 Yuri Velykanovych was born in a family of teachers Emilia and Dnytro Velykanovych in the village of Ilnyk (Austria-Hungary, nowadays Turka Raion, Lviv Oblast, Ukraine) where he graduated from school.Since 1920 he studied in the Ukrainian grammar school in Lviv.Then he entered the Faculty of Philology at the Jan Kazimierz University (nowadays Ivan Franko National University of Lviv).