Was Gretzky Polish, Ukrainian or Belarusian?

[Iapyi]

Gretzky was born in Canada. So was his dad Walter. So why would he speak with an accent?

An example of the anti-Canada bias I've heard about on this forum?

 

[MarkusKetterer]

That's true when it comes to football/soccer. But that maybe has more to do with the fact that Canada is not very good internationally in that sport (at least in the men's division). Canada only has one World Cup appearance, way back in 1986. All the immigrants from soccer-loving nations have no real opportunity to switch allegiance to Canada since they aren't even in the big tournament.

I assure you there aren't many Canadians of Italian ancestry who are avid fans of the Italian National Hockey Team.

In 2006, a lot of people here were cheering for Italy at the Olympics, then Canada.

Then again it was probably so they’d stay at the top level.

 

[Fight4yourRight]

he's Canadian.

Didn’t realize he claimed any Indigenous ancestry

 

[abo9]

It's always interesting to note that every Canadian/American has ancestors in Europe or somewhere else in the World. I would be curious to know the Habs' ancestors history for exemple. Just going by their name;

Gallagher - Irish
Price/Byron/Anderson/Caufield/Evans/Allen/Perry/Edmundson - English
Suzuki - Japanese
Danault/Drouin - French
Weber - German
Kulak - Russian
Staal - Dutch
Chiarot - Italian

"Or somewhere else in the world"

yes yes, everyone has an ancestor from somewhere in the world

 

[abo9]

I wonder what were Gretzky Family origin... Polish, Ukrainian or Belarus?


His own words in his HOF induction in 1999: 'Thanks god I am Polish'... This suggests he is of Polish origin.

But according to various other sources he is of Ukrainian or Belarus origin. His grandfather Terentiy (Anton) Lavrentievich Gretzky (Grecki/Gritzko) was a farmer from Grodno (now Belarus), while his grandmother Maria Khodenetsky was from Pidhaitsi, Ternopil Oblast (now Ukraine). His father Walter Gretzky once stated their parents were 'White russians from Belarus', however in his aubiography Walter stated their family's first language was ukrainian.

Ethnicelebs currently states that Wayne's father Walter Gretzky is of Belarus / Ukrainian descent: Wayne Gretzky - Ethnicity of Celebs | What Nationality Ancestry Race

Wayne Gretzky once visited & spoke at Ukraine Gala held in Toronto, Canada



Also Wayne appeared in a documentary film about hockey players with Ukrainian origins called 'UKE'

“Uke” director and producer Volodymyr Mula (left) holds a Ukrainian flag together with hockey legend Wayne Gretzky

Wayne Gretzky's father Walter Gretzky with Ukrainian flag

Maybe he has one side of his family of polish descendance and the other Ukrainien? And he was raised under both cultural heritages?

Would that change anything?

But to answer the question in the title - none of those. He was born and raised in Canada, so I think it's pretty clear he is Canadian...

Also according to wikipedia he also has USA cotizenship, so I guess you could classify him as either Canadian or American?

 

[Hjallis]

As a German speaker, I can read Dutch and can understand a good chunk of it too. As a Spanish speaker, the same with Italian and even more so with Portuguese (especially the Brazilian accent). My danish / Norwegian friends tell me they have no problem understanding each other (apparently there are two forms of Norwegian — one of which, according to one friend, is “practically identical” to Danish). Both struggle to understand Swedish. Then my Slovakian friends say they can understand Polish snd Czech, but a Czech friend says he can understand Slovak but not Polish, which I’ve always found fascinating. My Estonian friends can understand Finnish; Finns can understand Estonian. It’s a small world after all.

Sami language is the third official language of Norway (sign language # 4). Danish to a norwegian is super tricky to grasp in a conversation, but very easy to read. Swedish is easy peasy either way.

Staal doesn't sound norwegian to my ear, while names like Edmundson or Anderson has got some Scandinavian connection back in the day. Which easily can be a 1000 years ago.

For instance my avatar shows the 50s norwegian speed skater Hjalmar Andersen, known as "King Happy". In America he would've been King Happy Anderson, the Norwegian Rocket.

About The Great One I don't have a clue.

 

[Your old Jofa helmet]

It would be impossible to distinguish between Gretzky's Ukrainian and Belorussian heritage but I'm fairly sure he was not Polish. It was a common case for Ukrainian and Belorussian immigrants to be written down as Polish or Russians in their documents. Most of the peasants in those times have never left their area and would have very little idea about national identity. If the territory belonged to Poland, they would identify with Poland. The fate of their immediate family would be more important to them than the fate of the state, especially when they saw their towns and villages claimed by many countries.

