Yvonka Surville Is 90 Years Old.

• 11.04.2026, 11:25

The Chairman of the Rada of the BNR celebrates his jubilee.

April 11 marks the 90th anniversary of the Belarusian social and political activist and chairman of the Rada of the Belarusian People's Republic Ivonka Survilla.

Ivonka Survilla (maiden name - Shimanets) was born in 1936 in Stolbtsy. In 1944 she left Belarus with her parents. Ivonka's father, Vladimir Shimanets, was Minister of Finance in the BNR government of the time of Nikolai Abramchik.

She lived in France, Denmark, Spain, and now lives in Canada.

She studied at the École Supérieure des Arts in Paris. In 1959, she graduated from the Faculty of Linguistics at Sorbonne University. In addition to her native language, she speaks eight other languages: French, Spanish, English, German, Danish, Latin, Norwegian and Polish.

In 1959-65 she worked in the Belarusian editorial office of the Spanish national radio, taught French at the French Institute in Madrid.

From 1969 to 1996 she worked in various positions in the Translation Bureau of the Federal Government of Canada.

In 1974, Ivonka Survilla was elected chairman of the Belarusian Institute of Science and Art, and in 1984 she was elected to the board of the Canadian Ethnocultural Council.

In 1989, together with other representatives of the Belarusian diaspora, Survilla founded the Canadian Foundation for Assistance to Victims of Chernobyl in Belarus and was its head until she was elected chairman of the Rada of the Belarusian People's Republic in 1997. She was last re-elected to this position in 2023.