OPACAK
OPALEYCHUK
OPALINSKA
OPALKA
OPANUBI
OPACAK o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2005-10-21 published
McDONALD,
Carol
Ann (née
PAILING)
Suddenly in Val-Morin, Quebec on Sunday, October 16th, 2005,
in her 67th year. Carol, beloved daughter of the late Ivan and
Isobel PAILING.
Loving sister of Diane and husband Gary
TERRELL
of Orillia. Dear aunt of Shawna
TERRELL and Claudio
OPACAK of
Goodwood and Philip
TERRELL and Tammera
SEYFFER of Toronto. Sadly
missed by many cousins in Thessalon and the Niagara Falls area.
The family will receive Friends at the Mundell Funeral Home,
79 West St. N., Orillia from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. Saturday. Funeral
service will be held on Sunday, October 23rd, 2005 at 2 o'clock
in the chapel. Cremation to follow. If desired, memorial donations
to the charity of your choice would be appreciated by the family.
Messages of condolence are welcomed at www.mundellfuneralhome.com.
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OPALEYCHUK o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2005-10-05 published
DEROUIN,
Judith
Ann (née
OPALEYCHUK)
Suddenly on Tuesday, October 4, 2005 surrounded by her family,
at Southlake Regional Health Centre. Beloved wife of Gerry of
Sutton. Loving and cherished mother of Mark
DEROUIN
(Jill) of
Dundas, Laura
THERRIEN
(Chris) of Pefferlaw, Kevin, Traci, Pamella,
and Matthew at home. Cherished sister of Dr. Clyde
OPALEYCHUK
of Alban, Michael
OPALEYCHUK
(Gail) of Toronto, and Lyn
MULLINS
(Greg) of Thunder Bay. Loving aunt of many nieces and nephews.
Predeceased by her parents, Mike and Pauline
OPALEYCHUK of Sudbury.
Wife, mother and friend, Judy was an extraordinary woman with
many talents. She will be greatly missed by all who were fortunate
enough to know her. Visitation at the Taylor Funeral Home, Sutton,
on Thursday, October 6, 2005 from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. Funeral Mass
will be celebrated in the Church of the Immaculate Conception,
20916 Dalton Road, Sutton, Friday, October 7, 2005 at 1: 00 p.m.
Cremation to follow. Donations to the Church of Immaculate Conception
would be appreciated by the family.
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OPALINSKA o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2005-04-26 published
OPALINSKA,
Halina
Peacefully, at St. Joseph's Hospital on April 22nd, 2005, at
age 85. Dear mother of Eve and her husband Zbigniew
POSPIESZYNSKI.
Loving grandmother of Jakob and Chris. Unfailingly optimistic,
energetic and brilliant, Halina was a master of human kindness.
She will be sadly missed and joyfully remembered by her family
and many Friends in Canada and Poland. Resting at the Dodsworth
& Brown Ancaster Chapel, 378 Wilson Street East, Ancaster on
Thursday, April 28 from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. Mass at Saint Ann's Church,
11 Wilson Street West, Ancaster on Friday, April 29 at 11 a.m.
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OPALKA o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2005-09-16 published
HIPSZ,
John
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of John,
at the St. Joseph's Health Centre, on September 13, 2005. Longtime
dedicated employee of the Toronto Transit Commission Streetcar
Division.
Companion of Pearl
MacNEILLY. Cherished brother of
Mrs. Lucja
KSIAZCZAK of Poland. Loving uncle of Mrs. Teresa
OPALKA
of Poland. Dearest friend of Mr. Sheikh
ALI and his wife
Angela,
Mr. Roy SOOROOJANUTH and his wife Janet, and Mrs. Krystyna
SZYMANISKA.
John will be fondly remembered and sadly missed by all who knew
him. Friends will be received at the Cardinal Funeral Home "Earle
Elliott Chapel" (715 Dovercourt Road, Ossington subway - Delaware
exit), on Friday, September 16, 2005 from 1-3 p.m. and 6-8 p.m.
A complete Funeral Service will be held in the Cardinal Funeral
Home Chapel on Saturday, September 17, 2005 at 11 a.m. Cremation.