As for religion... Greek Catholic traditions, rites and masses are 99 percent identical to Greek Orthodox, the only valid difference would be that their head is the Pope in Vatican. Regular folks would have no idea about this and would not know what Vatican even is. I fully suspect those who considered themselves Catholic, were actually Greek Catholic opposed to Greek Orthodox. Pidhaitsy sounds like a typical Ukrainian name and it was founded in the old Rus kingdom (the old name of Ukraine), so I'm fairly certain Mary was Ukrainian while Terentiy might have been Belorusian, but they would speak Ukrainian at home as a more dominant of the two related languages, the difference between them is rather small.

And as for Boikos, Lemkos and Karpato Rusyns... those are Ukrainians mostly, sometimes their language is identified as a separate language, but believe me it's fully understandable to us and is nothing more that just a regional dialect of Ukrainian with borrowed words from Slovak, Hungarian and Polish. The majority of them identify themselves as Ukrainians and would not even know any different. Ruthenian Greek Catholic church can be also be broadly considered rather an Orthodox church.

 

[Theokritos]

As for religion... Greek Catholic traditions, rites and masses are 99 percent identical to Greek Orthodox, the only valid difference would be that their head is the Pope in Vatican. Regular folks would have no idea about this and would not know what Vatican even is. I fully suspect those who considered themselves Catholic, were actually Greek Catholic opposed to Greek Orthodox. Pidhaitsy sounds like a typical Ukrainian name and it was founded in the old Rus kingdom (the old name of Ukraine), so I'm fairly certain Mary was Ukrainian while Terentiy might have been Belorusian, but they would speak Ukrainian at home as a more dominant of the two related languages, the difference between them is rather small.

What gives me pause is that she used "Polish pronunciations" (as per the link provided by @htpwn above):

 

[Petey O]

Gloriously European.

 

[Mick Riddleton]

I heard the only slavic language spoken in the house was Ukrainian, from his Baba. She came from the Ternopil area and his father was Byelorussian.

 

[Chet Manley]

I thought my mother's side was Scottish until recently. Turns out they were Irish that moved to Scotland for 1 generation before moving to Canada. I'm sure this applies somehow.

 

[htpwn]

I don’t know if you deliberately omitted Carpatho-Rusyns from your explanation, but I should note that the picture of what’s now SE Poland isn’t just Poles and Ukrainians. Many descendants of people who resided in the interface area between Austro-Hungary and Russia in the first part of the 20th century were Ruthenians/Rusyns, who spoke distinctively from Ukrainians/ Poles, with their own eastern rite church. Some of this group allied with Ukrainians, but many saw themselves as East Slavs, closely tied to Russians. My great-grandfather was a pro-Russian Rusyn Lemko. He was killed by the A-H army at Talerhof concentration camp in 1915 or so. These Russophile Lemko were definitely not Ukrainian, and Lemkos were plurality or majority in many parts of Malopolskie, Galicia, Sanok, etc. The map you link to, showing Poles in the majority of most of Lemkovyna is propaganda that justified their ethnic cleansing (FYI, this was done under the pretext that Lemkos were UPA, but my Russophile Lemko family literally fought against the Bandera fascists).

There are Lemkos with names like Gretzky, but the details don’t line up with the idea that he is a Rusyn. That aside, it’s important not to obliterate Rusyns from any discussion of the peoples of the region.

I'm actually well aware of the Rusyn people, having attended a seminar (though not on Rusyn history) with Paul Robert Magocsi in my university days. It was not a deliberate omission; I just did not really view them as particularly relevant given where Gretzky's mother is known to be from (Pidhaitsi), which to my knowledge (I could be wrong) is outside the traditional areas of Rusyn settlement.

As for the map, I was thinking of putting a disclaimer that it is a Polish map (in the Polish language) and decided against it -- clearly wrongly. But despite that, I still like it as a rough outline of the ethnic complexity of the area, mostly because it has the percentage of the Polish population for each district, from which you can easily deduce the percentage of the Ukrainian/Belarusian (rather than simplistic colouring of areas as 'Polish' or 'Ukrainian' that doesn't really do justice, IMO). Of course, it may indeed by pro-Polish, although I'd argue not outrageously so (referring to my prior post: part of the difficulty in finding consensus is that ethnic identity is complicated. Most likely the Polish population is being conflated with Roman Catholics, which as Mary Gretzky's categorization of her own identity showed, could be both a reasonable assumption and a grossly oversimplified one).

You are correct that the number of Poles in Lemkovyna definitely seems to be significantly overstated, however, although Sanok (despite being coloured dark red) is listed as only 44% Polish and thus probably majority Lemko. Definitely a strike against the map, though.

 

[Zenos]

But in any international competition, it’s the opposite. Americans will cheer for the American first then their ethnicity, but Canadians will cheer for the (other ethnicity first, assuming they belong to that ethnicity), then the Canadian.

