Businessman, graphic artist, musical director.
Born at Winnipeg on 28 April 1920 to Ukrainian immigrants Maxim Lewicki and Ksenia Melniczuk, who arrived in Canada in 1904, he grew up in the North End and attended Isaac Newton High School. At the age of sixteen, he joined the Ukrainian National Choir directed by Paul Macenko. Gifted with an outstanding baritone voice and many artistic skills, he studied music and took courses at the Winnipeg School of Art while still in high school. At the age of eighteen he furthered his studies at the Art Institute of Chicago.
In 1939, at the outbreak of the Second World War, he interrupted his studies to serve with the Canadian Armed Forces in England, Italy, Belgium, and Germany. Good at mathematics and trigonometry, he was given the principal job of aiming artillery. At some point, he became a courier and flew regularly from England to France and The Netherlands to deliver documents by motorcycle. By the end of the war, he attained the rank of Lieutenant.
After the war, he returned to Winnipeg where he met Stephanie Monzik (1923-2010); they married at St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church on 27 May 1950. Together they raised two sons, Thomas Ernest Lewicki (1954-2024) and Robert Stephen Lewicki. Their first-born daughter Christina Lewicki, born in 1953, died one week after her birth. From 1946 to 1948, he was part of the Ukrainian Male Chorus of Winnipeg that won the Manitoba Music Festival Folk Song competition. For fifty years he sang with the O. Koshetz Choir and became an assistant conductor. The choir travelled to Europe, to Ukraine twice, and to South America and performed with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra when large accompanying choirs were required. On occasion, he sang solo parts and memorable to him was when Piero Gamba was the orchestra’s conductor. During the 1960s and 1970s, for a span of fifteen years, he served as musical director of the St. Nicholas Church choir.
He worked at William Gross and Company, a Winnipeg religious goods store which he ultimately purchased. When the business was no longer viable, he worked for Ketchen Printing as a graphic artist until he retired in 1985. Retirement provided time and opportunity for him to rediscover his many artistic talents, particularly his craftsmanship skills. In his home workshop he repaired musical instruments for friends and built banduras, Ukrainian plucked-string folk-instruments. He is remembered also for his religious paintings for churches in and around Winnipeg and for his hand-made wooden altar tabernacles. He built one for St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church officially blessed in 1966. When this tabernacle was replaced with a metal one, it was relocated to the adjoining Basilian Fathers’ monastery chapel where it remained for fifty more years.
He died at Winnipeg on 20 January 2008 and was buried in the All Saints Cemetery.
Birth registration [Orest Antony Lewicki], Manitoba Vital Statistics.
Obituary [Ernest “Ernie” Lewicki], Winnipeg Free Press, 22 January 2008.
Obituary [Stephanie Monzik Lewicki], Winnipeg Free Press, 12 January 2010.
Obituary [Helen M. Lewicki Babynec], Winnipeg Free Press, 9 November 2011.
Obituary [Thomas “Tom” Ernest Lewicki], Winnipeg Free Press, 30 December 2025.
St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church: Celebrating 100 Years: Together for Tomorrow by June Dutka and Athanasius McVay. St Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church, 2006.
We thank Marilyn Lewicki Dolenko and Robert Lewicki for providing additional information used here.
This page was prepared by June Dutka.
Page revised: 18 August 2025
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