Lansing United Church
Beecroft Rd & Poyntz Ave Toronto
ON M2N 1K4
The Ancestry of Dr. W.S. Kindraczuk (1882-1969): Research in Ukrainian, Polish, German, and Austrian records
This presentation is based on the genealogical chapter of the speaker’s biographical book about her maternal grandfather: Dr.W.S. Kindraczuk, Forgotten Chemist of Lancut and Pioneer of Probiotics (2018) who discovered a new probiotic bacteria “Bacillus carpathicus” in 1912 at the University in Vienna. Dr. Kindraczuk was born in the province of Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in an ethnically mixed family: Ukrainian (father) and Polish-German (mother). When Romana began to research her family history in 2002 there were few online sources. She started her research in libraries in Toronto but then travelled to libraries and archives in Ukraine, Poland, and Austria. She researched the genealogical records of her grandparents and visited the birth places of her parents and ancestors in Poland and western Ukraine.
Speaker Dr. Romana M. Bahry is Professor Emerita in the faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York University. She was born in Salzburg, Austria and arrived at Pier 21 in Halifax in February 1948 as an infant with her parents who were World War 2 refugees. They joined her father’s uncle in Hamilton who had immigrated earlier to Canada from Poland in the 1920s. She obtained her B.A. Honours degree in French and Russian and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of Toronto. After three years as a Teaching Assistant at the University of Toronto, she began to teach at York University in 1972, where she specialized in Comparative Slavic Literatures (Ukrainian, Russian) and English, Central and East European Film and Culture, and European Studies. She is fluent in English, French, Ukrainian, Polish, and Russian and has a reading knowledge of Latin and German. Dr. Bahry has a son, two daughters and five grandchildren.
MINI PRESENTATION:
Resettling and Rethinking: A Settlement Document that Revised a Family Story
During the pandemic, Bonnie took advantage of the free access to various documents at TNA in England and found a Settlement Document for her g-g-grandfather George Fouch. Even when you think you know all about your ancestor, there may be documents out there that will unsettle you and cause you to rewrite your family story. This document raised questions of a London adventure and took her into related family wills, property in Tewkesbury, and land-lording at the Black Bear Inn. As the document revealed, her poor ancestor George wasn’t quite the man she thought he was.
Speaker: Bonnie Bell is a retired accountant who has been a Toronto Branch member and volunteer for over 20 years. She has been researching family history, mostly in England, Scotland, and Canada, for over 40 years.
This will be a hybrid meeting. You are welcome to join us in person at Lansing United Church. Masks are encouraged. (We’ll know you are smiling.)
Or watch the presentation live online. Click here to register for your Zoom link.