Ivan Brutski was born in a wealthy farmer’s family in Belavusha (now Stolin Raion in Brest Voblast), West Belarus. After annexation of West Belarus by the Soviet Union in 1939, Brutski’s father was in 1940 exiled to Kazakhstan. In 1943 the young Ivan Brutski have been sent by the Nazis to Germany as an ostarbeiter. Having avoided repatriation in 1947, Ivan Brutski graduated from a gymnasium in Hannover. He then immigrated to Canada and participated there in The local Belarusian social and life and in the parish life of the Belarusian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.