Peter Kule: 1921-2023

On the night of 6–7 December 2023, Peter Kule died peacefully in his sleep, one month before he would have celebrated his 103^rd birthday. His passing will be mourned not only by his family members and many friends, but by everyone who knew him through his business, community, and church involvements, and all who have benefited from his visionary support for education and scholarship.

Peter was a native of the farming community of Stratyn, northeast of Rohatyn, in Ivano-Frankivsk oblast, Western Ukraine. He came to Canada as a seventeen-year-old in 1938 with his mother, Justine (Horbus’), and two brothers, Walter and Nick, to join the father, Michael Kuleba—who had emigrated a decade earlier in order to earn money to sponsor his family. Reunited just as the Great Depression was coming to an end, the Kulebas resumed their lives together in Two Hills, Alberta, where Michael’s sister Katherine had settled a year-and-a-half prior to his own arrival after marrying a widower named Cornelius Frankiw.

Although Peter had already finished secondary school in Rohatyn, upon coming to Alberta he immediately enrolled in elementary school in Two Hills, and within six months had completed eight grades with the help of a sympathetic Ukrainian teacher named Charlie Tymchuk. Obviously bright, ambitious, and hard-working, Peter’s determination and his academic prowess, especially when it came to mathematics, set him on a course that eventually launched him on his successful business and professional career.    

Shortly after the Second World War broke out Peter was conscripted, but medical issues prevented him from serving in the military. Rather than returning to Two Hills, he began a five-year accounting apprenticeship in Edmonton while working part-time as a busboy at the Hotel MacDonald— his first and fortuitous introduction to the hotel business. It was around this time, when he was embarking on his accounting career, that he shortened his Ukrainian surname from Kuleba to Kule, under which he subsequently became known both personally and professionally. Having received his certification as a Public Accountant at war’s end, Peter initially found work in the accounting department of City Dairy then soon broke out on his own to establish a somewhat unconventional private practice. Instead of simply working out of an office, he taught himself to drive, purchased a large used car, and began developing a clientele by travelling to rural communities outside of Edmonton.   

In the meantime, Peter’s life had taken a momentous turn, as he had fallen in love with an attractive young woman who shared not only his Ukrainian roots, but his dreams, his values, and his devout Christian faith. Her name was Doris Radesh and she was the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants from the village of Shubranets, Bukovyna, born and raised on a farm in the Boian district east of Willingdon, Alberta—in the heart of Canada’s oldest and largest Ukrainian agricultural settlement. After completing high school Doris obtained a teacher’s certificate from the University of Alberta and taught in rural schools north of Hairy Hill and at Derwent before moving to Edmonton in 1943, where one of her sisters was already residing. It was there that she met Peter, whom she married the following year, afterwards continuing her teaching career as a primary school teacher in Edmonton’s Beverly district, where she and Peter made their first home. The couple formed an enduring and loving partnership that was to span seventy-six years.

As Peter developed his accounting business, he was also quick to take advantage of investment opportunities that he learned about in real estate, especially when it came to hotel properties. In 1950 he bought a $10,000 share in the acquisition of a quarter-million-dollar hotel in Edmonton—which thanks to city ‘s vibrant growth, sold three years later for three million dollars. He next joined another syndicate to purchase a hotel in Vancouver that also yielded a tidy profit when it was subsequently sold for two million dollars. Over the years, thanks to his skill as an investor, Peter went on to acquire ownership and shares in hotels and motels in Jasper, Banff, Edson, Fort McMurray, Grand Prairie, Edmonton, and other centres as they flourished with the series of economic booms that followed the war years.  

At the same time, Peter continued to nurture his accounting business, which he began humbly with the help of just a receptionist-typist working out of an office in downtown Edmonton. In 1950 he was joined by a Ukrainian friend named John Peach, renaming the firm Kule Peach and Company—a partnership that lasted until Peach’s retirement in 1977. Afterwards, Peter’s firm took on his sister Katherine Frankiw’s grandson, Ken Pasnak, and later expanded significantly to become Kule Pasnak Anderson, before merging in 1990 to form Kingston Ross Pasnak—a company that today has 17 partners and more than 150 staff members. By the time Peter retired in the mid-1990s, he had seen his original accounting firm grow to become a big part of the largest, local, independent, full-service accounting firm in Alberta.   

