Michael M. Petrovich

Michael Milan Petrovich (Serbian Cyrillic: Михаило Миланов Петровић; born 1945) is a retired Serbian Canadian journalist, publicist, translator, activist and philanthropist.

Michael Petrovich was born in Montreal on 9 March 1945 to Danica (née Sablich) of Srpski Sveti Petar (Serbian St. Peter), a World War II Red Cross volunteer, and lieutenant Milan Petrović of the Royal Yugoslav Merchant Marine, and the grandson of Very Rev. Mihailo Petrović of Raška. The family first lived in Le Plateau-Mont-Royal and later in Park Extension, a neighbourhood in the city of Montreal, where Petrovich attended Sir George Williams University and Université de Montréal (Collège de Maisonneuve). Petrovich and his father, Milan Petrovich, a long-standing member of The Royal Canadian Legion's "St. George the Victorious" (Quebec, Branch No. 226), participated in the purchase and raising of a cenotaph to the Unknown Warrior at the Cemetery of St. Seraphim of Sarov in Rawdon, Quebec in 1967, and the founding of the Holy Trinity Serbian Orthodox Church in Montreal.

Michael Petrovich began his career in the 1960s as a reporter for The Montreal Star^[1] when Walter D. O'Hearn was the managing editor. During the Sixties, Petrovich covered the inauguration of Montreal Metro on 14 October 1966, events and exhibitions at various pavilions at Expo 67 on Saint Helen's Island, the Canadian Centennial celebrations, and other major happenings in and around the city. In 1968, he wrote news stories for the Voice of Canada before joining that same year the English Division of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Montreal as a writer and editor in the Press and Information Division, renamed Public Relations and Publicity Department during a reorganization period in 1970 when Herbert Steinhouse (1922–1996)^[2] became PR chief, under the direction of Eric Koch. Two years before the 1976 Summer Olympics, CBC retained Petrovich when he was seconded to the newly-organized ORTO (Olympics Radio and Television Organization) for "coverage of the most staggeringly ambitious undertaking and the greatest challenge in Canadian TV and radio history.^[3] There he wrote articles and press releases for newspapers (The Montreal Gazette, LaPresse) and magazines (TV Guide, TV Hebdo), and edited ORTO Courier, a bilingual^[4] quarterly magazine over a two-year period^[5] with a worldwide circulation,^[6][7] tasked to inform foreign radio and television broadcasters of the forthcoming Olympic Games in Montreal and the progress of each venue, including the Olympic Stadium and Kingston, the regattas site. While at the CBC-ORTO, Petrovich wrote several technical press releases, periodicals, and chapters for an engineering manual, published internally and distributed among broadcasters. He also researched and compiled an encyclopedia of the ever-changing and evolving electronic media. Petrovich received a citation for his special contribution, signed personally by A. W. Johnson, president of the then Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; Roger Rousseau, Commissioner General of the Games of the XXI Olympiad; and Harold M. Wright, president of the Canadian Olympic Association.

During that period, he had a "teaching stint" at Montreal's Berlitz School of Languages, where he taught Serbian to students about to embark on a youth exchange program in Yugoslavia, sponsored by Canada World Youth.

In 1977, with a group of older members of Montreal's "Holy Trinity" parish, he founded a cultural association to memorialize Dragoljub Mihailovich's life, tragic end, and aftermath. Much later, the aim of the General Mihailovich Society was manifested through a living monument — General Mihailovich Place — many years later in Windsor (1992).

In 1980, Petrovich moved to Ontario, where he worked as a Benefits Auditor for the Ministry of Revenue (Ontario) in Toronto. Petrovich was one of the earliest co-founding members of the Serbian Heritage Academy (SHA), led by Sofija Skorić. At the time of SHA's incorporation, supporting Škorić's efforts were lawyer Nikola Pašić (the grandson of World War I statesman by the same name); art historian Dušan Bijelić, civil engineer Nikola Alexeichenko, and educator and author Paul Pavlovich, Mrs. Rosa Somborac, Gojko Protich, Nikola Bogdanovich, and Michael Petrovich. Throughout the next several years, Petrovich prepared the year-end financial statement reports for CRA on behalf of the Serbian Heritage Academy (SHA), and proofread and corrected material for publication. In 1984 when Bishop Georgije Đokić was elected head of the first Serbian Orthodox Eparchy of Canada, the founding members of SHA Board went to the bishop's residence in Mississauga with a donation of $15,000 to kick-start the purchase of a 40-acre Campbellville, Milton, Ontario property, then owned by the Czech community.

