Physician, community activist.
Born at Brooklyn, New York around 1898, he grew up in a family of two boys and five girls. He received a public and high school education at Winnipeg. At university he distinguished himself as a scholar and an athlete in the pole-vault and on basketball teams. He graduated with honours from the Manitoba Medical College in 1922 and is believed to be the first person of Ukrainian descent to obtain a medical degree in Manitoba.
In addition to practicing medicine, he served on the faculty of the Manitoba Medical College and was a lecturer for many years at the St. Boniface Hospital. He was President of the medical staff of the Victoria General Hospital and was honoured as an outstanding member of the hospital. He was made a life member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba.
On 1 August 1925, he married Mary Sawczak at Winnipeg and they had two sons: Bernard Boris Dyma (1926-2009) and Donald Laurence Dyma (1930-2018). Active in the community, in the early 1940s he collaborated with several community leaders including Constantine Henry Andrusyshen, Jaroslaw William Arsenych, Wasyl “Basil” Kushnir, John Roman Solomon, and Miroslaw Stechishin to establish the Ukrainian Canadian Committee (currently, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress), a national body that united Ukrainians throughout Canada to preserve its cultural identity. He was also the first President (1943-1945) and honorary life member of the Ukrainian Professional and Business Men’s Club (currently, the Ukrainian Professional & Business Club of Winnipeg). In this capacity, he became involved in fundraising to secure a Chair for the Slavic Studies Department at the University of Manitoba headed by Jaroslav Bohdan Rudnyckyi.
After a short illness, he died at the Winnipeg General Hospital on 27 April 1966 and was buried in the All Saints Cemetery.
Brown and Gold Yearbook, University of Manitoba, 1922, page 63.
Marriage registration [Mary Sawchak, Bronislaw Dyma], Manitoba Vital Statistics.
Obituary, Winnipeg Free Press, 28 April 1966, page 31.
25th Anniversary Review, 1943-1968. Winnipeg: Ukrainian Professional & Business Men’s Club, 1968.
Obituary [Mary Sawczak Dyma], Winnipeg Free Press, 17 October 1998, page 64.
Dictionary of Manitoba Biography by John M. “Jack” Bumsted, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, December 1999, 288 pages.
Obituary [Bernard Boris Dyma], Winnipeg Free Press, 28 February 2009.
Obituary [Donald Laurence Dyma], Winnipeg Free Press, 8 September 2018.
This page was prepared by June Dutka.
Page revised: 15 August 2025
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