Vera Lysenko

Vera Lysenko’s vision of the ideal Canadian community is unambiguous. Through her characters, who delve into their ethnic heritage and introduce it to their neighbors, Lysenko shows that ‘unity and diversity’ can be achieved when prejudice is replaced by recognition of the significant contributions of each group

Oleksandra Kruchka Hlyn, Canadian-Ukrainian researcher of Vera Lysenko’s work

Vera Lysenko was a Canadian English-language writer of Ukrainian descent. Her real last name is Lesyk, but she wrote her works under the pseudonym Vera Lysenko.

She was born on August 7, 1910, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Her parents, originally from the Kyiv region, moved to Canada in 1903. In 1925, Vera began her studies at the University of Manitoba, where she received a scholarship. She became one of the first women of Ukrainian descent in Canada to earn a university degree (1930). She worked as a nanny, teacher, saleswoman, and journalist for Canadian media, namely the Digest and the Windsor Star.

Vera Lysenko is known for her several books. In 1947, she wrote Men in Sheepskin Coats: A Study in Assimilation, the first popular history of Ukrainian immigration to Canada published in English. Lysenko recorded hundreds of interviews and traveled across Canada in search of documents in churches and farms, which became the source material for the book. The book consists of several parts: the first provides a general overview of Ukrainian history, the second addresses the first immigrants and the difficulties they faced on the Canadian prairies, as well as everyday life, customs, and religious traditions of Ukrainians. The final part describes the achievements of individual Ukrainian immigrants.

Lysenko is also the author of the novel Yellow Boots (1954, reprinted in 1992) and the adventure story Westerly Wild (1956).

In Yellow Boots, the writer tells the story of a Ukrainian-Canadian girl, Lilly Landash, the daughter of immigrants from Ukraine, who tries to adapt to the English-speaking Canadian environment and build a career, but also preserve her ethnic Ukrainian identity and traditions. In her writings, Lysenko promotes a dual Canadian-Ukrainian identity as a way, particularly for the second generation of Ukrainian Canadians, to respond to their challenges and take their rightful place in Canadian society. Vera Lysenko reflects her own dual identity by writing in English under a pseudonym with a typical Ukrainian surname.

The main character of the novel Westerly Wild is a school teacher Julie Lacoste, who is of mixed ethnicity: her father is a French Canadian and her mother is Polish. In the story, Julie moves from the city to a rural area in Saskatchewan, where she starts working as a teacher. This story reiterates a similar idea to that of the Yellow Shoes: a common sense of belonging in Canada’s multinational society can be strengthened only by enriching and developing one’s ethnic and cultural heritage.

Vera Lysenko died on October 20, 1975, in Toronto.

Vera Lysenko is one of the first Ukrainian diaspora writers to write in English. In her works, she informs the English-speaking audience about Ukrainian life in Canada at that time, thus placing it in a broader social context.