I Also Walked on This Earth

By Eugene Stefaniuk

Eugene has walked over eight decades of his life on this earth and knows
his walk is coming to the end. Before he bids farewell to this earthly walk,
he wants to leave for family, relatives and friends his earthly life history.
His life history is varied; from a farm boy who grew up in the: “Great
Depression”, to being a school teacher, a military man and lastly a clergyman.
In this book you will discover the hardships from a small infant
as he traveled with his parents in a covered wagon for three weeks from
Cudworth, Saskatchewan to Grandview, Manitoba and two years later
returning back to Cudworth, his birthplace. His teaching experience in
a rural Manitoba district, becoming a member of the military serving in
the RCAF and fi nally being ordained a clergyman. He has much history
that would take another volume to put on paper. Here for the old at heart
readers or the young children in school, he briefl y puts down on paper
some of his joys, griefs and sorrows. e older folk may be able to recall
similar events in their life as did Eugene, and for the younger generation
many lessons may be learned of the past lives that are in by-gone days.
e language is written in a very plain way to understand the vocabulary,
so that today’s young folk of school age can read of what life was a few
decades ago in this great country of ours - Canada.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eugene Stefaniuk
• Release date: Feb 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781773025063

Book preview

Forward

This is my third book I have published. My first one Whose will is it was published in 2013, based on spirituality. Sales have not gone well. Had I written a book on pornography, I would need police to control people traffic who would be rushing to get such a book, but because it’s spirituality, and as you probably very well know, people are running away more and more each day from religion and God. My second book is presently at the publishers and being published is Our forefathers pre-Christian and present beliefs. This book in your hands is based on my life of some eighty-three years on the face of this earth. Having lived to that age and if I wanted to write everything without missing a minute of my life, it would take eighty-three years to write and it would take years to read the works. So in this work I have the highlights of what my memory tells me and what I have in my diaries from 1962 to 2012 (fifty years)

The language. Oh yes, very simple that even a grade four student will be able to read and understand, and my sight and plan was to write so a young child could and would understand. When I started school I did not know one word or letter of the English language. My parents came from Europe in the later 1920’s and I learned the Ukrainian language from them which I speak even today as well as the English.

But why are my publications in the language of grade four? Having entered seminary and mother knowing I would be ordained, she time and again and again gave me the same talk. Eugene, when you will be a priest, always talk in such a way so people will understand you. Many priests come to our church and they give sermons, but when the service is over, I don’t understand what they were talking about. So when you will talk, speak so people would understand what you are saying.

I took mother’s advice to heart. I can recall and remember how in one congregation where I served, that following the service I was invited by this one family to come to their place for lunch. On this yard lived two families. The parents lived in one house and their son and daughter-in-law with their family in another house on the same yard. During conversation at the lunch, the owner of the house had made some remark about something. His five year old grand-daughter breaks in and says: Dido, the priest said not to say and do that. Dido means grandfather in Ukrainian. I can still see that little girl (who today is a grandmother herself) telling her grandfather what I had said in church. Had I used language of grade twelve or university level, that child and probably the people where I was having lunch would not have understood what I was teaching and talking about. For this I am to this day thankful and grateful to my late mother for instilling in me to use a language that people can and will understand. I myself remember when I was a teenager and in church or some other gatherings, priests or higher educated people spoke using big fancy words that I did not understand or know what they were talking about. This also reminds me that the words spoken by Christ and His Apostles were not high vocabulary words, but simple that people could understand. That is why I wanted to have it be the way as I wrote it.

That is what I learned - to speak an understandable language for even Apostle Paul in his writing to the Corinthians says: Yet in the church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue. (I Corinthians 14:19) That is why I want the younger people to read this work and understand the times I lived in, in the Dirty thirties and we survived. People had more morals at that time and love among each other. Today in larger towns and cities people live together but ask them who their next door neighbor is and they don’t know. People have become to live to themselves and not needing anyone else. In my days if we had two horses, one neighbor had a plow and another neighbor had a seed drill, our two horses were hitched to the neighbor’s plow and his field was plowed, then our field and then the third neighbors field. The same with the seed drill. Today in the farming communities everyone has their own tractor, plow, seed drill, combine and they don’t need anyone else. What a different world in half a century it turned out to be.

As you read along page by page, I hope maybe you will remember of a same incident or activity during your lifetime that I had lived. Those days are gone and will probably never return, but if they should ever return to what they were a hundred years ago, how many people would survive not knowing how to produce food. How many people would die from the hands of others who would come to a strangers’ house looking for food. Whether such a time will come, no one knows, but only One, the One above us all.