In loving memory of John, donations to the Heart and Stroke Foundation
would be appreciated by the family. Online condolences at www.cardinalfuneralhomes.com
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OPANUBI o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2005-12-02 published
Magnus ELIASON,
Politicial
Organizer: (1911-2005)
He joined the Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation the year it
was founded and became a gifted backroom planner who groomed
such up-and-comers as Ed
SCHREYER
By Sabitri
GHOSH,
Special to The Globe and Mail, Friday, December
2, 2005, Page S9
Kingston, Ontario -- In 1957, officials at Co-Operative Commonwealth
Federation headquarters were looking for somebody to drive Magnus
ELIASON. It was one nomination that Ed
SCHREYER, then an ambitious
young politico, would rather not have got.
"Frankly, I thought it was going to be a drag, driving around
a political organizer," Mr.
SCHREYER said. "At the age of 20,
I had other things in mind."
But the white-haired éminence grise -- who was severely visually
impaired as a result of congenital albinism -- turned out to
be no ordinary passenger. As Mr.
SCHREYER drove him through the
Manitoba countryside, he cracked picaresque jokes, told stories
from Norse mythology, and recounted stirring anecdotes from his
days as an original Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation member.
"He was such a marvellous, marvellous storehouse of knowledge
and so entertaining as a raconteur that, after that first chore,
I genuinely volunteered to drive him around," Mr.
SCHREYER said.
They talked so much, added the former Manitoba premier and governor-general,
"we never turned the radio on once."
Though his own résumé as a politician was limited, Mr.
ELIASON
played a singular role in the rise of the Co-Operative Commonwealth
Federation and its successor, the New Democratic Party, through
tireless organizing and nurturing political talent like Mr.
SCHREYER,
who described him as a "tremendous influence on my early life."
The son of Icelandic immigrants, Mr.
ELIASON heard of the 1932
founding of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation while homesteading
with his brothers in Sunnybrook, British Columbia An immediate
convert, he became one of the party's most zealous missionaries,
preaching its program of socialism and full employment as he
freight-hopped during the Depression in search of work. In March
of 1935, he went on a proselytizing trek across northern British
Columbia and Alberta, walking to every farm in a 60-kilometre
radius to drop off Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation pamphlets
and spread the party's message. By his calculation, he achieved
a 65-per-cent success rate.
As Mr. ELIASON's activism grew, the Co-Operative Commonwealth
Federation hired him as an organizer to reinforce its Prairie
base. His tactical savvy and attention to detail proved critical
in winning Tommy Douglas a second term as Saskatchewan premier
during a close 1956 campaign.
"Magnus could walk into a room and know where everybody was and
who they were, and zero right in, find out just what the details
were," said Jim
MALOWAY,
Mr.
ELIASON's long-time business partner.
"So if he wanted them to come to a meeting, he would have their
name and phone number and the time they were home, and then organize
a car to go pick them up. You can't beat a guy with organizational
ability like that."
In 1958, Mr.
ELIASON returned to his native Manitoba to work
full-time for the Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation national
office. Over the next decade, he more than tripled party memberships
in the province. A born marketer, he loved going to people's
homes, setting out the Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation platform
as tangibly as he would demonstrate the merits of no-rip nylons
or encyclopedia sets in his erstwhile career as a door-to-door
salesman.
"He loved sales and getting directly to the sales pitch in a
way that would just make me cringe," Mr.
SCHREYER said. "But
most of the time, it worked."
One winter, Mr.
SCHREYER said, he drove Mr.
ELIASON to a tumbledown
farm -- "the farmer was chopping ice in the water trough for
his livestock; you could see he was just struggling, financially"
and watched with consternation as Mr.
ELIASON unloaded his
high-powered sales pitch.
"He probably was pleased that he could afford $5 to help out
a people's movement," Mr.
ELIASON later said when Mr.
SCHREYER
remonstrated with him. "Besides, you can't build a viable political
party... on sentiment alone."
While unwavering, Mr.
ELIASON's loyalty to the party was not
unquestioning. By his own admission, he "entertained some doubts
about the political wisdom" of amalgamating with the Canadian
Labour Congress to form the New Democratic Party in 1961. At
the New Democratic Party's inaugural leadership convention, he
went against the party mainstream again, unsuccessfully supporting
Hazen Argue over Mr. Douglas.
Convinced the party would lose Saskatchewan if Mr. Douglas left
for Ottawa, Mr.
