160 paintings on the Passion of Christ. He completed it in 1970. All 160 paintings inaugurated the opening of the new St.Vladimir's Institute in Toronto, as its first art show on February 26, 1970. The Kolankiwskys, who attended the opening, showed up at suppertime on the Kureleks' doorstep. They were planning to open an Art Gallery in Niagara Falls and wanted to purchase the entire series. Having no hope of selling any of these paintings, now with an entire gallery to be devoted to them, Kurelek saw this as nothing less than a miracle. That same year the Kolankiwskys organized a three-week tour of Soviet Ukraine, of the art galleries and churches. Kurelek went along, and was allowed by the Soviet authorities to visit his father's village, see the house where his father was born, and spend four brief hours with his relatives. Author Kurelek met May Cutler in June 1971. They were introduced by Mira Godard during his exhibition of "The Last Days" series at the Marlborough Godard Gallery in Montreal, Quebec. Cutler wondered if he would do a children's book for her. That book became A prairie boy's winter, his first book as a published author. Two years later the twenty original paintings for the book were exhibited at this same gallery. The ten made available for sale were gone in half an hour. People unable to buy one traveled to Toronto, where the other ten were sold just as quickly the following week at the Isaacs' Gallery. On the heels of this success, a series of other Kurelek books by Tundra quickly followed. Cutler wrote later to Robert Fulford that she was the first person ever to ask Kurelek to do a book: "Now everyone wants Kurelek to do books." He wrote and illustrated a series of children's books, several of which have become modern classics. In 1974 he illustrated a new edition of W. O. Mitchell's Who Has Seen the Wind. He won the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Illustrator's Award for A Prairie Boy's Winter in 1974 and A Prairie Boy's Summer in 1976. Kurelek's personal ethnic awareness translated into a growing recognition of others' ethnicity. In 1973 at a conference on ethnic studies in Toronto, Kurelek met Abe Arnold who became his collaborator on the book Jewish Life in Canada. Helen Worthington of the Toronto Star called them Canada's odd couple. "One is a shy, sensitive,