Happy reading. Take care, stay well and God bless.

Eugene

Genesis - The Beginning

The world moves along. People come and people go. Some leave behind them great works and become famous. Others leave no trace of themselves and are lost to this world. Still others look for glory and are at times remembered, while others will receive glory in the other world when they depart to the earth from which they were created. As the years kept piling up on my back, I decided to put a few words and thoughts together on paper to leave for the kin and for those that will come after me, so they would know of the life I had lived. Life at the time I lived was what we call, those good old days, or those dirty thirties.

I, Reverend Eugene Stefaniuk, was born at Cudworth, Saskatchewan, on October 6th - 1932. My father the late Fred Stefaniuk, who lived to be 101 years of age, was born in the district of Horodenka, village of Torhowitsa in Western Ukraine on April 15 - 1901. My mother the late Mary Stefaniuk (nee Tesarowski) was also born in Western Ukraine in the village of Mooshkativka, in the district of Borschiw on April 13 - 1906 and lived 87 years of her earthly life. I know one thing that the name Tesarowski is recorded in history books in Ukraine. Some 400 years ago there was a Bishop by that name in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Ukraine and he took part in the ordination of the Saint Peter Mohyla (1596-1647). When I was a seminary student at St. Andrews College in Winnipeg, Manitoba in the late 1950’s, I asked the late Metropolitan Ilarion, the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada at that time, if there was any way to find some information about Bishop Tesarowski. He said it was nearly 500 years ago and records were lost during the two World Wars. So was the late bishop Tesarowski related to my mother in any long way around? I guess only God knows and I will know if he was or not related to our family, when I leave this earth.

My late father came to Canada on July 2nd 1927 and my mother on June 29th 1928. Father arrived at Meacham, Saskatchewan and my mother at Ethelbert, Manitoba. After a year or two of working at the people who had sponsored them to Canada, they moved to Saskatoon, where they met. Their life together started at Cudworth, Saskatchewan in the early 1930’s.

Times were hard and tough when I arrived into this world at the Cudworth General Hospital on October 6 - 1932. The depression years had already sneaked into Canada when I came along. They were called: The Dirty Thirties. I do not remember anything from birth to about the age of five or six years. From what my late parents told me, the times were hard. When I wasn’t even a year old, father, mother and I traveled with a covered wagon from Cudworth, Saskatchewan to Grandview, Manitoba. It took three weeks to cover some three hundred miles. As we traveled along and as the sun would be setting, my parents would turn into some farmyard and ask the owners if we could stay overnight on their yard. The parents said people always welcomed us into their homes. One day near Kamsack, Saskatchewan we stopped overnight and it was at a Doukhobor family. We were treated well the parents said. When I grew up the parents told me that the Doukhobor family wanted to buy me from my parents. Parents did not oblige and next day we carried on in our journey. We were going to Grandview, Manitoba because mother had a cousin there Tillie Korzeniowski. Parents had heard that life was somewhat better in Manitoba, so they headed out east to start a new and better life

While residing at Meharry, a few miles west of Grandview, we lived at Andrew Balak’s place. Here in Grandview my brother John came into the world on January 20 - 1934. Now the parents had two toddlers to look after when the family was short of livelihood necessities. My father like other fathers tried to make a living. What did he do? He had a pair of bronco horses, so he would take some food with him into the bush and would cut cordwood all day long. Towards evening he would return home with the cordwood. Next morning he would take the wood to Grandview to sell to make a few cents to buy necessities for the family. No one would buy the wood, because they said they had enough wood or had no money to pay for it. As a last resort Father would go to the store and ask the owner to take the wood and give him at least a few essentials so that the family could survive.

After having lived in Grandview, the parents saw that they could not make a living in Manitoba either, so they decided to return back to Saskatchewan. They sold the horses, and the wagon was put on the train. They boarded the train with me and my brother and we all returned back to the Cudworth area. We settled and lived in vacant houses in the Cudworth surroundings. Father would find out who the vacant house belonged to and then asked for permission to live in it. My parents would clean the house and we would move in. We lived many times in such houses. Sometimes the house had been vacant for a number of years. At times after we had been living in such a house, the owners son or daughter were getting married and the owner said he was giving his children the farm with the house where we lived, so we had to vacate that house and find another place to live. This style of living was like gypsy living, here today, there tomorrow and just about each year or second year found us moving to a new place. As you will find out later it was move after move after move that we made. There was no money to buy a house or a farm like there is today. We lived where we could find a vacant house.

