He built one of Canada’s largest energy companies, donated C$250 million to medicine, has been funding Ukrainian projects for decades, helps Ukrainian hospitals during Russian strikes, and was at the origins of the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter. For Israel, there is another important point in James Temerty’s story — Jerusalem, where with the support of his foundation, the country’s first monument to the victims of the Holodomor was erected.
Author — Alexander Khmelnitsky
On September 11, 2026, Volodymyr Zelensky met in Toronto with Canadian entrepreneur and philanthropist of Ukrainian descent James Temerty. The President of Ukraine thanked him for his long-term support of Ukrainians and specifically talked about what is especially important today: daily Russian air strikes, the threat to ordinary life in Ukraine, and the need to keep Ukraine in the world’s focus.
“Met with entrepreneur and philanthropist James Temerty. Thank you for the tangible support of Ukrainians. It really matters — our community here in Canada and Canadians of Ukrainian descent actively help Ukraine.
We talked about the situation with air strikes, which the Russians are intensifying every day, aiming to cause maximum damage to ordinary people’s lives. We also discussed what can help cope with the existing challenges.
It is important that Ukraine remains in the world’s focus, and I thank everyone who contributes to this.” – Zelensky wrote in the official account on September 11, 2026.
If you look only at this meeting, Temerty may seem like another influential representative of Canada’s large Ukrainian diaspora. But his story is much broader. He is a person who has been investing in Ukrainian education, Holodomor research, and historical memory for decades, while also becoming one of the key participants in the large Ukrainian-Jewish dialogue, including with Israel.
And for me, the name Temerty appeared not after the photo with Zelensky. I wrote in NAnovosti about the first monument to the victims of the Holodomor in Israel, installed in Jerusalem. Among the organizations that made the project possible was the Temerty Foundation, and one of the monument’s authors was Lyudmila Temerty — James’s sister, who worked with sculptor David Robinson.
NAnovosti detailed the Jerusalem Holodomor monument here.
That is why the meeting in Toronto became an occasion to look at Temerty’s figure as a whole. It turned out that the lines Ukraine — Canada — Jewish world — Israel have intersected in his biography for several decades.
Born in Donbas
James Temerty was born in 1941 in Donbas. His family survived the Holodomor, Stalinist repressions, and subsequent upheavals of the 20th century. During World War II, the family left Ukraine, and in 1950 they ended up in Canada, where James grew up and later built his business career.
The family history here is not a backdrop for a beautiful biography. James and his sister Lyudmila grew up in a family of people for whom Soviet repressions were a personal experience. Their grandfather Konstantin Temerty was shot in 1938, other relatives went through arrests, deportations, and the Gulag, and their great-grandmother Odarka Tereshchenko was repressed in 1933.
This helps to understand why Ukraine, the Holodomor, and the preservation of historical memory later took such a place in Temerty’s philanthropy. His interest in these topics did not appear after the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022 and not as a result of a trend to support Ukraine. It was backed by family memory.
From IBM to Northland Power
In Canada, Temerty had the opportunity to build a completely different life. After studying, he worked for over 15 years at IBM in Canada and the USA, engaged in sales, planning, and management.
Then, together with his wife Louise, he got involved with ComputerLand. One store gradually turned into about 30 locations. Temerty also participated in the development of Softchoice, and in 1987 he created Northland Power, which later became a large international energy company, including in the renewable energy sector. Later, among his projects appeared the medical technology company MOLLI Surgical, working with technologies for breast cancer surgery.
In 1997, James and Louise created the Temerty Foundation. Through it, the family funds medicine, education, culture, Ukrainian programs, and historical memory projects.
The scale of this philanthropy is well illustrated by one figure. In 2020, the Temerty family and its foundation donated 250 million Canadian dollars to the University of Toronto. The university’s medical faculty was subsequently named the Temerty Faculty of Medicine.
However, for our story, something else is more important: Ukraine appeared in Temerty’s philanthropy long before 2022.
Ukraine was there long before the big war
Temerty participated in the creation of the Kyiv Mohyla Business School and chaired its advisory board, supported the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and the development of academic programs there. In 2008, the Governor General of Canada, awarding him the Order of Canada, specifically noted Temerty’s contribution to strengthening relations between Canada and Ukraine.
