Yuri Shymko (Cyrillic: Юрій Шимко, born September 6, 1940) is a former politician in Ontario, Canada. He was a Progressive Conservative Party member of the House of Commons of Canada from 1978 to 1979 representing the downtown Toronto riding of Parkdale. From 1981 to 1987 he served in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario representing the riding of High Park-Swansea.
From 2013-2017, Shymko served as President of the International Council in Support of Ukraine (ICSU) which coordinates Ukrainian NGO's in North America, Europe, South America, and Australia.
In 2008, Yuri Shymko received one of Ukraine's highest state honours when President Viktor Yushchenko awarded him the Order Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise at a public ceremony in Kyiv.
Background
Shymko was born in Cosel, Province of Silesia, Germany (modern Koźle, part of Kędzierzyn-Koźle, in Poland). He is the grandnephew of the renowned Ukrainian poet and social activist, Ivan Franko, whose granddaughter, Hanna Klyuchko, lived in Canada. Shymko's family moved to Belgium, where he received his early education in a private school operated by the Catholic Redemptorist Fathers. He moved to Canada as a teenager and went to the University of Toronto where he graduated with a degree in modern history and languages. After university he was head of the Modern Languages Department at Victoria Park Secondary School. Having devoted many years to researching the plight of political dissidents in the USSR, Shymko was the editor of "For This Was I Born", a Canadian-published book documenting the violation of human rights in the former Soviet Union.
Shymko is fluent in several languages, including English, French, Ukrainian, and Russian. Yuri Shymko is married to the former Stephanie Kowal. They have two daughters, Lisa Shymko, a political scientist, and Natalie Shymko, an art historian.
From 1973 to 1978 he served as the youngest Secretary-General of the World Congress of Free Ukrainians Ukrainian World Congress and later served as its President from 1988 to 1993.
Shymko is the recipient of a number of Canadian and international awards, including the Outstanding Service Award from the Reena Foundation (1985), which serves the needs of the Jewish community's physically-challenged children. In 1997, Shymko's support for the francophonie was recognized when he was officially inducted as an Officer of the Order of La Pléiade by the International Assembly of French Speaking Parliamentarians (1997). Shymko was inducted into the Ordre de la Pléiade together with Canadian astronaut Marc Garneau and Ontario Court of Appeal Justice, Roy McMurtry.
Politics
Shymko ran for the Ontario legislature in the 1971 provincial election, as a candidate for the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, in the riding of High Park. He was defeated by New Democrat Party incumbent Morton Shulman by 7,281 votes. In the 1975 election he ran again in the same riding against NDP candidate Ed Ziemba. he was defeated by 1,773 votes.
In 1978, Shymko was elected to the House of Commons of Canada in a by-election held on October 16, 1978, defeating future cabinet minister Art Eggleton by 1,038 votes in Parkdale. He served for seven months as a member of the official opposition acting as the Human Rights critic. For the 1979 federal election, his riding was redistributed into the newly formed Parkdale—High Park electoral district. On May 22, 1979, following a highly contested race, and an electoral re-count, he lost to Liberal Jesse Flis by 74 votes.
With the backing of the Canadian Government, he personally launched a historic initiative before the United Nations for the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union. On November 21, 1978, he presented to the President of the UN General Assembly and its member missions a Memorandum on the Decolonization of the USSR which he coordinated on behalf of the Baltic, Belarusian, and Ukrainian World Congresses.
In the 1981 provincial election, Shymko defeated Ed Ziemba by 2,680 votes. For the next four years, he served in the legislature as a backbench supporter of the Bill Davis and Frank Miller administrations.
Shymko was appointed Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Community Services. He also chaired the standing committee on Social Development which published a report on violence against women. He also sponsored several Private Member's Bills. In 1986, through a PMB, he was successful in having Stalin Township in Northern Ontario renamed as Hansen Township in honour of paralympian athlete Rick Hansen.