We had lived on Peter Guydych’s farm. It was a woody place a few miles from Cudworth. Many times father would leave at sunrise to Cudworth to see if he could find a job where he could make a few dollars to buy life sustaining goods for the family. Some days he would not get a job and would return in the evening with what he had left in the morning - empty hands and pockets. Sometimes someone would hire him to do something and that would take a day or a few days after which he was paid a few dollars. He would receive anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five cents an hour for his labor and it was ten to twelve hours of work a day. Because food was necessary, he asked a storekeeper to give him goods on credit. He would return late in the evening with a sack on his back carrying the goods home. He got flour, sugar, matches, yeast and other necessary items. He had walked to town and back for we had no horses now. The horses had been sold in Grandview.

My first memory goes back to when I was about four or five years old. It is something that I have a good memory at what happened at one of those places we lived. One day father had returned home after finding some work for a day or so. This time he had bought my brother and me two small toys. John and I were each given a toy policeman on a motorcycle. These toys lasted maybe a hour or two. John was younger than me. Where we had been living, someone had dug a cellar for a new house to be built on that place. John and I played in that cellar daily and now we played there with our toys. Somehow turning around here and there, our toys got covered with dirt and we never saw them again. That was the only toy I had received in my childhood. This was in 1936 and this year my sister Alice was born at Cudworth on March 14 and now there were three more pre-school and hungry mouths in the family.

The years kept rolling and slipping along. It was time to start attending school. By this time we lived at Andrew Kindrachuk’s place south of Cudworth, about half a mile. There was a vacant house there so with permission from Mr. Kindrachuk we moved into this place. Cudworth was not far to the north from where we lived, but for some unknown reason I did not go to school to Cudworth where it was closer. I had to attend school south of where we lived about two miles. I started school at Carpathian School which is still standing today along side highway #2 south of Cudworth on the west side of the road. A farmer was using the school as a granary or storage shed. As this is written in July 2016 my first school was still standing and my first teacher, Mr. John Luciuk, had passed away a few years ago at Wakaw, Saskatchewan.

Times were hard on many people or I could say most people. I remember my lunches to school. There were no school lunches provided by the school as there are in some schools today. I had to bring lunch from home. What was my lunch? One day it was - mother moistened a piece or two of bread in water, put sugar on it, wrapped it in some old newspaper or some other paper that she had and I was off to school. The following day she may have smeared a piece of bread with pork fat, put some salt and pepper on it, wrapped it and I was on the way to school. There was no such thing as an apple, orange or peanut butter sandwiches. There was no money to have bought such luxuries. Yes, other students may have had some of such foods, but I did not, because there were no funds to buy such items. There was no such thing as a school bus or to be driven with a car to go in comfort to school. It was walking miles in the morning and return in the afternoon.

I had to walk the first mile and a half to school all alone. The next half mile I was on a main road where other students were going to school, so it was better to walk with company. Some morning mother would put me on a horse and would lead the horse for the mile and a half until I got to the main road. Then I walked the rest of the way to school, while she led the horse back home.

One day coming home from school and about a mile from home, I ran into trouble. Coming along the farmers road, I spotted a skunk that was some ways from me near some bushes beside the road I was going home on. That was the most scariest thing for me at that time - to see or meet a skunk. I was not afraid if a wolf happened to come along, but a skunk, no way. Stay away from that animal. We had smelled the skunk many times when the wind blew from some direction and if that smell was so terrible, imagine what the skunk would do if you met it. So what do I do now? I can’t walk past that skunk, because if she sees me, she will destroy me. I stopped in my tracks. Oh yes it was a few hundred yards where I could see that skunk moving near a brush pile. I started tiptoeing backwards in the direction I was coming from.

After I had moved away some distance walking backwards, and seeing that the skunk was not coming after me, I turned around and as fast as my feet could move I was flying back towards the school. Having gone a while, I stopped and looked back. I could not see the skunk anymore, good, but I will not go there. I must get home, but how - which way? I walked back to school and took the road straight north of the school. I knew that road, because we had traveled on it before by horse and wagon after we bought a pair of horses. As I had headed back towards the school, tears as large as marbles, were falling like raindrops from spring rains. What a scary experience for a six year old. This second road was farther to get home. I knew mother would be looking to see if I’m coming home and waiting for me in the yard. I don’t know what she was thinking after I never showed up at home when I should have been home already.

