Stechishin, Savella

Stechishin, Savella [Стечишин, Савеля; Stečyšyn, Savelja; née Wawryniuk (Вавринюк; Vavrynjuk)], b 19 August 1903 in Tudorkovychi, Sokal county, Galicia, d 22 April 2002 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Pedagogue and community leader; wife of Julian Stechishin. After being educated at the normal school in Saskatoon (1924) and the University of Saskatchewan (1930), Stechishin became a school teacher and taught Ukrainian classes at the University of Saskatchewan and the Mohyla Ukrainian Institute in Saskatoon. A driving force behind the establishment of a Ukrainian women's movement in Canada, she was a founding member and the first president (1926–36) of the Ukrainian Women's Association of Canada. She was also instrumental in promoting the presentation of Ukrainian folk art traditions in Canada and in the establishment of the Ukrainian Museum of Canada in 1936. For many years Stechishin edited the women’s page of Ukraïns’kyi holos. During the Second World War she published numerous articles concerning health and nutrition on behalf of the Canadian government’s Wartime Services Department. She is the author of Traditional Ukrainian Cookery (1957; 18th edn 1995). She received the Order of Canada in 1989 and the Saskatchewan Order of Merit in 1998.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ostryzniuk, N. ‘Savella Stechishin, an Ethnocultural Feminist, and Ukrainian Culture in Saskatchewan,’ Saskatchewan History (Fall 1999)

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]