In 2014, the Temerty Foundation created the Temerty Community Development Fund in the Shevchenko Foundation, donating C$5 million to it. The funds were intended to support Ukrainian cultural, community, and educational projects in Canada.
A separate direction was the study of the Holodomor. With the support of the Temerty Foundation, the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium — HREC was created in 2013, operating at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta. The initial contribution was C$1.062 million, and the center focused on archives, research, educational programs, and training specialists in the history of the Holodomor.
For Israel, this topic remains particularly sensitive. Israel has not yet recognized the Holodomor as a genocide of the Ukrainian people at the state level, although the memory of this tragedy is gradually becoming more noticeable in the Israeli public space.
And it is at this stage in Temerty’s biography that a line appears that initially seems unexpected: Ukrainian-Jewish relations.
How Temerty got involved in the Ukrainian-Jewish dialogue
Here the question really arises: why did a Canadian entrepreneur of Ukrainian descent, who made his fortune in technology and energy, even begin to engage in Ukrainian-Jewish relations — and not just limit himself to cultural events, but entered into a difficult historical discussion about pogroms, the Holocaust, the Holodomor, Soviet repressions, and national memory.
First, it is important to clarify: Temerty came here not as a representative of the Jewish community. In the materials of the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter and related institutions, he is presented as a Canadian entrepreneur of Ukrainian descent, born in Donbas; one of the UJE biographical materials also mentions his Orthodox background. His interest in Jewish history grew out of the Ukrainian theme, not from his own Jewish identity.
And the initial idea to create a special organization for Ukrainian-Jewish dialogue, judging by the story of UJE itself, did not arise from Temerty alone.
The Director of Communications for the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter Natalia Feduschak told the story of the organization’s creation in detail. The first initiators of the idea were Alti Rodal, Berel Rodal, and Adrian Karatnycky. During meetings and discussions, they concluded that separate conferences, contacts, and conversations between the Ukrainian and Jewish communities were not enough.
The dialogue needed to be, in their words, institutionalized — turned from a series of one-time events into a permanent international structure with its own program, historians, experts, research, and long-term projects.
After this, the Rodals and Karatnycky involved James Konstantin Temerty in the discussion. He was already a successful entrepreneur, a major Ukrainian-Canadian philanthropist, and a person who had been investing in Ukrainian education, culture, and the preservation of historical memory for many years.
And together, the four of them began to determine what the new organization should be and what exactly it should do. From these discussions, in 2008, the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter — UJE, “Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter” was born.
This sequence is important. Temerty was not a wealthy Canadian who one day independently decided to create an organization “about Ukrainians and Jews.” People came to him for whom history, national identity, Ukraine, and Ukrainian-Jewish relations were already a professional field.
Who proposed this project to Temerty
Alti Rodal was born in Chernivtsi — a city where Ukrainian, Jewish, Romanian, German, and other cultures coexisted for decades. She received part of her education in Israel and then studied history and literature at McGill University, Oxford, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Later, she taught at universities in Montreal, Ottawa, and Oxford.
At the same time, academic work was only part of her biography. For more than twenty years, Rodal held leadership and advisory positions in the Canadian government, including working in the Privy Council Office under the federal cabinet of ministers. She was the director of historical research in the Canadian Commission on the Investigation of Nazi War Criminals, and her own research focused on Jewish history, culture, identity, and intercommunal relations.
Therefore, for Alti Rodal, the Holocaust, relations between Ukrainians and Jews, and conflicting versions of shared history were not a public hobby but a professional field.
Berel Rodal came from another side — state strategy, security, and international politics. For about twenty years, he held high positions in the Canadian government, where he worked with foreign policy, international trade, national unity, defense, security, economic and social policy. He was also part of the Canadian negotiating team for the free trade agreement with the USA, which preceded NAFTA.
Later, Rodal advised businesses, government structures, think tanks, and non-governmental organizations. He dealt with issues of nationalism, political identity, governance, and international security — that is, he had a good understanding of how historical conflicts transition from university discussions to modern politics.
The third initiator was Adrian Karatnycky — an American analyst of Ukrainian descent and a long-time specialist on Ukraine and the post-Soviet space. From 1993 to 2003, he headed Freedom House, engaged in programs supporting democratic and human rights movements in Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Serbia, and other countries, and participated in research on political reforms in the post-communist world.