After making the extra distance, I finally got home. I remember that mother had been worried and asked where I had been that I was so late coming from school. I told her the story about the skunk, but she only laughed it off. It was funny for her, but a most fearful thing for me. She said the skunk was probably more afraid of me than I of her and probably had run away. I said that when I had gone back towards the school, I looked and saw that the skunk had not moved and said that she was still there.

Next day was off to school again. But - how can I go past that pile of brush where the skunk was. Mother said she would go with me to that place. I was put on the horse, while mother lead the horse. Now we are nearing that brush where the skunk was yesterday. As we came closer, I could hear my heart beating faster. What is going to happen if that skunk is still there? Will she eat mother and me? From the top of the horse I could see the brush pile and sure enough I could see the white stripe on the skunk. I told mother to stop because the skunk was still there. Where? Where is the skunk? I can’t see any skunk she said. Mother being brave enough left me on the horse and herself walked towards the pile of brush. I was beginning to cry, because the skunk would eat her. To my embarrassment mother stops near the white spot and picks up an oldnewspaper that the wind had blown against the brush. Each time the wind blew, the paper moved and it looked like the skunk with the white stripe was moving beside the brush pile.

Another incident which happened at this my first school was, when I started school I did not know one word or letter of English. A day or two after the first day of school my parents were going with the wagon south of Cudworth towards Prud’homme for some reasons which I don’t remember. They said I would have a ride, because they would be going right past the school. When we came to school, I was late for classes had already started. I knew where my desk was, so I walked in and headed straight for my desk. The teacher Mr. John Luciuk, asked me to say Good Morning when I came in. I did not understand what he was saying. He took me by the hand and led me to the porch (cloakroom). He told me in English to come in and say, Good Morning when I walk in. This was being done in English and what good did it do me, when I did not understand what he was saying. As soon as he turned around to go in, I rushed passed him and to my desk. I have to study at my desk not in the porch. He tried that over and over, but nothing helped and tears like marbles were rolling down my cheeks by this time. Finally he told one of the older Ukrainian students to take me out and tell me in Ukrainian what I have to say in English when I come in. I don’t remember if I ever learned anything that day or what I had to say when I came in late. By this time I had enough of schooling. Everybody is watching me and laughing. I’m not going back to school again. I have all the education I need for now.

When I came home that day after school, I told the parents what had happened, but could not explain to them what everything was about. That evening we all went to see someone for the parents wanted to know what had happened. They found out and laughed. That’s it no more school for this boy. He goes to learn, but people laugh of him, schooling is done. My parents being older and wiser convinced me that I will not be late for school again and nothing will happen. Somehow they left me at ease and with hesitation I did journey back to school the following days and years.

Another thing that happened one day where we lived in Kindrachuks’ house is something that got carved into my memory to this very day. It was Sunday afternoon. It was very early spring with snow still in many places in the shades or where there had been big piles of snow. The roads were nothing but mud up to the knees whichever way you went. We had gone with the wagon to church at Cudworth. Coming home from church, John and I had noticed a large nest in the bush maybe 100 yards east of the house. We asked the parents if there are any baby birds in the nest and they said, no.

I was not convinced. When we got into the yard, the parents were unhitching the horses and doing chores, so what did John and I do? Oh yes, we have to investigate that nest and see the baby birds in it. If it’s a crow’s nest we have to kill the baby crows, because they will grow up and then will catch and kill our baby chicks. John was younger and smaller so he would follow me to do what I was doing. He came along with me to check the nest. We did not tell the parents where we were going or what we were planning to do. We came not to far from the tree, but in the bush there was still big piles of snow. John being lighter walked on top of the snow, me being older and a little bit heavier, I sank into the snow. Finally that was as far as I could go. I sank into the wet soft cool snow up to my armpits. I could not get out of the snow in which I had broken in. I told John to help me get out, but he wanted to see the baby birds in the nest first so he went. He tried crawling up the tree, but the branches kept breaking and he couldn’t get up. In the meantime, I’m stuck and can’t move out of the snow. John finally came and tried to help me out, but he could do nothing and said that he was cold and was going to the house. He started for the house and I was left in the snow crying and trying to wiggle out in some way out of this mess. I told John to tell the parents to come and get me out of the snow. After wiggling, kicking and twisting in the cool snow, I was beginning to make headway. Slowly, slowly I kept pounding and kicking at the snow as it softened from the warmth of my body heat and slowly I managed to crawl out, wet, cold and hungry. To this day I never again went to check any bird’s nest or look for little baby crows.

