Lobai, Danylo

Lobai, Danylo [Лобай, Данило; Lobaj; Lobay], b 30 December 1893 in Ulivok, Sokal county, Galicia, d 27 December 1966 in Toronto, Ontario. Journalist and community leader. Lobai was active in Prosvita and Sich societies in his native village. He emigrated to Canada in 1913 and joined the Federation of Ukrainian Social Democrats in Canada. Coeditor of Robochyi narod (1914–18) and its successor, Ukraïns’ki robitnychi visty (1919–35), Lobai was a founder and stalwart lieutenant of the Ukrainian Labour-Farmer Temple Association (ULFTA) as well as a member of the Communist Party of Canada (CPC). In August 1935, disturbed by the Famine-Genocide of 1932–3 and purges in Soviet Ukraine, the growing domination of the ULFTA by the CPC, and the disappearance of two former ULFTA members (Myroslav Irchan and I. Sembai) who had returned to the USSR, Lobai left the ULFTA with a group of disenchanted followers. He then founded the League of Ukrainian Organizations (renamed Ukrainian Workers' League [UWL] in 1940) and edited its papers Pravda (Winnipeg) (1936–8) and Vpered (1938–40). He became president of the UWL (1940–66), a founding member of the Ukrainian Canadian Committee and a member of its presidium, and an active member of the Ukrainian National Home in Winnipeg. From 1948 until 1965 he was coeditor of Ukrains’kyi holos in Winnipeg. Lobai was the author of Za diisne vyiasnennia polozhennia na Radians'kii Ukraïni (For a Truthful Clarification of the State of Affairs in Soviet Ukraine, 1935) and Neperemozhna Ukraïna (Unconquerable Ukraine, 1950). His account of the relationship between the ULFTA and the CPC as well as of the events leading to his break with the former was published in the 1949 Propam’iatna knyha (Memorial Book) of the Winnipeg Ukrainian National Home.

Bohdan Krawchenko

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]