GRAVESTONE OF UKRAINIAN CANADIAN FIRST WORLD WAR VET RESTORED
Julia Harmsworth
KINGSTON — A community of rememberers has come to together to restore the memory of a young man who paid the ultimate price for his country.
The Ukrainian Canadian Club of Kingston commissioned Alexander Gabov of Conservation of Sculptures, Monuments and Objects to professionally restore the gravestone of Ukrainian Canadian First World War veteran Pte. Nikita Natalsky in Cataraqui Cemetery.
Lubomyr Luciuk, president of the Ukrainian Canadian Club of Kingston, first noticed the gravestone’s deterioration on Remembrance Day of 2019, when he went to pay his respects.
“I started to notice that there was kind of an orange lichen spreading very quickly over the surface of this gravestone. And, in fact, it had gotten to such a state that it was virtually impossible to read,” he said.
Luciuk contacted the cemetery, which referred him to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The commission also denied responsibility for the upkeep of the gravestone.
After speaking with some members of the Ukrainian Canadian Club of Kingston, Luciuk determined the small community lacked the resources to fund the restoration themselves. So, he applied to the Shevchenko Foundation’s Ukrainian Canadian Veterans Fund, which agreed to support the project.
Though the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the process, it was still successful — now, the gravestone has been restored to perfection.
“I’m really happy we did that, because, I mean, this is a known Ukrainian Canadian who served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force of the Great War and I think he needs to be remembered,” Luciuk said. “We made sure that Natalsky’s marker will stand and be legible and be an object of memory for at least another hundred years.”
in 1978, Luciuk met Mitch Andriesky, son of Ivan Andriesky, one of the first Ukrainian immigrants to settle in Kingston and the man who placed Natalsky’s gravestone cemetery — Natalsky had no family in Kingston to do so.
Mitch Andriesky introduced Luciuk to Natalsky’s gravestone, prompting decades of annual Remembrance Day visits. Andriesky was very active in the Ukrainian Canadian Club of Kingston until his death on July 30, 2020. He did not live to see the project completed.
“If it hadn’t been for Mitch Andriesky telling me about what his father had done, then Nikita Natalsky probably would’ve been forgotten,” Luciuk said.
Natalsky immigrated to Kingston from western Ukraine prior to the First World War. Because Ukraine was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Natalsky arrived with an Austrian passport.
When the war started, Natalsky was at risk of being interned for his identity as an “enemy alien.” One of these internment camps was located right in Kingston, at Fort Henry.
Natalsky disguised himself as a Russian citizen and enlisted in the 59th Infantry Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. He was sent overseas to fight on the Western Front, where he suffered serious injuries. He returned to Kingston after the war and died in 1922.
“It was the right thing to do,” Luciuk said. “If stories like this aren’t transmitted from one person to another, then people forget. … If we don’t remember, who will?”