Early years

My parents were always church goers as far back as I can remember. Us children were never left at home or with any baby sitters while the parents went to church or other places. The whole family went to church, for as a saying says: The family that prays together stays together. This next incident that happened a number of times, also took place on Kindrachuk’s farm. This happened many times over, when we were still small. We had been to church a number of times and had seen the priest serving, dressed in brilliant robes. People carried banners around the church, the priest made sweet smelling smoke (censing). People sang in church. Many times as soon as the parents were out of the house, I would put two chairs in the middle of the room. I would tell John to sit on one and Alice on the other. I would put on a long coat or sheet on my back and pretend to be the priest while John and Alice were the parishioners-faithful. I would sing to John and Alice and shake my hand as with a censor. Sometimes I would tie a dish towel to a broom and carry it around the house and tell John and Alice to follow me. To John and Alice this made no sense at all at that time. Could anyone have said at that time that some thirty years later I would be standing in front of the altar serving God? Was that a calling from God already at that early hour what I was to do in my adult life? Many times I would be caught by mother doing this when unexpectedly she would walk into the house from the barn or the garden. Then she would want to give me a spanking, but she couldn’t do that because first she had to catch me. Sometimes she did catch me if I was too far away from the door, but if she caught me than the yard stick or her hand would smack my back. She would say: And what do you think you are doing? I usually got the yard stick, because John and Alice were innocent bystanders (parishioners?)

Because I was the first born in the family, naturally I was the first one to start school. As previously mentioned when I began school I did not know one word in English. Later when John started school, I by this time knew some English words and I would teach him what I knew. When we knew even more English, oftentimes the two of us would converse in English in the house. Mother hearing us speak English would say: How are you talking in the house? Talk so I can understand. You can talk English in school, but at home talk so father and I would understand. If we did not pay attention to her words, she would smack her hand or a dish towel over our necks and backs. Today both parents are gone and I am thankful and grateful that they instilled in me their language, customs and traditions. For that may God reward them blessed a life in His heavenly Kingdom.

As mentioned above when I started school I had to walk over two miles, summer or winter. In the spring of 1938 we moved to William Sopotyk’s place and lived with them. They had a large house and they had half of the house and half where we lived. Now it was much better. Here I had to go to school only across the road. I could come home every day for lunch. But one thing that will always stick in my mind is the day we moved to Sopotyk’s place. All our belongings that we had were packed in a wagon. We arrived at Sopotyk’s shortly after lunch. Just as we entered the yard we could see an absolutely huge, dark, black cloud rolling across the sky from west to east. It was a dust storm, those dirty thirties.

My mother and Mrs. Sopotyk were lucky to get into the house with us children. Father and Mr. Sopotyk had unhitched the horses and barely had time to scramble into the barn with them. They could not make it to the house, because it got so dark that you could not see anything outside as if it were in the middle of the night. Wind and dust flew into your face. You could not walk in the wind, because the wind would knock a person over and dust flew into one’s eyes, nose and ears. The belongings that were on the wagon, some became victims to the wind. The wind had pushed the wagon against the barn and there it stood till the storm died down about two or three hours later. Mrs. Sopotyk had lit the lamp in the house for it was dark and no one could see anything. We children were afraid and some of us hid under the table and others under the bed and you could only see their eyes shining in the dark from the dim coal oil lamp. Some were screaming and crying because of the howling sound of the wind and the darkness. The noise from the storm sounded like a freight train passing right through the room. There was three children in our family and there must have been three or four in Sopotyk’s family. During those Great Depression years hundreds of dust storms raced across the prairies blowing away everything with them and taking away the top rich soil. Even the windows on the west side of the house were blown out and I remember that mother and Mrs. Sopotyk held quilts and pillows against the broken windows to keep the wind and the dust out.

The storm lasted about two or three hours, but it seemed like it was there for days on end. The fear of such storms was instilled in everyone. Some of our belongings that were on the wagon were broken and destroyed because there had been no time to bring them in. Some things that the storm blew away were never found. Anyone who has never experienced such a dust storm when daylight turns into complete darkness does not know what fear is. You would think the world was coming to an end. One cannot even begin to explain to today’s people what those dust storms were. There just seem to be no words to describe such horrific catastrophe as it was called.

