In Memory

of Maria Luciuk

“Matriarch lived life full of grace”,

The Kingston Whig Standard, 25 February 2012

Maria Makalo was born in 1927 in the Western Ukrainian village of Kurnyky. She was only 16 when the Germans came, transporting her to Bavaria, press-ganged into the service of the Third Reich. She was not alone. Millions of Ukrainians suffered a similar fate. Many would not survive. Being young and petite, Maria was not the first choice of those selecting slaves for hard labour. Paradoxically, that was lucky. For when she was finally picked, it was by a bauer (farmer) whose ailing wife and two children needed help. So, Maria worked mainly in the kitchen, able to scrounge food and even sneak some to the Polish POWs the farmer held captive. Somehow, her father, Stepan, a First World War veteran of the Austro-Hungarian army, and fluent in German, learned where his daughter was. From occupied Ukraine he posted letters of encouragement, those few sheets of paper becoming some of her most precious possessions - for she would never see him again.

Still a teenager when the Second World War ended in May 1945, Maria again found herself among millions of people cast adrift, political refugees unwilling to return to Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe. There, the Stalinist regime was brutally suppressing Ukrainian nationalism, a counterinsurgency campaign that continued well into the 1950s. Maria’s father was a member of the resistance. Captured by the Communists, Stepan perished rather than renounce the cause of Ukraine’s liberation. His final resting place is unknown. The Iron Curtain then severed Maria’s ties to her mother, three brothers, and a sister, a chasm un-breached until the Soviet empire fell and Ukraine regained its rightful place in Europe, almost a half century later.

Not able to go home, Maria instead found sanctuary in the ‘Freiman Kasserne’ Displaced Persons Camp, near Munich. There, she joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, (OUNb), becoming a trusted underground courier. It was a dangerous time. Hundreds of thousands of “Soviet citizens” were forcibly repatriated to the USSR. There were political assassinations, widespread criminality, and a climate of fear, many believing a Third World War was imminent. So, most DPs lived “on packed suitcases,” motivated by a “compulsive need to return home,” seeing themselves as the “second line” of the liberation movement, determined to husband their Diaspora’s resources until they could get home. They believed that would happen soon. They were mistaken. Their exodus would last for decades.

Unbeknownst to her, Maria came under surveillance. One day he stopped her, in Munich’s famous ‘English Gardens’. Fortunately, the man who crossed her path was another nationalist. His name was Danylo. He became her unofficial escort and bodyguard and, eventually, her husband, rarely leaving Maria’s side until she died, peacefully, in his arms, in their bed, in their home, after more than six decades of happily married life.

Resettled from post-war Europe to Kingston, Ont., in 1949, Maria and Danylo found work, she at Hotel Dieu Hospital, he at Brock Jewellers. At first, they lived in a Queen Street boarding house, on the edge of Kingston’s immigrant and working class “North End.” Wanting to start a family, they moved to 68 Nelson St., infusing their home with all things Ukrainian. Anyone crossing that threshold immediately entered what Maria and Danylo remembered or imagined Ukraine should be like, a welcoming and happy place. It still is. When their children were born, they named them Lubomyr, “Lover of Peace,” and Nadia, “Hope,” signalling what their adopted homeland had given them - peace, love, and hope.

In their early years in Canada, Maria and Danylo encountered many fellow citizens who knew little, if anything, about Ukraine or Ukrainians. She dedicated herself to overcoming that ignorance. Maria taught Ukrainian School, pushed her children to study hard, was a leading member of St. Michael’s Ukrainian Catholic Parish, a founding and lifelong member of the Kingston Branch of the Canadian League for the Liberation of Ukraine, helped establish the Kingston and District Folk Arts Council, the Ukrainian Maky Dance Ensemble, the Ukrainian Canadian Club of Kingston, and was the heart and soul of the “Lviv, Ukraine” pavilion during Kingston’s annual “Folklore” festival, for 42 years. Her commitment to her culture and, in particular, to Ukrainian embroidery and traditional cooking, were a delight within her own hromada (community) and for the many thousands of Kingstonians she hosted over several decades. We will not see the likes of her pyrohy (perogies) and holubtsi (cabbage rolls) again. And yet, while she always made sure people knew she was a Ukrainian, and what that meant to her, Maria was equally keen on learning about the lives and cultures of everyone she met, genuine in her advocacy of multiculturalism, believing it to be a strong pillar girding up Canada’s uniqueness as a society.

Maria and Danylo’s enduring support for the cause of Ukrainian independence - for many who knew them nothing but a quixotic émigré dream - was vindicated when the USSR collapsed in 1991. And, at almost the same time, they became grandparents, who savoured watching their granddaughter, Kassandra, become a woman and a young scholar of modern Ukraine’s history. For Baba and Dido (grandmother and grandfather), there could be no more satisfying legacy.

On the evening before she died, Maria spoke her last words, in Ukrainian: “Goodnight, my children.”  Her family was with her when she passed, at 9:03 a.m. on Friday, 10 February 2012. She was calm and unafraid. Just like the Mary whose name she bore, Maria had witnessed appalling suffering in her lifetime yet remained a woman of faith. Parting with motherly words of comfort, she finally went home, full of grace, to be with God, reminding us of the psalmist’s words: “for He grants sleep to those He loves.”

In Maria’s memory, donations may be made to the “Luciuk Family Fund,” c/o the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko (#202- 952 Main St., Winnipeg, Man. R2W 3P4 or online at www.shevchenkofoundation.com) for an endowment supporting graduate student scholarship on Ukraine.