Leaving
Home: The Remarkable Life of Peter Jacyk
Leaving
Home: The Remarkable Life of Peter Jacyk
By Walter Derzko
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On
September 18, 2013, Figure 1 Publishing and Raincoast Books
announced the publication of Leaving Home: The Remarkable Life of
Peter Jacyk. The book launch was held at Trinity College, University
of Toronto and featured a full auditorium of invited guests from the
academic world, the publishing industry and the Ukrainian community.
Dr Frank Sysyn welcomed the public to the book launch and reminisced about the long standing involvement and financial support of Peter Jacyk, not just for the University of Alberta but for other Ukrainian projects across Canada and the USA.
Nadia Jacyk, Peter Jacyk’s daughter thanked the author – John Lawrence Reynolds, and all the people that he interviewed, who contributed to the book and then informed the audience of how the book idea came to fruition. Nadia explains: “Former Ukrainian Ambassador to Canada, Yurij Scherbak had urged the late Peter Jacyk, my father, to put out a book about how and why he happened to come to Canada …..and how he managed to become one of the few to realize his dreams.“
Nadia Jacyk continues: “What words of wisdom could he share? What kind of character traits or mindset did one need to have? It had to be a book not only for Ukrainians in Canada, but for Canadians in general. Canada, after-all, is home to millions of immigrants through the decades. Peter set out to write his thoughts in the last year of his life and left an eighty page typewritten manuscript, however, sadly did not live to see it to completion.”
Nadia Jacyk conclude that she was most fortunate to find business biographer John Lawrence Reynolds, who enthusiastically took on the project, completing the manuscript and bringing it to completion.
The author, renowned Canadian biographer and novelist John Lawrence Reynolds recounted from his childhood that even his own mother was critical of immigrant displaced persons (DP’s). I found it interesting that the working title that Peter Jacyk had envisioned for his manuscript was: D.P. --No More!
Leaving Home recounts the inspiring life of one of Canada’s most successful immigrants, the late Toronto-based businessman Peter Jacyk.
Petro (Peter) Jacyk survived two of the most horrendous events of the twentieth century: the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s, instigated by Stalin and responsible for the deaths of untold millions; and waves of invasion and slaughter from Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. Fleeing post-war Europe in 1949, he arrived in Canada with $7 in his pocket and horrific images in his memory.
His adopted country would inspire a deep and life-long love in Jacyk. Here at last, as he put it, he was “free to live and free to succeed.” Through the Toronto building and land development firm he founded, he established himself as an economic and cultural powerhouse. Exacting in his dealings with others, yet a generous mentor, he sought excellence in all of his pursuits.
In time, the man who had begun as a “poor-penny immigrant” became one of the country’s most prominent philanthropists. Jacyk donated substantial portions of his wealth to projects dedicated to Ukrainian history, language, and culture. Universities such as Harvard, Columbia, the University of Toronto and the University of Alberta benefited from his largesse. The programs Jacyk sponsored in Ukraine, and the enormous energy he devoted to them, earned him his homeland’s highest award of distinction.
Leaving Home celebrates the life of a remarkable man determined to make a positive impact on an often hostile world.
PHOTO
John Lawrence Reynolds and Nadia Jacyk