Dr. Iraida Gerus Tarnawecky was born in 1924 in Pochaiv, Volhynia, in what was then part of eastern Poland (now Ukraine). Her parents were Reverend Serhij and Anna Gerus (Palianychka). In 1949, she obtained a B.Sc. from the Georg August (informally known as the Georgia Augusta) University in Goettingen, Germany. After immigrating to Canada in 1950, she obtained an M.A. from the University of Manitoba (1964) and a Ph.D. from the Ukrainian Free University (Munich, Germany, 1965) in Slavic Studies. Dr. Tarnawecky was married to the late Professor Emeritus Michael Tarnawecky (1924-2003), an electrical engineer, and had two daughters, Marusia and Natalka. From 1963 to 1968, she served as a sessional and full-time lecturer with the Department of Slavic Studies (University of Manitoba). In 1968, she was appointed Assistant Professor with the department. She was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 1975 and to the rank of Full Professor in 1984. Upon her retirement from the Department of German and Slavic Studies, Dr. Tarnawecky was honoured with the title of Senior Scholar.

Dr. Tarnawecky was a renowned Slavic linguist and onomastist with a keen interest in Slavic philology and Cyrillic paleography. She was published both nationally and internationally and her publications include two books and many articles. One of her most important publications is entitled East Slavic Cyrillica in Canadian Depositories (1981), a monograph identifying public and private Canadian collections containing Cyrillic manuscripts and early books. In order to compile the material for her research, Dr. Tarnawecky visited 87 institutions and private collections throughout Canada. In 1974, Dr. Tarnawecky was the first Canadian academic chosen in an agreement between the Canada Council and the former U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences to carry out a research program in the history of Slavic languages at the Linguistic Institute in Moscow and Kyiv. She remained active throughout her career in various associations and committees, including Vice-President of the Canadian Society for the Study of Names, Chairperson of the Humanities Section of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Canada (UVAN), member of the Senate for St. Andrew’s College Library, editior of the Onomastica series, and a former member of the Canada Council Selection Committee for Doctoral Scholarships in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Dr. Iraida Tarnawecky passed away on July 5, 2011.