It was also around this time in my time or maybe a year or two sooner that I remember having my tonsils taken out. It was such a time in history that every child had to get their tonsils removed, why, I don’t know. I was brought to the Cudworth Hospital where I was born a few years earlier. I was more scared being left there than a rabbit was afraid of a fox. Afraid and crying with no parents around and complete strangers all dressed in white. What does a four or five year old child do, when all around everything is strange, unknown and unfamiliar. I don’t remember being put under for surgery. What I can remember is that someone gave me something to smell and that was it. Then I thought I heard music playing. It seemed to me that a radio was chasing me and I was running away as fast as I could. Next thing what I remember was when I awoke after the surgery. This was the time I liked to be in the hospital because the people dressed in white were feeding me with marshmallows. The marshmallows were soft and easy to eat and brought no pain to the throat after surgery.

At this same hospital a few years later my youngest sister Oksana was born. My both sisters and I were born in the same hospital at Cudworth, only brother John is a Manitoban for he was born at Grandview while we resided there for a year or two. I was born October 6 - 1932; John January 20 - 1935; Alice was born on March 14 - 1937 and Oksana was born on August 11 - 1940.

I believe that it was in the spring of 1939 when we moved again, this time about two or three miles east of Cudworth. There had been a vacant house and we moved into it. We lived only half a mile north from Mr. Mike Stefaniuk, which was no relation to us. There were children from that Stefaniuk family that attended this same school. The school, St. Cunageneda, was only about three or four hundred yards east of where we lived. Today it is there no more, but only a marker stands there to tell that there stood a school. We moved here in the spring as the snow was just starting to melt. I went to school the very next day. I had now been in school for one year. Miss Frey (or Frie) gave me a grade two reader to read. I could not read what she asked me to read, so I was put in with grade one.

It was also in this school that I had some misfortunes. This was the school where I got the only two straps while attending different schools all my school life. As mentioned in the above paragraph, we lived less than a quarter of a mile from school, so each day I would come home for lunch. This school had no well, so there was no water in the school and children had to bring water to school for themselves in jars or whatever. One day I had just returned from home from lunch and was playing with other children outside. The school bell rang and everyone rushed to get into their desks. After everyone was in their desk, the teacher Miss Frey (or Frie) asked me to come to the cloakroom with her. I thought she was going to teach me something or ask me to do something. She came and brought the strap with her. Then in the cloakroom she told me that I had drank the water that one boy that brought to school. That boy was a bully in school. How much English I understood, I told her that I did not drink any water because I was at home. I was at home and if I wanted water, I drank it at home, so why would I drink some one else’s water? There were no if’s and but’s for the teacher and for that I got two straps, all for nothing, because the bully made up a lie against me and I could not defend myself still not knowing the language that well.

Another thing that this bully did was on a cold winters day. This day I did not go home for lunch because it was cold and some stormy weather was churning outside. I brought my lunch with me to school this day. The lunch was in a paper bag. The teacher dismissed the class for lunch, and she went for lunch to the teacherage next to the school. As soon as the teacher was out the door, this bully walks past my desk, grabs my lunch, pulls up a chair beside the blackboard and puts my lunch on top of the map cabinet. Maps used to be in a drawer type cabinet which you would pull down any map you needed to show something to the class. There sat my lunch. An older student, Mary Stefaniuk, (the daughter of Mike Stefaniuk mentioned above) began to argue with the bully to give me my lunch back. No way. He bullied her also and with the poker that was used to stoke the fire in the wood stove, he would poke her with it. At other times when I knew he would come to grab my lunch I would guard it, but he would still come around and grab my sandwich from hands and either eat it himself or throw it into the garbage pail or into the stove. He would keep an eye on the teacherage and as soon as he saw the teacher was leaving the teacherage coming to school, he would quickly give me the lunch back at which time there was now no time to eat. I sat hungry throughout the whole day until I came home from school. I would not eat my lunch when classes started because I was afraid so that I would not get a strap again. In that school I lived in fear all the time because of the big bully.

One other funny thing that happened at this place where we lived was in the spring time. The snow had just about melted when one day when John, Alice and I were playing outside and we happened to find a beautiful pin with a red ruby stones on it. I was going to pin it on myself, but John began to cry that he wanted it, so I pinned that on him to keep him quiet. And who got a spanking for that pin? Yes I did, for pinning it on John. Mother tried taking the pin out of his shirt, but the pin would not come out until the shirt was partly damaged. Why? Because later we learned that this pin was a fish hook and the fish hook has a barb the other way and you would have to tear a small hole in the clothing to get it out.