I don’t find that to be true at all - the only exception being men’s soccer where Canada effectively doesn’t compete (last qualified for the World Cup in 86).
In every other sport I can think of, Canadians enthusiastically support and celebrate their own - in fact, many of Canada’s most renowned athletes weren’t even born Canadians - think of Lennox Lewis, Donovan Bailey, and Steve Nash, or more recently Alphonso Davies and Denis Shapovalov.

 

[Mick Riddleton]

I don’t find that to be true at all - the only exception being men’s soccer where Canada effectively doesn’t compete (last qualified for the World Cup in 86).
In every other sport I can think of, Canadians enthusiastically support and celebrate their own - in fact, many of Canada’s most renowned athletes weren’t even born Canadians - think of Lennox Lewis, Donovan Bailey, and Steve Nash, or more recently Alphonso Davies and Denis Shapovalov.

It is a shame more Canadians do not get behind the soccer team. I think they will when they see success as they finally have a good young team and a smart coach. Problem is the ethnicity takes dominance over country. The Woman have done a better job at uniting the country as a World contender.

As for the guys you mentioned where there are born means nothing when the country they represent molded and taught them everything. They came to Canada and learned their chosen sports in Canada. They had zero knowledge or skills brought in to make them who they became.

Davies was only 5, Nash was not even two years old. Shapovalov - The family moved from Israel to Canada before Denis' first birthday. (His mother was Ukrainian, father Russian)

Lennox Lewis moved to Canada in 1977. He took up boxing the next year. Donovan Bailey moved to Canada at age 12. He learned track in High School but he loved Basketball. He took up running again in 1990.

 

[Buffalo Preds]

I'm actually well aware of the Rusyn people, having attended a seminar (though not on Rusyn history) with Paul Robert Magocsi in my university days. It was not a deliberate omission; I just did not really view them as particularly relevant given where Gretzky's mother is known to be from (Pidhaitsi), which to my knowledge (I could be wrong) is outside the traditional areas of Rusyn settlement.

As for the map, I was thinking of putting a disclaimer that it is a Polish map (in the Polish language) and decided against it -- clearly wrongly. But despite that, I still like it as a rough outline of the ethnic complexity of the area, mostly because it has the percentage of the Polish population for each district, from which you can easily deduce the percentage of the Ukrainian/Belarusian (rather than simplistic colouring of areas as 'Polish' or 'Ukrainian' that doesn't really do justice, IMO). Of course, it may indeed by pro-Polish, although I'd argue not outrageously so (referring to my prior post: part of the difficulty in finding consensus is that ethnic identity is complicated. Most likely the Polish population is being conflated with Roman Catholics, which as Mary Gretzky's categorization of her own identity showed, could be both a reasonable assumption and a grossly oversimplified one).

You are correct that the number of Poles in Lemkovyna definitely seems to be significantly overstated, however, although Sanok (despite being coloured dark red) is listed as only 44% Polish and thus probably majority Lemko. Definitely a strike against the map, though.

I’m impressed — you learned from the foremost Carpatho-Rusyn scholar in North America! You are surely aware of the tragic history of the Rusyns, and would understand the sensitivity we have regarding the erasure of our culture. In this context, it is eminently sensible to omit Rusyns from the discussion (although the inclusion of Belarus by others is likewise a stretch when discussing the Gretzky lineage).

Anyhow, thank you for providing the most informative contribution to this discussion.

 

[SmoggyTwinkles]

Wayne Gretzky is Canadian, and that’s all you need to know about that!View attachment 452309

BORN AND RAISED.

It's so annoying hearing people go on about how they're this or that, yet born in Canada.

Be proud, if your parents are from somewhere else originally, be grateful they decided to move to Canada and that you get to live here.

I'm not Irish, my parents are Northern Irish and I was born in Canada, don't try putting green food colouring in my beer on St Pattys OK?

 

[majormajor]

Charlize Theron is African American.

Heritage and genealogy are not always as simple as they seem.

The definition of African American is Americans that descend from Black African ethnic groups. It's an ethnic category not just about geographic origin.

 

[CpatainCanuck]

Didn’t realize he claimed any Indigenous ancestry

Canada is a Confederation of settler colonies. The indigenous people of Canada generally have separate treaties with the crown (which has for the most part transferred its obligations to Canada). The indigenous people of Canada often have their own partially self-governing nations under this arrangement. So no: Canadian does not mean simply the people of Indigenous ancestry. If you want to be pedantic, Canadian more accurately refers to Canadian citizens of non-indigenous ancestry.

For example see Chief Cadmus Delorme discuss how he views his citizenship and relationship to Canada at 7:50:

 

[AgeIess]

Gretzky was and is Canadian.

 

[majormajor]

I remember Wayne being Polish more than anything else (and Canadian, obviously).

