Harvey Leonard Dyck Obituary
Husband, father, grandfather, historian, researcher and political activist, a voice for the disappeared in the Soviet Inferno, died of heart failure on January 11th at the age of ninety.
He was the loving husband of Anne Konrad, a high school sweetheart growing up in British Columbia. He was a loving and engaged father to his children Maria (Steve Krashinsky), Toozie (John Henry) and Alexander (Stephanie Curtis) and a loving and much loved grandfather to his grandchildren Jacob Carter and Annie, Henry and Ben Curtis-Dyck. Also a caring brother to his (deceased) sisters, Rita (Waldemar) Guenther and Lorna (Thomas) Boulter.
He was an adventurous world-traveler, curious, interested in ideas and willing to share them. He was passionate about many things, particularly about his dear family. He is remembered as a vital and caring individual, kind, welcoming, fond of music, enthusiastic about his kids and grandkids, and a lover of celebrating life's big events. He will be dearly remembered.
Harvey was born in Winnipeg Manitoba on March 16, 1934. His parents Anna Warkentin and Isaak John Dyck both immigrated from Soviet Russia. His father became a high school Math and Science teacher in Winkler, Manitoba. In 1944 the family moved to Abbotsford, British Columbia where Harvey's father became high school principal of the Mennonite Educational Institute. Harvey's Russian Mennonite background and family history would greatly influence his life.
After graduating with an MA in History from the University of British Columbia, Harvey received his PhD from Columbia University, New York City. His teaching career began at Wesleyan University. He returned to Columbia University and taught in the History Department from 1963 to 1966. He moved to the University of Toronto as Professor of Russian and East European history, a position he held from 1966 to 1997. Since 1989 he was Director of a Research Program at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, now Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.
Always an outspoken advocate for social justice with a deep concern for world issues, he chaired a Committee at the Toronto United Mennonite Church that sponsored and settled over 50 Vietnamese refugee families. He became active in faculty negotiations, initially as executive secretary and later president of the University of Toronto Faculty Association where he successfully negotiated a record setting Award for faculty and library workers that strengthened faculty power for Ontario university associations.
He spent the last decades of his life scouring archives, researching and telling the story of what had happened to Mennonites who had lived in the former USSR for over 200 years. The violent Bolshevik Revolution and Soviet policies of collectivization, exile, penal labour camps, imprisonment and wide scale secret executions of male family members, led to the disappearance of one quarter of Mennonite men and thousands more Mennonites became refugees in an exodus to Canada and South America.
In 1991, with the fall of the Communist government, he gained access to many state archives in the former USSR and began a multi-year microfilming program, collecting as many previously believed 'lost' documents as possible before the state would again close access. He oversaw getting copies of these illuminating documents back to Canada and to share globally where they continue to inform historical study of Russian history, particularly including Mennonites.
Retiring from teaching, Harvey resolved to honour the lives of those disappeared in the Soviet era and to restore their story to present Ukraine. Collaborating with Ukrainian scholars, administrators, museum officials, and scholars, he became chief co-organizer of two scholarly international conferences held in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. He formed a committee to create scholarships at the Universities of Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine to support research and publication of papers and books. Described as "a man of vision," Harvey would become instrumental in a renaissance in Russian Mennonite studies.
He actively fundraised to place markers and monuments in villages and towns of former Mennonite settlements in Ukraine. A particularly important monument in Zaporizhzhia, cherished locally and acknowledged as representing citizens that perished due to Soviet policies, remains sandbagged in the recent Russian occupation. He had a pivotal role in the creation of the Friends of the Mennonite Centre in Ukraine, FOMCU, a community centre providing medical, educational and humanitarian aid to local residents. Harvey saw this as a Mennonite response to the tragic part of their history.
Harvey was a devoted and loving father to his children and grandchildren. He loved to joke around, laugh, swim, ride bikes, and even write individual Valentine's poems for his children. Family gave him great joy. Harvey's children and grandchildren have the fondest memories of time spent together at the family farm in Purple Valley, collecting coloured leaves in bumpy rides in the red pickup truck, and driving the John Deere mower.
Harvey is predeceased by his parents, two sisters and their husbands. He is survived by his wife Anne Konrad, his three children and four grandchildren and by Dyck family nephews and nieces Rick Guenther (Valerie Stevens), Stan Guenther (Pat Miller), Linda Boulter, Shauna Grant (John), Steve Boulter (Tracy). Also by family in-laws, Elizabeth Konrad (Jake), Lillian and John B. Toews, George and Hilda Konrad, Bernard and Irma Konrad, Louise Friesen (Neil) Candelaria Arceo (Herman) Konrad, and many nieces and nephews, relatives here and many in British Columbia.
The family wishes to thank Dr. Ken Shulman and Harvey's caregivers Dina Sapitan and Amante Batoon. A funeral will take place Saturday, January 18 at 10:30 am at the Toronto United Mennonite Church, 1774 Queen St E, Toronto, ON M4L 1G7. Visitation is at Humphrey Funeral Home, 1403 Bayview Ave, Toronto on Friday, Jan. 17 from 2:00 to 4:00pm and 6:00 to 8:00pm. Donations may be sent to Friends of the Mennonite Centre in Ukraine.