Another silly thing that happened at this place was with John and me. A hundred yards south-west of the house was a slough. The snow was just about all melted, but here and there in the bush were still small piles of snow. One afternoon father and mother took Alice and went to Cudworth some 2-3 miles west of where we lived. They told John and me to play outside and be good and they would be back soon. John and I were home alone. So what do two young rascals do for action? First we played around the yard and then decided to go to the slough and play with the water. From first we threw little pebbles into the water that we found, then would throw some sticks and see who can throw farther. There were no bathrooms and bathtubs in homes at that time in the places where we lived. Baths were seldom taken, maybe once a month or so in a tub in the house. John and I thought it would be a good time to go into the water. We rolled up our pant legs and went into the water, but we soon found out that was not very much fun. We undressed and fully naked ran into the slough. The water was ice cold, since as mentioned snow was still standing in shady places. But two young rascals splashing around in the water that was belly-button deep, was no time to feel cold. Having a good time in the water we never even noticed when the parents arrived home. They saw us in the water and yelled to us, what we were doing and to get out of the water. We did get out and were dressed in shorter time than we were undressing to go into the water. Mother said we were half blue and half white from the cold water. Mother pick up some kind of a stick and warmed our butts for what we had done. We never went bathing into that slough again without the permission of the parents.

After spending a year living in this place, the following spring we moved again, just as the snow was beginning to melt. This time father had found a place one mile east of Wakaw which is eleven miles north of Cudworth and we moved there with father renting a quarter section of land from the late John Kwasnicia. Mr. Kwasnicia had a store in Wakaw and lived in Wakaw, but he also had a vacant house on the farm. By this time we already had four horses, one or two cows and other livestock. Here for the first time father started farming by renting the farm, quarter section of beautiful level land. In the north-west corner of the farm was a small Orthodox church and cemetery which is there to this very day. (the church is no more there.) We attended this church whenever services were held. There is another side to this story where we lived. Nearly half a century later I was married to Mary Kwasnica who was a niece to John Kwasnica, but at that time when we lived there, I never knew Mary (Marusia). The story of this will be told later as we come to that era in time.

Moving to this area early in the spring, John also started school here. The name of the school was Crooked Lake and was just over one mile south east from our place. It was one mile to Wakaw, but why we went to the farm school instead of to Wakaw, I don’t know. When I came the first day to the new school, what does the teacher do? Does he put me in grade two or grade one that I had already spent two years. He gives me a grade three reader to read, but with new and harder words it was difficult to read. Seeing this the teacher keeps me in grade two. I had to repeat the same grade again and by this time I nearly knew the grade one and two readers by memory, but the teacher thought I was not ready for grade three. For this reason it is a very bad decision for families to move in March if there are children going to school. We lived at the east end of the quarter section and about two or three hundred yards east of where we lived, was another family the Fereniuks. Children from that family also went to the same school, so we had company to and from school in this school district. During free times we played with the Fereniuk children in their yard or in ours. The school was south-east of where we lived and to get to school we walked past Fereniuk’s place and east to get to the main road. There was a lake from east to west and we had to go around to get to the road that went past the school.

As mentioned above we already had four horses by this time. Now there was something to work the land with. Father was still asking and looking to get some work around the community, while mother did most of the work around the yard and also in the house. Father had gotten some kind of work someplace and was not home a day or two. One morning probably during July, when we woke up we found the horses had broken out of the pasture and were missing. Now where do you start looking for the horses? Mother left John, Alice and Oksana at Fereniuks and took me with herself to help find and catch the horses. We tried to follow their tracks but soon lost them. We stopped in at different farmers places to ask if they did not see four stray horses. Later we found some horse tracks by the railway. The first thing that came to mind was that if the horses got on the railway, they may be dead now, being killed by the train.

We followed those tracks and lost them also. Were those the tracks of our horses? The day was hot. It was summer and I was thirsty and tired. After walking and searching for miles and miles, we returned home with no horses seen anywhere. This same evening father came home from where he had been working and mother told him that the horses were gone. He was upset and angry, but what could we have done when they broke down the fence during the night and got out. Next day father himself went looking for the horses, but had no luck finding them. Later towards evening Peter Hryciuk from Cudworth came with the car to our place and told us that our horses are at Cudworth where we used to live. Wakaw to Cudworth is eleven miles. One of the horses we had was smart and many times we had problems with her. We thought that this was probably the work of that mare Lucy, who got out and took the other horses with her. Father got into the car with Mr. Hryciuk and went to Cudworth to bring the horses back. He brought back all four horses, only I don’t remember if it was that same night or the following day.

