Things you didn't know about UCU employees...

Spot light on:

Yuriy Diakunchak

Yuriy in a recent publicity shot

Yuriy Diakunchak is the Director of Marketing at Ukrainian Credit Union Limited. Though he’s been in that role only since late summer 2010, he has a long history of involvement in the marketing function at UCU. For about 5 years in the mid-2000s Yuriy ran a company called Creative Quotient Inc. which counted Ukrainian Credit Union Limited among its list of clients.

Just to be a bit different, Yuriy likes to style himself as a Québécois-Ukrainien having been born in Montréal and spending his formative years on the South Shore. He also spent enough time living in Kyiv in the early 1990s (and working as a journalist of sorts) to consider himself at the very least an honorary Kyivite – “Yak tebe ne liubyty Kyyeve miy” – banged out regularly by the bell tower on the Maydan has never quite erased itself from his internal soundtrack.

At the start of his working life, Yuriy focused on the editing and writing crafts. He was partly responsible for the creation of the North American version of Zdorov! The Magazine of Ukrainian Things and was an editor of the sadly now-defunct The Artery which was the voice of the Parkdale Village arts community. He has also worked extensively in the software industry for such Canadian success stories as Hummingbird and Platform Computing.

Setting off onto an arduous three day trek into
the wilds of south-western Algonquin.*

In recent times, Yuriy has rediscovered his passion for the outdoors. As a former Plastun (once a Plastun always a Plastun?) he used to do a lot of camping and hiking and such. Appropriately, he’s a lapsed member of the Burlaky Scouting fraternity, which features as its emblem a torn hiking boot. After a long hiatus from such activities he is easing himself back into the joys of slogging up and down hilly terrain in the Algonquin and getting dunked into the rushing waters of Ontario rivers.

  

He has set himself the goal of eventually walking every step of the Appalachian Trail, but so far has only managed a small part of it in New York. He intends to do the same on the Bruce Trail in Ontario, on which he has a bit more of a head start.

 

Yuriy channels a curmudgeonly coureur de bois in sub-zero temperatures this past
Thanksgiving morning on the shores of the Madawaska. The clothes hanging in the back
are drying from the previous day’s capsizing on one of the rapids.
“Get your hands off the GUNWALES!!!!” is still ringing in his head.*

Since Yuriy likes to maintain a bit of a mysterious air, he wants to leave you with this cryptic thought: “Carcassonne is not just a medieval city in southern France you know”.


Did we mention that Yuriy likes to think he can dance?

To read about other UCU employees that have been featured in a Spotlight please visit this page: Spot Light On...

*Camping related photos were taken by the (not-so)-world-famous photographer Jeff Wade.