Article: ‘This is total resistance’: How a Toronto lawyer became a Ukraine defender

The Calgary Herald writes..

Back to the U.S.S.R.: Dan Bilak, 62, formed a volunteer force to protect Kyiv and was recently awarded a medal by Ukraine’s defence minister, writes Paule Robitaille

KYIV — The choice of a Crimean restaurant for my lunch date with Dan Bilak is symbolic as well as culinary. The menu is inspired by the cuisine of the Crimean Tatars, a Turkic people that have the sad distinction of having been persecuted by both Stalin and Vladimir Putin, for the crime of being native to a piece of land coveted by Russia. “Crimea, this peninsula that Russia tore from Ukraine and which we will take back,” he tells me.

I haven’t seen Dan Bilak since law school at McGill University in 1986. He was the guy who threw the best parties, who was quick to laugh, equally at ease chatting about the Leafs or a Bach concerto. And smart. Even at a school full of bright young people, he stood out

As a young lawyer for Toronto law firm Fasken, he first went to Kyiv in 1991 to represent the Canadian Bank Note Company, which had won a contract to print the new Ukrainian currency, the hryvna. It was an opportunity to return to his roots, as both his parents were born in Ukraine. Thirty odd years later, he’s still there.

Shall we take the Genghis Khan plate? That should be enough for both of us,” he says, perusing the menu. The platter of food is gargantuan. It makes me think of the Mongol emperor who conquered a wide swath of Eurasia in the 13th century, including most of present-day Ukraine. I can’t help but draw parallels to the savagery of Russia’s current war effort, marked by countless atrocities against civilians.

 

We did not imagine an offensive so disproportionate from Russia

DAN BILAK

“We knew that the conflict in Donbas, which had been festering since 2014, was going to evolve,” says Bilak. “But we did not imagine an offensive so disproportionate from Russia.”

Back then, Ukraine had a threadbare and outdated army hobbled by a Soviet-style military culture. Russia’s stealthy military intervention in the eastern Donbas region, under the guise of a revolt by Russian-speaking separatists, was a wake-up call to modernize. “We accepted all the training we could get from NATO countries, including Canada,” says Bilak. “If we hadn’t had these eight years of collaboration with Western armies, I don’t know if we would have been able to confront the Russians.”

Read more at  https://calgaryherald.com/feature/back-to-the-ussr-kyiv-dan-bilak