Shevchenko Foundation and the Ukrainian Canadian Veterans Fund fund a grave cleaning project in Kingston, ON

Lubomyr Luciuk, Kingston, ON.

With this note I am pleased to report we have completed most of the work involved in the restoration of the headstone of Private Nikita Natalsky, a Ukrainian Canadian who served overseas with the CEF during the Great War and succumbed to his injuries a few years after his return to Kingston. His gravestone was all but illegible, grown over with various lichens during the course of the past several decades.

Thanks to a grant from the Shevchenko Foundation and with the support of the Ukrainian Canadian Club of Kingston, we have had the marker professionally cleaned and restored. This coming autumn it will be further stabilized by our conservationist but, as can already be seen from the attached photographs, Private Natalsky’s final resting place has been brought back to an excellent condition; his marker is quite legible and remains standing in the ranks with his other comrades from the First World War. Private Natalsky was one of those Ukrainian immigrants who, having arrived from western Ukraine, might have been interned as an “enemy alien” but instead served this Dominion honourably, and paid the ultimate sacrifice.

My only regret is that the man who alerted me to the presence of Private Natalsky’s grave at the historic Cataraqui Cemetery, Mr Mitch Andriesky, died on 30 July 2020, and was not able to see this restored gravestone, even though I had alerted him to the fact that this restoration work was being done.

On behalf of the members of the Ukrainian Canadian Club of Kingston allow me to again thank the Shevchenko Foundation (and the Ukrainian Canadian Veterans Fund) for their support of this modest but important project.

We remember them.

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