Hlynka, Anthony

Hlynka, Anthony [Глинка, Антоній], b 28 May 1907 in Denysiv, Ternopil county, Galicia, d 25 April 1957 in Edmonton. Politician and community leader. In 1910 his family immigrated to Delph, Alberta. A founding member of the Ukrainian National Federation, in the 1930s he frequently contributed to its weekly, Novyi shliakh. From 1935 to 1937 he edited and published an irregular anti-communist tabloid, Klych, and then a Ukrainian-language party newspaper, Suspil'nyi kredyt (Social Credit) in 1937–40. As a candidate of the Social Credit party, in 1940 and 1945 he was elected to represent Vegreville in the House of Commons. In Ottawa he criticized discrimination against Canadians of foreign extraction, spoke about an independent Ukrainian state in postwar Europe (provoking particularly strong protests from the Soviet Union because of this), and championed the right of Ukrainian displaced persons to settle in Canada. In the federal elections of 1949 and 1953, he lost by narrow margins to John Decore. A collection of his articles and parliamentary speeches was published in 1982 as Antin Hlynka, posol Federal'noho Parliamentu Kanady, 1940–1949 (Anthony Hlynka, Member of Canada’s Federal Parliament, 1940–1949). The Honourable Member for Vegreville: The Memoirs and Diary of Anthony Hlynka, MP, edited by Oleh Gerus and D. Hlynka, appeared in 2005.

[This article was updated in 2025.]