The Temerty Foundation was established by James C. Temerty and Louise Temerty with the goal of providing funding to Canadian registered charitable organizations focused on medical research, arts and culture, education, and social services that address the needs of children and the underprivileged. The foundation also has a special interest in programs and projects, within Canada and internationally, that focus specifically on Ukraine, reflecting its goal of making the accomplishments of Ukrainian culture widely available, including quality texts for educational purposes.
The Temerty Foundation has been especially dedicated to promoting knowledge and study of the Holodomor. Six years ago the Temerty Foundation provided funds to establish the Holodomor Research and Educational Consor-tium at CIUS (CIUS-HREC). In addition to its ongoing support of HREC at the Univ. of Alberta, the Temerty Foundation provides the funding for the Holodomor Research and Education Centre in Ukraine (HREC in Ukraine). James and his sister, Ludmilla, whose family originated in the Donbas region of Ukraine, have a personal connection to the Holodomor famine-genocide as the children of survivors. Ludmilla is also the designer of the Holodomor monument in Edmonton (1983), the first such monument erected in North America.
In 2018 the Temerty Foundation increased its support for Ukrainian historical studies by pledging $250,000 to two major research projects at CIUS's Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research. Of that amount, $150,000 has been designated for the publication by the internationally renowned Hrushevsky Translation Project of the final two volumes (5 and 2) of Mykhailo Hrushevsky's historiographic magnum opus, History of Ukraine-Rus'. The grant will also be used to disseminate the History to libraries internationally, and to make it available online to scholars everywhere. The Jacyk Centre thanks the Temerty Foundation for joining other foundations and individuals in order to ensure the successful completion of the Hrushevsky Translation Project (HTP).
Although Hrushevsky's History ends in the mid-seventeenth century, the HTP's English edition includes discussions of scholarship that have appeared since his magisterial history was written. With the completion of the translation project, the Jacyk Centre has initiated a number of projects aimed at advancing new research on modern Ukrainian history, and producing monographs thereon for today's international scholarly community. With initial support from the Ukrainian Studies Fund, Inc., the centre engaged Dr. Serhiy Bilenky, an eminent specialist on nineteenth-century Ukraine, to write a new history of Ukraine from 1793 to 1914. To that end, $100,000 of the Temerty Foundation's 2018 pledge has been designated to sponsor the volume by providing funds for research, editing, and publication.
CIUS is profoundly grateful to the Temerty Foundation for its generous support of these projects, which will significantly increase worldwide understanding of the Ukrainian past.