Later, Karatnycky became a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and continued to work on Ukraine and its relations with North America.
The result was a rather unusual initial team: a historian of Ukrainian-Jewish relations, a former high-ranking Canadian strategist, an American specialist on Ukraine — and a major entrepreneur of Ukrainian descent, capable of providing the project with financial stability, international connections, and his own weight.
Why Temerty agreed
For Temerty himself, the proposal was not a completely foreign topic. By the mid-2000s, Ukraine already occupied a large place in his philanthropy. He supported Ukrainian education and community projects, the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada, and the history of his own family was directly related to the Holodomor and Soviet repressions.
It turned out that the Rodals and Karatnycky offered him to expand the already existing work with Ukrainian memory to that part of it which cannot be fully told without Jewish history.
Temerty agreed — and did not limit himself to funding.
Here it is important to compare two accounts of UJE itself. Natalia Feduschak talks about the initial initiators — Alti Rodal, Berel Rodal, and Adrian Karatnycky, who then involved Temerty. Alti Rodal, already talking about the next stage, names four founders — herself, Berel Rodal, Karatnycky, and Temerty, who jointly formed the organization’s mission in 2007–2008.
There is no contradiction here. The first account explains where the idea came from, the second — who created a real organization out of it.
It was then that the main question of the future UJE arose: what prevents Ukrainians and Jews from understanding each other?
Two memories of one land
The founders concluded that the problem is not only in the tragic events of the past. Equally important are the completely different narratives about these events that exist within the Ukrainian and Jewish communities and are passed down from generation to generation.
Alti Rodal explained that over more than four centuries, different, and at times directly contradictory, historical narratives formed between Ukrainians and Jews. They were influenced by empires, wars, national movements, regime changes, and especially the mass violence of the 20th century.
For Jewish memory, pogroms, anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and the almost complete destruction of the vast world of Eastern European Jewry became central.
For Ukrainian memory — the Holodomor, Stalinist terror, the destruction of part of the national intelligentsia, the struggle for statehood, Soviet repressions, and their own experience of existing between several empires and totalitarian systems.
These two pictures often existed almost separately from each other. Moreover, the same historical figures, movements, or events could be perceived diametrically opposed by Ukrainians and Jews.
Temerty himself later recalled another detail. In the Canadian press, relations between the Ukrainian and Jewish communities were sometimes described almost exclusively through mutual dislike and historical “hatred.” He considered such a representation unacceptable.
But the creators of UJE did not decide to replace two conflicting versions of the past with a third, convenient for everyone. Their idea was different: to gather historians of different views and make them analyze controversial issues through documents, context, and professional research.
Already in 2008, UJE gathered researchers and public figures from North America and Ukraine to determine the mechanism of such work. One of the results was expert round tables on key periods of shared history, and later this grew into the Shared Historical Narrative project.
Its task was not to write one “correct” Ukrainian-Jewish history. It was about trying to build a fact-based and at the same time empathetic description of several centuries of joint life — including peaceful coexistence, cultural exchange, mutual influence, but also crises, conflicts, and violence.
Temerty became not just a sponsor
After the launch of UJE, Temerty’s role can no longer be reduced to a person who paid for the work of others. He became one of the four founders and the chairman of the organization, and in UJE documents, he is called founder and main sponsor.
Adrian Karatnycky and Alti Rodal became co-directors of the organization, Berel Rodal joined its leadership and chaired the advisory board. Temerty personally participated in the international work of the project.
And quite quickly, Israel appeared here.
In October 2010, the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter held a large conference in Jerusalem Ukrainian Jewish Encounter: Cultural Interaction, Representation and Memory. Temerty opened it as the chairman of UJE, Alti Rodal and Adrian Karatnycky participated as co-directors, and among the invitees were researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israeli historians, and specialists in Ukrainian and Jewish history.
The program included a visit to Yad Vashem with a separate conversation about Ukrainians — Righteous Among the Nations.
That is, the project that the Rodals and Karatnycky once proposed to Temerty quite quickly turned into his own long-term work.
In 2011, Temerty allocated $1.2 million to the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv for three academic areas: Ukrainian-Jewish relations and interfaith dialogue, Jewish studies in the context of Central and Eastern Europe, and biblical studies.
Later, he allocated another $5 million for a modern library at the Ukrainian Catholic University, named after Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky.
