[1] He was born in 1883 in village near Stara Vyzhivka in Volhynian Polesie in a family of impoverished church teacher Nikandor Fedorovych Burczak-Abramowicz and his wife Olena Mykolaivna (née Pynkevych).
His old noble family hailed from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Lytvyns) who moved to Volhynia, Kyiv and Chelm lands and were Ukrainized (Ruthenized).
Nikanor lost his dad when he was 15, while his mother died in 1918 soon after she received information that Bolsheviks in Bessarabia murdered her son Fedir, a student of Kharkiv Veterinary Institute.
In 1918 he joined the Ukrainian Fraternity of Our Saviour in Zhytomyr and Volhynian Prosvita (Enlightenment society), was appointed a gubernatorial instructor of National Education in Volhynia.
In 1919 after sudden occupation of Zhytomyr by Bolsheviks Nikanor was arrested and miraculously managed escape own execution by fleeing to Polish occupied territories of Ukraine near the city of Volodymyr.
On 24 July 1942 Reichskommissar of Ukraine Erich Koch has officially requested Metropolitan Polikarp to remove Archbishop Nikanor and Bishop Mstyslav from office.