After a long and difficult hospitalization, Yaroslaw Zajac passed away at the Ottawa General Hospital on January 19, 2026.
Yaroslaw (“Yaro” / “Slawko”) was born on March 8, 1948 at Highfield Maternity Hospital near Woking, Surrey, England to Melania Maloid and Volodymyr Zajac, Displaced Persons from Western Ukraine following the Second World War. The family’s time in England was short-lived. Two years later, they boarded a ship for Canada but nearly lost Yaro to the sea when he leaned too far over the gunwale to reach the cap that the wind had snatched from his head. Fortunately, his father managed to grab his legs just in time and before he was completely over the rail.
Making their home in Toronto, Melania and Volodymyr enrolled Yaroslaw in Ukrainian school and in the Ukrainian Youth Association (Ukrainian acronym: SUM). Both provided many opportunities for life-long friendships and many summer camp adventures. At the age of nine, tragedy struck when his beloved mother died of cancer. (His father later married Anastasia Solar who had a daughter, Olga, from a previous marriage.) Yaro’s faith became a source of strength and solace.
Yaro continued to be an active member of the Ukrainian Youth Association, later camp counsellor, then head of the Canadian national organization in his twenties. In that role, he travelled across Canada to visit its various branches. The Association and his extracurricular Ukrainian school provided him with a life-long interest and concern with Ukraine, its long struggle for sovereignty, as well as with a general interest in Canadian and world politics. Later in life, he looked forward to his weekly issue of The Economist and to discussing the state of the world with friends and family around the kitchen table.
Besides politics, Yaro maintained a wide range of interests throughout his life. Joining the Air Cadets in his youth provided a source of pleasure, including flying and skydiving, and an appreciation for ritual, ceremony, and discipline. But his dream to become a pilot was prevented by his less than 20/20 vision. His interest in the skies extended to astronomy and, as a boy, he carefully saved up his pennies for a telescope. He sang with a fine tenor voice and played the violin. He was especially thrilled to take part in Handel’s Messiah during his year at the University of Waterloo.
At the University of Toronto, where he completed his studies with a Bachelor of Science (1971), Yaroslaw continued to be engaged in Ukrainian matters, becoming president of the Ukrainian Students Organization, initiating and participating in various activities, including traveling by bus to and from Ottawa for protests against Soviet Russia. He was also an active member of the Youth Section of the Association of Ukrainian Journalists of Canada.
Later, at the University of Ottawa, he obtained an Executive MBA (1996). He worked as an executive officer with a range of companies and organizations including Cansult, Canadian Association of Consulting Engineers, Automotive Industries Association, Consumers Association of Canada, the Association of Technicians and Technologists, and others. He also founded Lectus, a consultancy. His work took him all around the world including to Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Japan, India, and Dubai.
On the more personal front, while in his third year as undergraduate, he met and fell in love with Irena Makaryk, then in her last year of high school. On his way to university classes, he brought a rose to her locker every morning until the vice-principal discovered him and prohibited further visits. Unbeknownst to her, the roses were filched from a neighbour’s garden. Forever a romantic, the single rose remained his signature gift to Irena after they married in 1979, and was frequently presented without any special occasion but just as a reminder of his love.
During their 46 years of marriage, Yaroslaw and Irena were blessed with two wonderful daughters: Natalia (“Talia”, b. 1985, m. Ethan Menchinger) and Larissa (b. 1989, m. Jeremy Elzinga; Jeremy predeceased Yaro in 2021). Yaro had found his vocation as a devoted, loving husband and doting father. Always putting family first, Yaro could be found storytelling, bicycling, driving, swimming with his daughters, or putting the finishing touches, especially for Larissa, to decadent chocolate-chip pancakes. He put on his tuxedo and dancing shoes to squire his daughters to Elmwood School’s annual Father-Daughter Dance. “Mr. Math” to Talia, he was ready and patient in helping her with Math schoolwork. Fatherhood brought out his creativity and for years he told his daughters the never-ending story he invented of “Penny Penguin” and her adventures attempting to escape the zoo and return to her Antarctic home. He was also not above playing dress-up, but only for his daughters, and once made a memorable appearance for Larissa’s third birthday as a very large Tweety Bird in orange hose and feathered costume.
In addition to creative talents, Yaro enjoyed collecting cookbooks and experimenting in the kitchen, eventually becoming a fine chef. Every Mother’s Day he would prepare a special lobster dinner for his wife. His Caesar salad was second to none. But Yaro was also known more widely among family and friends as “Kapusta King.” Each Fall, he would delight in preparing his very own brand of traditionally made sauerkraut, a skill he learned from Irena’s father, Yevhen. As well as filling 28 to 30 Mason jars with pickled cabbage, for many years he simultaneously distributed a hilarious “newsletter” as the purported CEO of a sauerkraut-making company.
An inveterate punster and general lover of the play of language, Yaro enjoyed reading, museum and gallery visiting, theatre (the Shaw Festival and Stratford were favourites), opera, and travelling. Whenever possible, he helpfully tagged along on Irena’s research trips across Europe and the UK, and shared in the delights of discovery.
For his wife, and for many, he was a Galahad: a consummate gentleman, always gallant, always courteous and jocular, sometimes puckish, even when in hospital and hardly able to talk. A favourite with the nurses, he joked nearly up to the very end. Vichnaya pamiat’! Eternal memory!
The family will receive condolences at Beechwood Funeral, Cemetery and Cremation Services on Thursday, January 29th, 2026, from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m (with a Panakhyda Memorial Service at 6:00 p.m). The funeral service will be held at St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Shrine on Friday, January 30th, at 10:00 a.m., followed by Interment at Beechwood Cemetery and a small reception from 1-3pm at Beechwood.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to one of Yaro's favourite organizations: Canada-Ukraine Foundation; Doctors Without Borders; WaterAid.