NAnovosti — News of Israel | Nikk.Agency
Sheptytsky as another bridge
The topic of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky gradually took a separate place in the Ukrainian-Jewish dialogue. The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church during the Holocaust helped save Jews, but the question of his recognition as Righteous Among the Nations in Israel remains unresolved.
It was Temerty who later proposed to draw more international attention to Sheptytsky’s actions and, more broadly, to the history of Ukrainians who saved Jews during the Nazi occupation.
In 2013, the medal of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, established by the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine for contributions to Ukrainian-Jewish understanding, was awarded for the first time to James Temerty himself. The ceremony was attended by the head of the UGCC Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the chief rabbi of Kyiv and Ukraine Yakov Dov Bleich, former presidents of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk and Viktor Yushchenko, diplomats, and representatives of the Jewish community.
For Israel, this story remains unfinished. Despite the testimonies of saved Jews and many years of appeals by public figures, Yad Vashem has not yet awarded Sheptytsky the title of Righteous Among the Nations.
NAnovosti detailed this long-standing struggle for Sheptytsky’s recognition.
Now the entire trajectory of Temerty becomes clearer. Initially, Alti Rodal, Berel Rodal, and Adrian Karatnycky proposed to a major Ukrainian-Canadian philanthropist to turn the Ukrainian-Jewish dialogue into a permanent institution. He agreed, became one of the founders and chairman of UJE, and then began investing in his own directions of this work — research, university programs, conferences, and historical memory.
So it is more correct to say not that Temerty unexpectedly “decided to engage in the Jewish theme.” He was invited to the project by professionals for whom Ukrainian-Jewish history was already the main subject of work. Temerty saw that this history was directly related to Ukraine, which he had been helping for decades anyway — and made the Ukrainian-Jewish dialogue one of the notable directions of his own philanthropy.
NAnovosti regularly encountered the results of this work before. For example, in August 2026, we wrote about the finalists of the UJE literary prize “Zustrich”, where the shared Ukrainian-Jewish history is considered not as an appendix to national history, but as its integral part.
NAnovosti’s article about the “Zustrich” prize and the five finalists of 2026.
Jerusalem here is not a coincidence
The Israeli line is therefore not a late addition to Temerty’s activities. It was present in UJE almost from the first years of work: the conference in Jerusalem, the Hebrew University, Israeli historians, Yad Vashem, research on Ukrainian-Jewish relations, and the controversy around Sheptytsky.
And years later, this connection received a material embodiment near the Knesset.
The first monument to the victims of the Holodomor in Israel appeared in the Wohl Rose Garden, between the Knesset and the Supreme Court. The official opening ceremony took place on December 3, 2025, with the participation of representatives from Ukraine, Israel, the diplomatic corps, and the Ukrainian community.
NAnovosti reported on the opening of the monument in Jerusalem.
The project was implemented with the support of the Temerty Foundation, the city of Jerusalem, the Embassy of Ukraine, HREC, and the World Congress of Ukrainians. The authors were David Robinson and Lyudmila Temerty — James’s sister, who had created the first monument to the victims of the Holodomor in Canada, in Edmonton, back in 1983.
Thus, the family history of people who survived the Holodomor and Stalinist repressions was materialized in Jerusalem decades later. Moreover, the monument appeared not on the periphery of the city, but literally next to the Israeli parliament.
Therefore, for Israel, the story of James Temerty is no longer a tale of a distant Canadian philanthropist. Part of his family’s memory has become part of the Jerusalem space.
After 2022, help became a matter of survival
The full-scale Russian invasion changed the nature of Ukrainian aid from the Temerty Foundation. If earlier a significant part of the projects was related to education, culture, and historical memory, after February 2022, the money increasingly went where it was needed immediately.
Through UNITED24, James Temerty donated $1 million for generators for Ukrainian hospitals, which needed to continue operating during Russian strikes on the energy system.
This did not remain a symbolic campaign. In February 2026, UNITED24 reported that 657 generators, purchased as part of Light Up Ukraine, continued to be used in Ukrainian medical institutions during power outages. Among the major donors of the program, the platform again named James Temerty.
The Temerty Foundation was also one of the first major international foundations to support the Olena Zelenska Foundation. The first contribution — $500,000 — was directed to generators for hospitals, educational institutions, and critical infrastructure facilities in the Kharkiv region, as well as to help more than two thousand internally displaced persons.