Peter’s many lucrative investments and his prosperous accounting business made him a wealthy man, which enabled him and Doris to become extremely generous philanthropists supporting a wide array of causes, chiefly in the field of education. In total, they were to contribute some $17 million dollars to several post-secondary institutions, among them The Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies (University of Toronto); the Ukrainian Resource and Development Centre (Grant MacEwan University, Edmonton); and the Chair of Ukrainian Studies (University of Ottawa). The University of Alberta was a significant beneficiary of their largesse, receiving donations to underwrite the Kule Centre for Ukrainian and Canadian Folklore and the Kule Chair of Ukrainian Ethnography (Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies); the Kule Institute for Advanced Study (Faculty of Arts); the Chartered Accountants’ Education Foundation in support of the School of Business; St. Joseph’s College, for Catholic Religious Education; and the Ukrainian Canadian Studies Centre (Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies). Always a shrewd investor, Peter was able to obtain matching funds for many of the endowments that he and Doris created, greatly increasing the impact of their contributions.

It seems both natural and appropriate that Peter and Doris would support Ukrainian Canadian and Diaspora Studies at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS), given their backgrounds, interests, commitments, and achievements. With their Ukrainian immigrant roots and life-long involvement in the Ukrainian Catholic Church and numerous Ukrainian organizations, their personal histories are woven into the very fabric of nearly a century of Ukrainian life in Canada. CIUS’s Ukrainian Canadian Studies program was named in the Kules’ honour in 2007, recognizing their commitment to supporting academic research, conferences, public education, and publications devoted to documenting the Ukrainian experience in Canada. Today, the Peter and Doris Kule Ukrainian Canadian Studies Centre at CIUS boasts an endowment that together with the Peter and Doris Kule Endowment for the Study of the Ukrainian Diaspora, have a combined value of almost 1.7 million dollars.

Over the course of his long life, in addition to participating in various Ukrainian Catholic Church groups, projects and foundations, Peter was an active member of several different volunteer and service organizations within and outside of the Ukrainian community, to which he contributed both money and his financial expertise. These included the Ukrainian Professional and Business Association of Edmonton, the Norwood Seniors’ Housing Association, and St. Michael’s Extended Care Society. He received numerous awards for his volunteer and philanthropic efforts, among them an Order of Merit service medal from the Government of Ukraine and a special lifetime achievement award from the Mennonite Centre for Newcomers. He and Doris were particularly proud of being granted honorary doctorates from the University of Alberta in 2005, the first couple to be so recognized.

In the best tradition of Ukrainian pioneers, Peter blazed a trail and set an example for others to follow when it came to sharing his success with the wider community. His intense pride in his Ukrainian heritage was obvious, but he was also intellectually curious and enjoyed reading on a wide range of topics. He was humble, approachable, and blessed with an earthy sense of humour, which made him delightful company for those privileged to know him. He also enjoyed travelling the world with Doris and made an especially memorable trip to independent Ukraine in 1996 to visit his ancestral town. Typical of the frugal nature of immigrants of his generation, although he could easily afford to fly first class, he nevertheless always booked seats in coach even after he became dependent on a wheelchair following an amputation.

Peter was predeceased by his wife Doris, who was five days older than him, on 15 March 2020. By then, Peter’s health had also begun to fail, though he stoically bore the burden of his ailments and advanced age without her at his side for another two years and nine months.

May Peter rest easily in Canadian soil after a long and productive life well and fully lived, and may his memory be eternal!

*For more information about Peter and Doris Kule see Champions of Philanthropy: Peter and Doris Kule and their Endowments, edited by Serge Cipko and Natalie Kononenko (Edmonton and Ottawa Kule Endowment Group, 2009).