before trekking by foot over the strip of no man's land into Israel, conscious all the time of traversing holy ground, the road the Holy Family had traveled. His experience of the Holy Land, which in his eyes had changed little from two thousand years earlier, is reflected in the faces, places, and landscapes depicted in his series The Passion of Christ According to St. Matthew. He returned to London by way of Rome. In 1969, he took a trip around the world, stopping in South Africa to visit his sister Sandy, then to Calcutta to visit a mission school in Darjeeling, and finally to Hong Kong to visit his foster-child. In 1970, he took his first trip of two to visit his father's village in Soviet Ukraine. In Canada, he travelled to all the places that are found in his paintings. Last years The split in Kurelek between his creativity and religion continued to the end of his life. In 1975, while on a pilgrimage to Lourdes again, he completed 73 illustrations for Bohdan Melnyk's translation of Ivan Franko's Fox Mykyta. Initially, he knew nothing about Franko, but when suggested that the Ukrainian classic should be part of mainstream culture, went ahead with the project. "Since greed, hypocrisy, opportunism are often self-defeating, Fox astutely plays upon these moral flaws. The drawings sparkle with energy, humor, and hard-won wisdom of both Franko and Kurelek." Having finished the illustrations, Kurelek read the book more closely and voiced the concern that Franko's fox was using clerical disguises for selfish ends. He held up the publication of the book and it was only published posthumously. In 1976, a similar drama unfolded with author Gloria Kupchenko Frolick and her novella The Chicken Man. Kurelek completed 15 paintings to illustrate it, and then had second thoughts. "If she wished to use his work to illustrate her fiction, she would have to change the text, turning the abortion into a miscarriage performed by an unqualified midwife." Despite his knowing that it was based on a real story. The author changed the story to the illustrator's liking, and it was published. In January 1976, Kurelek painted the mural at the St. Thomas More College Chapel in Saskatoon. It was a culmination of many influences, the Mexican muralists, Breughel, and his Christianity. Having trouble with heights, his assistant Geralyn Jansen climbed to the apex and painted God into