Semen and Olha Bida Fund

Amount: $500,000

Designation: The fund’s focus reflects the personal experiences and causes that were supported by the late Semen Bida throughout his life. The fund will support projects that promote Ukrainian literature and history, support students and youth, particularly projects that focus on the history of the veterans of Ukraine’s World War II resistance movement and Ukraine’s struggle for independence.

Background: The youngest of four sons, Semen Roman Bida (1916-2009), was born in the village of Tarnoshyna, in what is present-day Poland. One of his brothers, Mykola, immigrated to Vancouver in 1928, where he died in 1947. In 1945, his oldest brother, Andriy, was forcibly re-settled to Siberia, where the communist authorities separated him from his wife and children. Like so many other Ukrainian families at that time, Semen’s mother and brother Pavlo became the victims of ethnic cleansing in 1945, when they were forcibly removed from their home and re-settled near Lviv.

Semen was an active member of the OUN, which fought both the Nazi and Soviet occupying forces in Ukraine. Trying to avoid capture by both Nazi and Soviet forces, in 1944 he made his way to Bavaria. He narrowly escaped forcible repatriation to the USSR and certain death, when he landed in a Displaced Persons Camp in Neu Ulm in the American zone.

Semen immigrated to Canada in 1949. He became a successful real estate broker and partner in a realty company in Toronto that flourished for forty years.

In 1953, Semen married Olha Mendyk in Toronto. Together they supported countless causes in Canada and abroad. As a tribute to his beloved late wife, in 2007 Semen dedicated the publication of a children’s book entitled “Ukraine – We Are Your Children” (“Ми – діти твої, Україно”), which was widely distributed in children’s Reading Rooms across Ukraine.