Mary herself was active in the ULFTA's youth movement and worked as an organiser for the Young Communist League.
Mary met her future husband, Bill Kardash, in 1939 and they married in March 1940, later having two children, Ted and Nancy.
Mary ran in north Winnipeg as a Communist candidate for the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba in the 1973 provincial election (in Burrows), and for the House of Commons of Canada in the 1974 federal election (in Winnipeg North Centre), but won under 200 votes in both attempts.
The Communist Party acknowledged that many Ukrainians died by famine in the early 1930s, but they and she denied that Joseph Stalin's government was responsible for an act of genocide.
[11] Mary and Bill Kardash resisted efforts to dissolve the Communist Party of Canada after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.