Today that property serves as the Serbian Orthodox Eparchy of Canada with the Holy Transfiguration Monastery and bishop's residence are there with the Saint Nicholas Serbian Orthodox Cathedral nearby in Hamilton, Ontario serving as the cathedral church.^[8]

In 1985, Petrovich learned that the construction of the Church of Saint Sava, interrupted by the Second World War, received permission to proceed after a 40-year communist government ban. The Petrovich family responded to that early international fundraiser with a substantial bequest and was named Ktetor (Founder) of the Temple of Saint Sava by Patriarch German of Serbia. They also donated to the building fund of Saint Sava's Seminary in Belgrade.

In 1988, Petrovich moved to Windsor where he responded to a government call for affordable housing for seniors and low-income families. Upon receiving a positive reply, he commissioned an architectural firm to design the building and grounds and managed the entire lifecycle of the project, from conception to completion. The community housing project was built near Tecumseh Road and Joe St. Louis in Windsor. The 99-unit apartment building, carrying the name of General Mihailovich Place became a reality on 26 July 1992, when Ptrovich was presented with a certificate signed by Elmer MacKay, Minister responsible for Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and given personally to Petrovich by a CMHC representative along with other municipal, provincial and federal dignitaries attending the opening ceremony. U.S. Major Richard L. Felman, author of "Mihailovich and I",^[9] traveled 5,000 km to cut a ribbon for a man who saved his life and that of hundreds of other U.S., Canadian, British, French, Russian, and other Allied airmen in what is now referred to as Operation Halyard. Petrovich at the time met most of the living former members of the Office of Strategic Services who undertook the logistical task of coordinating the safe return of all the downed airmen who were then "deemed" missing in action (MIA) in both Yugoslavia and nearby Romania: Nick Lalich, George Musulin, Eli Popovich, Michael Rajacich,^[10] Zvonimir Vučković, Arthur Jibilian,^[11] George Vujnovich, and others who played an instrumental role in the special rescue mission facilitated by General Mihailovich and his loyal Chetniks.

Later, Petrovich worked for a private business publication (now defunct) as its editor and writer. In 2000-2001, the late Paul Chauvin of the Centre Communautaire Francophone hired him to write the history of New France ("Who Speaks for New France?", still in manuscript form) on the occasion of the Tercentenary of both Windsor and Detroit in 1701. The following year (2002), Petrovich received bitter news from his cousin Dragan Milenković, son of Vida and Svetozar Milenković, who lives in Switzerland, that their uncle Alexander Petrovich, who had been missing since World War II was murdered in a gas chamber at Hartheim in 1944.

In 2005, Petrovich translated "The Ray of the Microcosm" by Petar II Petrović-Njegoš.^[12] The book was printed by Prometej Publishers of Novi Sad in 2007.^[13]

Petrovich retired in 2014 but continued as a community volunteer. With political turmoil abroad, high immigration, and other unforeseen factors, a serious need arose in Windsor to establish a third Serbian parish. In November 2013, a group of Serbs, after petitioning Bishop Georgije (Đokić), received a charter named Saint Petka Congregation. Petrovich joined a committee formed specifically to search for an existing building. An empty public school in Maidstone (now Lakeshore) that was up for sale since 2010 caught the eye of the committee.^[14] Then, the ever-growing Serbian community of Windsor and Essex county launched a fund-raising campaign to purchased the vacant Maidstone Public School.^[15] Petrovich was among the leading founders of Saint Petka Serbian Orthodox Church-Parish of Lakeshore, Ontario.

Also, that year (2014) Cambridge University Press published online a controversial article under the title "Fact and Fiction in the Life Story of Luigi von Kunits"^[16] questioning posthumously von Kunits's original biographer Aglaia Edwards^[17] of Oakville, daughter of von Kunits, under unfathomably dubious and illogical assumptions. Even putting into question articles written by others, including Michael M. Petrovich's von Kunits biography, an excerpt featured in The Canadian Encyclopedia published on line 7 February 2006 and the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, and other publications, including a chapter in "Serbs in Ontario" (1987).^[18]

In his spare time, Petrovich translates Serbian poets^[19][20] and writes short biographies of prominent personages and characters for publication in Wikipedia.

• Petrovich, Michael M., 'Luigi von Kunits: The Man Who Made Pittsburgh and Toronto Musical', Serbs in Ontario: A Socio-Cultural Description, ed. Sofija Škorić and George Vid Tomashevich (Toronto: Serbian Heritage Academy, 1987): 183–190 Google Scholar, here 185. The article first appeared in the Toronto newspaper The Voice of Canadian Serbs on 27 November 1986.
• Petrovich, Michael M. 'Luigi von Kunits: the man who made Pittsburg [sic] and Toronto musical,' Voice of Canadian Serbs, 27 Nov 1986
• Translator Michael M. Petrovich, "The Ray of the Microcosm" by Petar II Petroviċ-Njegoš. Publisher: Prometej, Novi Sad, 2007.