Arsenych, Jaroslaw

Arsenych, Jaroslaw [Арсенич, Ярослав; Arsenyč, Jaroslav], b 24 September 1887 in Bereziv Nyzhnii, Kolomyia county, Galicia, d 29 June 1953 in Dauphin, Manitoba. Lawyer, judge, and community leader. Arsenych emigrated to Canada in 1904. After attending the Ruthenian Training School in Brandon, Manitoba, he taught in Manitoba and Saskatchewan until 1913. He became a lawyer in 1917, was appointed King’s Counsel in 1935, and became a district court judge in Dauphin, Manitoba, in 1947—all firsts among Ukrainians in Canada. A founder of the Ukrainian Publishing Company (later Trident Press Ltd) and its president for thirty-four years, he was the first rector of the Adam Kotsko Institute in Winnipeg and, during the First World War, the head of the Ukrainian Canadian Citizens’ League and general secretary of the Ukrainian Red Cross in Canada. He helped to establish the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church of Canada (serving later on the Consistory), the Ukrainian Self-Reliance League, and the Union of Ukrainian Community Centres of Canada (serving on numerous executives). In 1940 Arsenych became the first secretary general of the Ukrainian Canadian Committee, representing the Ukrainian Self-Reliance League.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]