In 2008, Yuri Shymko received one of Ukraine's highest state honours when President Viktor Yushchenko awarded him the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise at a public ceremony in Kyiv.

He is the grandnephew of the renowned Ukrainian poet and social activist, Ivan Franko, whose granddaughter, Hanna Klyuchko, lived in Canada.

Shymko's family moved to Belgium, where he received his early education in a private school operated by the Catholic Redemptorist Fathers.

[1] Having devoted many years to researching the plight of political dissidents in the USSR, Shymko was the editor of "For This Was I Born", a Canadian-published book documenting the violation of human rights in the former Soviet Union.

In 1997, Shymko's support for the francophonie was recognized when he was officially inducted as an Officer of the Order of La Pléiade by the International Assembly of French Speaking Parliamentarians (1997).

Shymko was inducted into the Ordre de la Pléiade together with Canadian astronaut Marc Garneau and Ontario Court of Appeal Justice, Roy McMurtry.

[6] In 1978, Shymko was elected to the House of Commons of Canada in a by-election held on October 16, 1978, defeating future cabinet minister Art Eggleton by 1,038 votes in Parkdale.

On November 21, 1978, he presented to the President of the UN General Assembly and its member missions a Memorandum on the Decolonization of the USSR which he coordinated on behalf of the Baltic, Belarusian, and Ukrainian World Congresses.

[14] In August 1991, as president of the Ukrainian World Congress, he urged the Canadian government to recognize the newly independent country of Ukraine.