For ages, half of Ukraine and all of Belarus was actually part of Poland. Many Belarussians and Ukrainians will have a good amount of Polish blood.

Euratlas Periodis Web - Map of Europe in Year 1600

What gives me pause is that she used "Polish pronunciations" (as per the link provided by @htpwn above):

View attachment 452935

When you have a ruling minority like that, like with the Polish minority ruling over Ukrainians, it is less the Polish blood that the Ukrainians got and more the sense of prestige attached to certain Polish things like the Polish language. The prestige factor is part of why so many Western Ukrainians identified as Polish, which I suppose beyond a point makes them Polish.

 

[Zenos]

As for the guys you mentioned where there are born means nothing when the country they represent molded and taught them everything. They came to Canada and learned their chosen sports in Canada. They had zero knowledge or skills brought in to make them who they became.

Well, I wouldn't say it means nothing. Those guys were foreign born / had foreign parents / another citizenship and therefore could have represented another country internationally. The fact that they didn't* and instead chose to represent Canada discredits MarkusKetterer's notion that Canadians overwhelmingly choose to support the nation of the parents/ancestors/ethnicity over that of Canada - which was the point I was arguing against.

Like I wrote earlier, men's soccer is pretty much the only exception here - Guys like Owen Hargraves, Jonathan De Guzman, and Asmir Begovic were equally as moulded and taught by Canada having learned their chosen sports there, but chose to represent England, Netherlands, and Bosnia respectively. Interesting how these same dynamics don't affect the WNT, which happens to be a top-10 programme internationally.

 

[banks]

The definition of African American is Americans that descend from Black African ethnic groups. It's an ethnic category not just about geographic origin.

I'm aware. And my comment is a tongue -in-cheek example of how ethnicity, nationality, genealogy, and culture might not be as easy to distinguish as they seem. I'm sure Charlize Theron doesn't introduce herself as an African Americain. That's not her ethnicity, but it is her nationality.

I, myself, have had to try and explain this to many people about my heritage. I am told constantly that I "can't be" what I am because I don't look it. I have Japanese ancestry, and was born in Scotland to Canadian and Japanese parents. I am constantly called a liar when I say I'm Scottish.

My point with Charlize Theron is that people can come from anywhere. Was Gretzky Polish, Ukrainian or Belarusian? Was he Canadian? The answer could be all 4, depending on your view.

 

[majormajor]

I'm aware. And my comment is a tongue -in-cheek example of how ethnicity, nationality, genealogy, and culture might not be as easy to distinguish as they seem. I'm sure Charlize Theron doesn't introduce herself as an African Americain. That's not her ethnicity, but it is her nationality.

I, myself, have had to try and explain this to many people about my heritage. I am told constantly that I "can't be" what I am because I don't look it. I have Japanese ancestry, and was born in Scotland to Canadian and Japanese parents. I am constantly called a liar when I say I'm Scottish.

My point with Charlize Theron is that people can come from anywhere. Was Gretzky Polish, Ukrainian or Belarusian? Was he Canadian? The answer could be all 4, depending on your view.

Hmmm.. I know it can get quite complicated but these examples have clear answers for me.

-- African American is an ethnicity not a nationality.

-- Charlize Theron is South African (a nationality).

-- You're Scottish, and possibly also Canadian (nationalities).

-- Gretzky is Canadian (a nationality).

-- Gretzky has Ukrainian and Belarusian ancestry on his father's side.

 

[banks]

Hmmm.. I know it can get quite complicated but these examples have clear answers for me.

-- African American is an ethnicity not a nationality.

-- Charlize Theron is South African (a nationality).

-- You're Scottish, and possibly also Canadian (nationalities).

-- Gretzky is Canadian (a nationality).

-- Gretzky has Ukrainian and Belarusian ancestry on his father's side.

I believe we agree with each other. I hope I don't sound like I'm arguing, because I'm not. All of your answers are correct.

I only brought up the comparison with Charlize because the question asked wasn't, as it rarely is, specific. Usually people ask "Was Gretzky A, B, or C" or "Where are you from". You gave 3 correct answers for Gretzky, one of which was not A, B, or C. If people ask what I "am", they usually don't mean my passport. You're answer above for me isn't ever the answer they are looking for.

 

[su24]

I remember Wayne being Polish more than anything else (and Canadian, obviously).

For ages, half of Ukraine and all of Belarus was actually part of Poland. Many Belarussians and Ukrainians will have a good amount of Polish blood.

Euratlas Periodis Web - Map of Europe in Year 1600

Belarus has never been a part of Poland. On the map you can see the name "Poland-Lithuania". They couldn't even spell the name of the country? That was Rzeczpospolita, which is CONFEDERATION of independent states. Modern Belarus was called Litva back then. That's terrible how uneducated North Americans trying to talk about our history.