In September 2023, the foundation announced another $1 million in aid for Ukrainian projects.
A separate direction was Borodyanka. Temerty allocated funds for the restoration of a children’s creative and sports center destroyed by the Russian invasion, which was used by children not only from Borodyanka itself but also from neighboring communities before the war. The Office of the President of Ukraine estimates this contribution at $1 million.
More than 200 Ukrainian students were able to continue their studies
There is also a less visible direction of assistance. After the start of the full-scale war, the Temerty Foundation allocated C$3.2 million for a program between the University of Toronto and the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
It allowed more than 200 Ukrainian students and up to five teachers to be accepted in Toronto, whose education and research work were disrupted by the war.
For some, this meant one semester in Canada, but the program’s goal was much broader: to preserve people, research, and academic connections in a situation where the war threatens not only university buildings but an entire generation of future Ukrainian specialists.
Here, the principle by which Temerty builds his assistance is clearly visible. Next to him are a generator for a hospital, a university program, a Holodomor study, assistance to displaced persons, a library, historical dialogue, and the restoration of a destroyed children’s center.
Contacts are no longer limited to the humanitarian sphere.
In August 2025, James Temerty met with the then-head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine, Kyrylo Budanov. The GUR reported that possible new directions for supporting military intelligence and the involvement of the Ukrainian diaspora in strengthening Ukraine’s defense capabilities were discussed.
Temerty himself then spoke about the need to help people who risk their lives every day defending the country. The details of possible projects were not publicly disclosed, so attributing any specific military programs to him without confirmation would be incorrect.
However, the very fact of such a meeting shows how far his contacts with the Ukrainian state have moved from the initial cultural and educational philanthropy.
On August 20, 2025, Volodymyr Zelensky awarded James Temerty the state award “National Legend of Ukraine”.
A year later, they met again in Canada — at a completely different stage of the war.
Why this meeting is happening now.
Zelensky’s current Canadian visit takes place against the backdrop of intensified Russian air attacks. Ukraine is simultaneously trying to strengthen air defense, protect energy, and prepare for another winter.
On September 10, Zelensky met with Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney. The parties signed a declaration on 100-year partnership, documents in the field of defense and energy, and Ottawa announced new support programs for Ukraine.
Of these, C$350 million is intended for the purchase of air defense interceptors through the JUMPSTART initiative. Separate funds and guarantees are provided for Ukrainian energy, gas purchases, generators, restoration, assistance to veterans, and the return of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia.
And the very next day, Zelensky spoke with Temerty specifically about Russian air strikes.
A private philanthropist, of course, cannot replace state air defense systems or military budgets. But Temerty’s biography shows something else: he knows how to turn talks about support into concrete things — university programs, working generators, restored buildings, scientific centers, and institutions that continue to exist for decades.
Not just a Canadian philanthropist next to Zelensky.
If you only look at the photo from Toronto, it’s easy to see another meeting of the President of Ukraine with an influential representative of the diaspora. But James Temerty’s story is much more complex.
He was born in Donbas to a family that survived the Holodomor and Soviet repressions. In Canada, he became one of the country’s most successful entrepreneurs, built a large energy business, and invested hundreds of millions of dollars in medicine and education. At the same time, the Ukrainian theme remained with him long before the big war.
Initially, it was the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Canada’s Ukrainian projects, Holodomor studies, and education. Then — the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, an attempt to deal with the difficult shared history of Ukrainians and Jews, academic programs, Israel, Sheptytsky.
After 2022, this was supplemented by generators for hospitals, assistance to displaced persons, the restoration of Borodyanka, support for Ukrainian students, and contacts with Ukrainian state structures.
And Israel has its own physical marker in this story.
Between the Knesset and the Supreme Court today stands a monument to the victims of the Holodomor, created in part thanks to the Temerty family foundation. Its co-author is James’s sister, and behind the monument itself is the family history of people who survived that famine and Stalin’s terror.
Therefore, the meeting between Zelensky and Temerty on September 11 is not just one of the episodes of the Canadian visit of the President of Ukraine.
It is a meeting with a person who has been investing in Ukraine, preserving its historical memory, and engaging in dialogue with the Jewish world for decades.
And part of the bridge he built is already in Israel.