ELIASON saw its subsequent defeat there as unwelcome
vindication. "In politics," he said in his 1997 memoir, A Life
on the Left, "I often sense a lot of things in my bones."
Mr. ELIASON's political intuition astounded Mr.
MALOWAY, a Manitoba
Member of Legislative Assembly since 1986. "He could predict
the number of seats in an election campaign down to one or two.
He used to phone me before an election and say, 'Well, Jim, I
think you guys are going to get 13, or 20,' or whatever it was:
He just had a great ability to sense this stuff."
In the mid-1960s, certain that Mr.
SCHREYER was the key to an
New
Democratic
Party victory in Manitoba, Mr.
ELIASON secured
an agreement from party leader Russ
PAULLEY to resign in favour
of the young member of Parliament. When Sid
GREEN threatened
to thwart his plan by contesting the leadership, he helped Mr.
PAULLEY stave off the challenge. His protégé's ascension to party
leader in 1969, followed by his election later that year as Manitoba's
first New Democratic Party premier, marked the high point of Mr.
ELIASON's career.
Domestically, the long-time bachelor had also found another kind
of perfect candidate: nurse and New Democratic Party supporter
Catherine MacFARLANE, whom he married in 1965.
Mrs. ELIASON's niece, Wanda
OPANUBI, felt Mr.
ELIASON -- the
consummate political organizer -- craved someone who could bring
order to his chaotic home life. "Magnus was the child of the
marriage," she said. "He was not only the husband, but the kid,
and he did need a certain amount of care."
Backed by his wife, Mr.
ELIASON finally realized some of his
most long-standing ambitions. He bought an New Democratic Party
colleague's insurance company and became a respected businessman.
Then, in 1968, he won a seat on Winnipeg City Council representing
a downtown ward. Championing revitalization of the urban core
and the preservation of heritage buildings, he served five terms
before retiring in 1989.
It was the only public office Mr.
ELIASON ever held. Decades
earlier, he had run for alderman in Vancouver, but managed to
repel both poles of the 1940s electorate by defending Japanese
Canadians' right to vote while simultaneously disavowing communism.
"He had a streak of idealism," Mr.
SCHREYER said, "but he often
spoke of the need to temper that with reality. He used the word
a lot: 'reality,' along with 'common sense,' 'logic' and 'analysis.'"
Mr. ELIASON's deference to reality caused the two men -- who
"had a tendency to agree on just about every issue," Mr.
SCHREYER
said -- to disagree on one point. Mr.
SCHREYER believed a party
should never expel its members under any circumstances, especially
on policy, while Mr.
ELIASON thought it was sometimes necessary
for the sake of party unity.
Mr. SCHREYER found it ironic, then, when Mr.
ELIASON started
taking positions contrary to the party line on issues such as
abortion. In recent years, his commanding baritone could often
be heard at New Democratic Party gatherings projecting a sharply
dissident voice. "I know it irritated some folks," Mr.
SCHREYER
said, "but I admired him all the more for it."
The same fearlessness also characterized Mr.
ELIASON as a salesman
and canvasser. He liked to quip, "An adventure lies behind every
door."
Mrs. OPANUBI offered his family's explanation for it: "He couldn't
read expressions on people's faces. So he just kept on going."
Ultimately, Mr.
ELIASON's readiness to come face to face with
anyone or anything nearly killed him. On his business's busiest
day of 1978 -- the province's February deadline for renewing
car insurance -- he was working late into the night at his home
office. "We closed at 6 o'clock," Mr.
MALOWAY said, "but there
would always be people coming by to insure their cars who would
show up at 7, 8, 9 o'clock, and he would help them: He was extremely
customer-friendly and would never turn a customer away."
Hindered by his near-blindness, Mr.
ELIASON inadvertently opened
the door to a gunman, who threatened to kill him unless his wife
handed over their money. The couple survived the experience physically
unharmed but emotionally brutalized.
What happened next was almost as extraordinary. The usually voluble
Mr. ELIASON never spoke of the traumatic incident with anyone
except his niece and business partner. Nor did his Friends detect
even a subtle shift in his personality or political views: On
crime, he continued to argue, as always, for rehabilitation over
retributive justice. And he still opened his door whenever people
came calling.
Magnus ELIASON was born in Arnes, Manitoba, on June 21, 1911.
He died after a brief illness in Winnipeg on November 11, 2005.
He was predeceased by his wife.
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