ukraine and when and what were your impressions?

Nykolai: I went three times in total. When the Soviet Union was still going strong, the sheer fear on the part of my father's family would have precluded going there. He was afraid that something could happen to us. So the first time I went was when the Soviet Union was already very rocky and this was in July 1990 when the Ukrainian ensembles from Toronto went to Ukraine to sing on the anniversary of Ukrainian settlement in Canada. So that was the Ukrajinski Molodizni Ensembli *as they're called. My wife was singing in the choir and I just tagged along, that gave me the opportunity to break away from the group and visit Kolomyja** and knock on some doors and find out where my relatives were. We had lost contact and it would have been dangerous for them to receive mail especially during this Soviet period. I was able to reestablish contact so it meant a lot to me. It's a very emotional moment……… grandmother's older sister was still alive even though my grandma had already passed away in Canada. So I could bring my family up on all the news of the Diaspora, they had last had contact during the Khrushchev thaw.

Then coincidentally in October of 1990 I was at a conference, a technical conference in Kyiv…. It was an interesting moment in political history too. It was the first so-called Namytove misto or  tent City on the Maidan*** at the time of October, October 1990. Students were protesting against Vitalij Masol, the Premier. He actually resigned while I was there and I went out on the street and the kids were celebrating and so it was an interesting moment and I thought, wow, like the Soviet union really is caving in.

It wasn't until this year that I made another trip to Ukraine so in March, during March break I spent a week visiting our kum****, Roman Waschuk, and so we stayed at Canada House at the Ambassadors residence and Oksana, his wife showed us around, so things had changed a lot.

Interviewer: How important is your non-Ukrainian parent’s culture to you?

Nykolai: There's a lot of very interesting things in Germany and it's a country that while it has also, you know, committed some nasty things, especially during the Nazi regime, it also added a lot to world culture and science. So there's a lot that Germans can be proud of, too, in their accomplishments, so yeah, I have always felt strongly connected to both of those cultures…..

So why did I devote much more energy to the Ukrainian community than the German one, which in fact I did, and the reason was that, especially back in the Soviet period there was this feeling that the Soviets are actually trying to destroy Ukrainian language and culture, nobody was doing that to Germany. Germany was quite stable and healthy as a cultural and linguistic project so I felt that Ukraine needed me more.

*  Ukrainian Youth Ensembles

** Kolomyja - City in Western Ukraine

*** Maidan - Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine

**** Kum - Godfather