Mrs. Kateryna Kushnirenko

Obituary

KUSHNIRENKO, Kateryna (Katya), peacefully, at Ivan Franko LTC in Toronto on Friday, October 31, 2026 at the age of 99. She was a Holodomor survivor.

Pre-deceased by her husband of 65 years in 2014, she was the beloved and loving, caring mother to sons Marko (Mirella) and Pavlo (Liijanna).

Proud Baba to Aria and Luka (Marko) and Zakary, Alexya and Gabriel (Pavlo).

Born in the city of Kyiv Ukraine December 3rd 1926 as Kateryna Rudyk she was the second of four sisters: Lida was her older sister along with her younger sisters Valya and Luba.

She lost two brothers (a baby and a toddler) to starvation during the Holodomor. She rarely talked about this part of her life, but when she did, the lived history was horrific.

World War II changed her life. On the 6th of August 1942 she was taken to Germany as a forced labourer to work on a dairy farm near Munich. She did not return to her family in Ukraine until the summer of 1972. Post war she spent 2 years in a “displaced persons” camp in Mittenwald Germany, eventually making her way to England where she worked as a cleaner in Caring Cross hospital.

It was in England she met and married her husband Ilarion (‘Larry’) Kushnirenko in 1949.

Sensing opportunity, Larry and Katya immigrated to Canada in 1952 and took up their first residence on Adelaide St. Katya was hired as a sorter at the Bay St. post office where she worked until 1962.

Her first son, Marko, was born in 1956 and when he was ready for kindergarten, the family bought a small grocery store on Pacific Avenue in the High Park area of Toronto. Katya quit the post office and worked the counter at the store with her husband so she could both work and be a stay-at-home mother, which was important to her.

In 1967, she was blessed with her second son Pavlo and the family moved to Etobicoke where she became a full-time mom.

From that point on, she enthusiastically embraced life returning to Ukraine in 1972 and again in 1999.

She celebrated the marriage of her sons and the birth of grandchildren. After all she had been through, she passed contented. We will miss her.

Vichnaya Pam’yat.

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