Roman Paul Fodchuk was born in Vegreville, Alberta in 1931 to Michael and Nancy Fodchuk. As a child he moved to Hairy Hill where the family began farming. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture from the University of Alberta in 1954, following which he worked as a district agriculturalists for the Alberta Department of Agriculture in the Two Hills area, near where he had grown up. In 1957 he married Adeline Youzwyshyn, a local nurse.

In 1957 he moved to California, where he worked as a landscape architect at Lawrence Halprin and Associates in San Francisco while working on a Bachelor of Science in Landscape Architecture from the University of California (Berkeley), which he completed in 1959.

Between 1959-1965 Roman Fodchuk worked as Landscape Planning Officer and Chief for the Landscape Planning Section of Canada’s National Parks Branch. While working there he also completed a Master of Landscape Architecture degree from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in 1964.

From 1965-1967 he worked as an Associate Professor in the School of Landscape Architecture at the University of Guelph, before moving to Ottawa where he worked as the Chief of the Landscape Architecture Division for the National Capital Commission until 1970. From 1970-1975 he was Assistant Director of Planning and Development, Western Region Parks Canada where he directed programing, planning, and development of National Parks, Historic Parks and Sites, Byways and Special Places in Alberta, British Columbia, and the Yukon.

In 1975 he moved to Alberta and began his own firm, Roman Fodchuck & Associates Ltd., with offices in Calgary and Edmonton. For the next 25 years Roman Fodchuk worked on a number of projects, most notably the Capital City Recreation Park plan, the Strathcona Ski Centre and the Science and Archaeological Museum Complex, and the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village.

In 1985 Roman Fodchuk completed post-graduate work in Arid Land Resource Sciences at the University of Arizona.

In 1990 he retired from professional work to care for his wife Adeline, who had Multiple Sclerosis. Adeline would pass away on February 6, 2003. In 2003 Roman Fodchuk resumed work on his monograph Zhorna, published in 2006 by the University of Calgary Press, a work which explores Ukrainian pioneers in Alberta specifically through the lens of their material culture.

Throughout his life, Roman had a keen interest in many things; he especially enjoyed working on his Model T Fords, collecting antique cameras, tools, and avidly reading books on all topics. He participated actively in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as a member of the Order of St. Andrew at S. Vladimir’s Ukrainian Orthodox congregation in Calgary Alberta.

Roman Fodchuk passed away on February 4, 2021 in North Vancouver, BC.