Professor, linguist.
Born at Pochaiv, Volyn, Ukraine in 1924, daughter of Serhij Gerus and Anna Borecky, after the Second World War she studied medicine at Goettingen University in Germany where she met law student (and future engineering professor) Michael Tarnawecky (1924-2003). They married in 1948 and, two years later, immigrated to Canada and settled at Winnipeg.
She changed her focus to Humanities and received an MA degree in German and Slavic Studies at the University of Manitoba. Later she received a PhD at the Ukrainian Free University of Munich. In 1963, she began teaching at the University of Manitoba and retired 30 years later as Professor and Senior Scholar. She was internationally recognized for her expertise in Slavic Studies, particularly for her studies of old Cyrillic manuscripts. She participated in an agreement between the Canada Council and the USSR Academy of Sciences to research the history of Slavic languages in Moscow and Kyiv. She held executive positions in the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Canada, Canadian Association of Slavists, Canadian Onomastic Society, and Research Institute of Volyn.
She died at Winnipeg on 5 July 2011 and was buried in the Glen Eden Memorial Gardens.
Obituary [Michael Z. Tarnawecky], Winnipeg Free Press, 20 October 2003.
Obituary, Winnipeg Free Press, 9 July 2011.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 23 December 2024
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