Memories of My Father

“Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die” – Amelia Burr

My father, Taras Zakydalsky, died on November 8, 2007, after a brief battle with brain cancer. At the tryzna, I was in no shape to share my memories of him.

Tato was born in Lviv on February 2, 1941. He was not born in his family’s hometown of Drohobych because his mother, Natalka, was visiting his father, Danylo, in the  NKVD prison in Lviv. It was not until the 1990s that Natalka and her son knew the fate of their husband and father – he had been shot during the Red Army retreat in June 1941.

Tato and my grandmother came to Canada in 1949 and soon bought a house with my grandmother’s family on Augusta Avenue in Toronto. It was there that tato spent his formative years, attending Harbord Collegiate Institute. He later went to the University of Toronto and eventually graduated with a PhD in Philosophy from Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania.

In 1966, after a long courtship, tato finally convinced my mother Oksana Witushynska to marry him. In 1973, their first son Danylo was born and they were graced with my birth in 1981. Tato first taught at Ursinus College, Pennsylvania, and then moved to Toronto, where he worked on the Encyclopedia of Ukraine project for fifteen years, contributing articles on philosophy and working as an editor.

In 1996, tato became editor of the journal Russian Studies in Philosophy and in 2003 – editor of the Journal of Ukrainian Studies, both of which he edited until his death. Throughout his life, tato never forgot his homeland. In the 1970’s, he was active in defending the rights of Ukrainian dissidents and political prisoners, frequently helping the families of those imprisoned. After independence, tato quickly established contacts with academics and universities in Ukraine, teaching at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv three times - in 1994, 1995 and 2000.

Tolstoy wrote that all happy families are alike, but that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. He was wrong. We were and are a very happy family, but we’re certainly not like other families. For one thing, growing up we didn’t have a TV set. I remember in my youth being angry about this, but looking back I probably wouldn’t have developed the love for reading and learning that I did had I sat rotting my brain in front of the TV.

Tato was frugal to the point where he took a lot of ribbing from my brother, my mom and me for it. In the 26 years I spent with him, he had only 3 cars: first an old Subaru; then a Hyundai Pony that he ran into the ground; and then a pink Hyundai Accent - pink because it was the last of its model on the lot and he didn’t want to pay for shipping a different coloured one. But whenever any of us needed money or anything else, he never refused once. I know he and my mother helped my brother out quite a bit when my brother was buying his house and starting his family. I guess frugality pays off in the long run, perhaps the only lesson tato taught me that I haven’t yet absorbed.

Most of the memories I have of tato was that of laughter. We laughed almost constantly. When I was a kid, I loved trains and luckily we lived close to the Junction in Toronto. Many after school afternoons were spent clambering around the tracks to see trains with tato at Runnymede and Dundas. When driving crazily with him up and down Dupont St., he treated it as his personal racetrack. It seems to me that everything we did together was filled with guffaws.

As I grew up, I began to appreciate and absorb his peculiar brand of dry humour – sarcastic and ironic, but never mean. My mother was the perfect foil for his humour, and they good-naturedly bantered back and forth at family dinners. As I was leaving for Ukraine this September, a good friend of mine had dinner with my parents and me, and told me afterwards “Zak, now I know where you get it.” Some of my happiest memories were made around the table in our living room, or, in the summer, in the backyard, as tato burned yet another batch of barbecued chicken. After a while, I took over barbequing duties from him for which we were all much better-off. 

Tato died too young. My biggest sadness is that he won’t get to see my brother’s son, Tarasyk, now almost two years old, grow up. Man, did he love that kid! When I was finishing my degree in Toronto I often asked tato when he was taking care of his grandson whether he wanted me to take him off his hands for a while. As far as I remember, he never accepted.

Orest Zakydalsky November 30, 2007