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Ottawa-June 12, 2009 - At the inaugural ceremony of the Paul Yuzyk Award for Multiculturalism, the first award was presented to the Honourable John Yaremko.
This award honours an individual or organization that has demonstrated excellence in promoting multiculturalism. Senator Paul Yuzyk was known as the father of Multiculturalism and, in his maiden speech in the Senate in 1964 entitled "Canada, A Multicultural Nation", he pointed out that a third of Canadians were neither French nor English nor Aboriginal but are, in fact, ethnic groups and that this made Canada a multicultural nation. Senator Yuzyk went on to serve in the senate for 23 years. In 1971, a policy of Multiculturalism was announced by the government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
John Yaremko was the first Ukrainian Canadian elected to the Ontario Legislature in 1951 where he served as a distinguished member until 1975. While in the Legislature, he advocated for human rights and multiculturalism. He was appointed to the Cabinet in 1958 and was Ontario's first Minister of Citizenship (1961) and the province's first Solicitor General (1972-1974).
He and his late wife, Myrsolava, made many philanthropic gifts which reflect their wide range of interests. In 2002, the John and Mary Yaremko Program on Multiculturalism and Human Rights was established at the Faculty of Law of the University of Toronto with an endowment of $600,000. The program supports an annual forum that brings scholars and teachers to the Law School to engage the community in vital discussion about the core concepts underlying our sense of ourselves as Canadians: pluralism, multiculturalism, and inclusion. In 2008, Mr. Yaremko pledged $50,000 to the John Robarts Library at the University of Toronto to preserve and make broadly accessible retrospective library materials relating to Ukrainian history, literature, language and culture through digitization.
The award was presented to the Honourable John Yaremko by the Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism on Friday, June 12 at Roy Thompson Hall.
As Ukrainians, it is prudent for us to celebrate not only the award but also the fact that the inaugural award was given to a distinguished and deserving Ukrainian Canadian.
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