ALEX DAGENAIS BIO

Date and Place of Birth:  August 29,1957, Levis, Quebec  
Mother: Maria Sviatoslava Lesiuk b.1935,  Sokolivka, Ukraine
Father: Clement Antoine Dagenias b.1935 Ste. Angele, Quebec, Canada

Alexander Dagenais has a B.A. in Metallurgical Engineering from the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, University of Montreal. He has worked for Alcan throughout his career, his first job being in Jonquiere (Saguenay), Quebec where he met his wife French Canadian wife, Karen. He now lives and works in Detroit, Michigan.  His sons, Erick, Kevin and Andrew were born in Cleveland, Florida and Michigan respectively where Alex was working at the time. Alex was raised by his grandmother and mother speaking mostly Ukrainian as a child and some French to his father. Soon his French-Canadian father, Clement Dagenias, the last child of 16 raised on a farm in Quebec, mastered Ukrainian and Alex and his siblings all spoke Ukrainian in the family while growing up.

Alex’s mother came to Canada with her parents in the early 1950’s when she was ten years old, sponsored by her uncle, also a refugee who worked at Vicker’s shipyard in Montreal.   The family had escaped Ukraine during the war, fleeing to Vienna, then to Mittenwald, a refugee camp in Germany.

Living in Cleveland and now Detroit, Alex’s sons all attended Ukrainian school and the Ukrainian Youth organization Plast with the full support and encouragement of Alex’s wife. Although busy with his work, often travelling abroa , Alex took responsibility for buying books for the Ukrainian schools his sons attended as well as maintaining their computers.  Alex himself had been very active in Plast from a young age and later as a troop leader. He also attended Ukrainian school in Montreal as did his siblings. He has visited Ukraine after independence and keeps in very close touch with his family in Sokolivka.

INTERVIEW EXCERPT

Date and place of interview: Sep 18, 2022, Toronto, ON
Length of interview: 73 minutes
Interviewer: Ariadna Ochrymovych
Language: English

Interviewer: So how did your wife feel about you speaking Ukrainian to the children?

Alex:  Oh she's the one that really supported this whole endeavor. The fact that I needed to speak to them in Ukrainian was paramountly important to her, for them to go to Ukrainian school on Saturdays and for them to go to Plast*, she was very very supportive, I couldn’t ask for more support …. I don’t know if they would have been so much involved in Ukrainian activities if she wouldn't have been that supportive because obviously I worked, I was often outside of the the house. I traveled a lot as an engineer for Alcan across the whole world and also within the United States and Canada so I wasn't home all the time and that was especially difficult for her because she had three young boys and she had to deal with three young boys in a city where there's no family.

Interviewer: Did you grow up in a very religious or spiritual… ?

Alex:  My mother my grandmother were quite religious Ukrainian Catholics, a lot of uncles on my mom's side were priests in Ukraine.  I think two of my grandmother's brothers were priests, the family that I still have there is from a priest that was exiled and they actually lived in Siberia for a while, there were four girls and a boy.

Interviewer: When you were asked to go to this Seminary did that seem just like a very natural  thing for you to do ?

Alex:  Yes, my mother talked with the local priest at one of the churches there to to find out who goes there and and then I had a discussion with the priest so that you know something about what you want to do so… I went there for a couple of years.  It was very very very interesting, you know, I've learned a lot about the Ukrainians outside of just being around Montreal. I learned a lot about the Ukrainian Customs because over there every Sviato** was celebrated to the utmost and I saw the Metropolit*** ….  you had the Ukrainian University right beside the Ukrainian Seminary so it was very interesting. But then after that I knew that I want to pursue a science degree or science direction so I had to stop.

Interviewer: So you didn’t really consider being a priest for very long?

Alex:  No, I didn’t consider being a priest although my mother said that as a custom the firstborns in a lot of cases in Ukraine were devoted to the priesthood.

Interviewer: So throughout most of your elementary and high school you spoke French, you were in a French milieu ?

Alex:  Yes I always went to French school. I’ve never been to English school, my first year when I first started school, the first year of Elementary School I didn't know French very well because we spoke Ukrainian exclusively at home. I heard some English from time to time because my mother and my grandmother would speak to my father mainly in English and he would speak to them mainly in English because he was in the process of learning Ukrainian and she was in the process of getting familiar with  French, so I heard basically Ukrainian and English. My father spoke to us in French but we were not very comfortable with it until I went to school and obviously we picked that up very quickly and then French became second nature.

Interviewer: So how did your father learn Ukrainian?

Alex:  Just, just by listening to my mother,  my grandmother, my grandmother was a teacher in in a school near near Lviv, Sokolivka, and so she had tricks to teach people how to learn language, mom also was helping out and he was very very keen on learning Ukrainian.