User:Wpawlowsky/About you

William Pawlowsky is someone that knows a lot more than you can learn in University. Though my three different degrees did help me be a great researcher. I didn't learn how to write for many years.

I have been a community activist and leader in the Ukrainian-Canadian community since the late 1980s. I am a researcher/librarian, journalist, biographer and chronicler of historical events in the Ukrainian contemporary cultural sphere.

I've contributed to many different organizations and individuals in the past, and will continue to do so in the future. My experiences give me every right to document what I am documenting. In every case where possible I try to find sources to confirm my sharing of information. At times, I have to depend on the personal archives of active individuals whom I write about. Some of them I know better than others, because of person relationships based on our cultural and community values.

I lived traveled to Ukraine extensively and lived there for nearly ten years, working in the fields of communications for civic organizations, as both a print and radio journalist for nearly five years, an information specialist for a leading Ukrainian law firm, and consultant for a leading NGO specializing in public opinion polling, writing and implementing many grant proposals over a five year period.

Below, I will try to share my experiences, it may take a few years, while I share with the English language world a part of Ukraine that is not the war you are all seeing via social media now regarding Ukraine.

Youth and University Years
I've been involved in Ukrainian Canadian matters since the early 1980's both on an educational and academic level and then as an active member of the Ukrainian communities in Ottawa and Montreal Canada as both a student and a professional.

I hold a number of academic degrees, and while these have helped me over the years, most of real life experiences was gained through my studies in Leningrad in 1985 and then my numerous trips of what at first was the Ukrainian SSR and then became an independent nation of Ukraine with the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Over the years I have made many personal contacts with a variety of individuals in many different fields. Those that have interested me a great deal are those who support Ukrainian culture, but particularly, contemporary Ukrainian music and Performing arts.

I travelled extensively as a competitive swimmer during my youth having competed throughout the provinces of Quebec and Ontario as well as in the cities Edmonton, Halifax, Victoria and Winnipeg; the city of Bangor, Maine, town of Gardner, Massachusetts and the cities of Cranston, Rhode Island and Providence, Rhode Island in the USA; and the city of Leeds, and the town of South Tyneside in North East England.

Upon completing my Bachelor of Arts at the University of Waterloo, with a focus on Slavic studies and with a bent towards International relations and after close to three years of planning, I together with a good friend, after visiting Expo 86 for three days, cycled from Vancouver, British Columbia to Montreal, a journey which took us fifty-nine days of travel. The experience gave me a greater understanding of the regional diversity of Canada which are clearly influenced by aspects of Physical geography contributing to how communities were formed throughout the country.

After such an adventure I continued my formal education at the University of Ottawa extending my interest and knowledge in the area of Slavic languages and literatures. During that two year period from the autumn of 1986 through to the spring of 1988 I completed the requirements to be conferred upon me the degrees of Master of Arts in Slavic studies with a focus on Ukrainian literature.

In the late 1980's and the early 1990's due to my position in the SUSK community as well as being a Master's degree candidate at the University of Ottawa I had the opportunity to meet with many different academic and cultural activists with a desire to see an independent Ukraine.

During my studies in Ottawa I decided to take a much more pragmatic approach to where I would head academically and decided to meld my knowledge of languages and my constant curiosity for learning new and different things by examining the possibility of doing a Masters in Library and Information Studies after checking out my options I applied to the program at McGill University.

After SUSK members had been present at the first conference when the Student's Brotherhood organization was formed in late May of 1989 and becoming a member of the Executive or SUSK in the autumn of 1989, where I was active in re-establishing the McGill University Ukrainian Students' Club.

Political activity
If my memory serves me right in the spring of 1988 my City of Lachine had a by-election which was probably the first issues based election our community had every faced in many years. I was working with a friend of mine Christopher Voutsinas to get him a seat in our local city council. Our entire campaign team was under thirty-years old and I think we did quite well in that we only lost to the female-candidate, Jane Cowell-Poitras, oddly enough I would about a year or two later meet her official agent, whom I would go into business with.

During my first semester of study at McGill in 1988 I got heavily wrapped up in the federal election. The only issue that was on the table during that election was the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement, as someone who was going to graduate as a professional information specialist two years down the road, access to the workplace in the USA was important to my employability in the future. It got to the point that by the second week of November of that year my faculty advisor was getting a little concerned as whether I would actually make it through my first semester.

It was a pretty crazy period of my life and I met some very good people during that election campaign working in many different ways from Bob Layton's campaign offices located out on Cartier Avenue in Pointe-Claire as well as at the Lachine office on Notre-Dame. On top of getting to know Bob Layton quite well, I met many others who worked on his campaign including former neighbour Tasha Kheiriddin and local individuals who would go on to be municipal councillors in Lachine, John V. Hachey and I got to know Jane Cowell-Poitras a bit better. In meeting with Cowell-Poitras during this period would renew some connections with her young brothers with whom I had swam with competitively though whom I had not seen for about eight years.

About ten days before the general election I had seen a notice in the the local paper that John Turner would be appearing at Pierrefonds Comprehensive High School.

During my period studying at Mcgill, I maintained close contacts with the Ukrainian-Canadian students' community until and after I graduated from the program in the spring of 1900.

Real world education begins
Having graduated from McGill with a degree which would me employable somewhere, an new phase of my life had begun.

In July of 1990, I together with five other student representatives visited Ukraine where we made many interesting contacts. I was the sole individual that was actively involved within SUSK though I know for a fact that one of those who travelled with us returned to Lviv to teach English a few years after that initial trip in 1990. Upon my return from that trip I attended the SUSK annual congress at whih I was elected President of the national student body.

In the winters of 1990 and 1991 I helped spearhead a student's choir from Ukraine in doing a tour of Eastern Canada. The first attempt failed due to much political intrigue in Lviv and individuals who wanted to take advantage of a free ride to Canada. Eventually, our small group succeed in bringing the right group of students to Canada for a series of concerts during the Holiday period from December 1991 through to the beginning of January 1992. However, there were still more adventures to come before that successful project.

Amongst the members of that choir I met a fellow that interested me for both his brash self confidence and the fact that he noted that he worked for Ukraine's first independent music agency, which focused on contemporary Ukrainian music and performing arts. His name was Roman Chayka of the Lviv-based band Dead Rooster and the agency he worked for was Rostyslav-show.

Throughout the 1990s I closely followed Ukraine's music scene and the developments which were taking place. My next trip to Ukraine was in 1993.

While I never developed the ability to write well until I was living and working in Ukraine from 1999 through to 2009, regardless, I was always avid in keeping journals while traveling about both the social and political situation of where I was as well about the people I met.