Because of the hardships that followed us wherever we went, I being the oldest was expected to do more to help out with chores around the yard and house. When I was about eight years old father put me on the discer to disc the summer fallow when school had been out for the summer. Father had other work to do around the yard at home. The field was exactly half a mile from east to west. He tied me down to the discer seat so that I would not slide off and down under the discs and get run over. I went from the east end of the field, where the yard was, all the way to the west end where I had to make a turn and come back again.

As I was making the turn, the steering pole fell of the horses neck yoke and I stopped. I could not get off the seat because I was tied down and the knots were under the seat where I could not reach them to loosen myself from the rope and seat. So what does an eight year old do at the end of the field half a mile from home and no one around? I sat in the hot sun but I was lucky that the horses did not decide to leave the hot sun and take off. It would have been a catastrophe and I could have been made into hamburger under the discs. I sat in the seat and cried, for what else could I do? Maybe someone will come along and will help me. In the meantime whatever father was doing in the yard and he would glance from time to time to see if I’m still discing. One time he said he looked and thought that the horses were standing and not moving. He looked the second time, and sure enough there was no movement. He said that his first thought of seeing the horses standing, was that I must have fell off. He could not see me if I was sitting because of the color of the horses and my clothing, so he could not distinguish if I was on the seat or not. He knew something was wrong, but did not know what. I was lucky that the horses were quiet horses and they would have rather stood and rest than move and pull the discs. Father seeing that the horses were standing, he came running towards me. I had already made half a turn, so I was sitting in a way that I could turn my head and see the yard at home half a mile away. When father arrived he saw right away what was wrong. He put the steering pole back in place and then shortened the pulling straps of the harness by one or two rings and than I disced the rest of the field, for the rest of the day without incident.

Summer came and went. There was time for work for an eight year old, but than there were times for play. Now harvest was around the corner. Father had seeded half of the field in the spring and there was a bumper crop that year. When harvest came in late August or early September, school had already started. Our crop was now cut, stooked and ready to be threshed. I had seen a threshing machine before from a distance, but I would not go too close to one, because it was too frightening, making a huge noise and it looked dangerous.

One day after school we learned that the threshing crew will be threshing at our place the following day. I was told that I would have to stay home from school, because I will need to help at the machine by shoveling grain in the bin. The machine and crew arrived and the following day our crop was threshed. My job was in the granary. I shoveled and shoveled that wheat and ate the dust that was in the bin. This was my first experience with a threshing machine and crew. Everybody had something to do. Racks on the field were being filled by sheave pitchers. An engineer was keeping an eye on the machine to see that everything was working properly. Someone else would do something else and everybody was busy. As the threshing machine hummed along, more wheat kept pouring into the granary. I shoveled until there was no more room to shovel the wheat. An empty wagon was brought by the granary and the wheat was directed into the wagon.

When I was shoveling in the granary it got hotter and hotter and harder to breath in the dust. Father brought me a wet rag and tied it around my face. Oh what a relief that was when it became so much easier to breath. Finally all the sheaves were threshed and it was supper time. As the threshing was going on, inside the house there was just as much commotion as from the threshing machine outside. Mother was preparing lunch and coffee to take to the workers by the machine, and then also prepared dinner and supper for the crew. Another thrill came to me in the evening. About ten to twelve men sat around a large table having supper after they first had looked after their horses outside, to be watered and fed. All day mother had prepared this meal for the hungry crew. Someone had noticed that I was standing in a corner in the house, (because children were always taught to respect the elders and not say anything or do anything, but stand quietly and watch) and the person says that I should sit down to eat with the men because I was helping with the threshing. A place was soon made for me and what a thrill to sit at the same table with the threshing crew. Was I grown up and a man now? An eight year old man?

Life at Wakaw lasted only one year. It was a good place there. The land was nice and level, no rocks, close to town, etc. But, father had found another place to rent land and so when spring came at about the end of March or early April we were on the move again. This time we moved from Wakaw to Reynaud which was about fifteen miles east of Wakaw towards Basin Lake. There father was going to rent a quarter section of land from Mr. Shchitka. About a mile south of where we lived father rented another quarter section of land. This second quarter had been neglected and no one had worked that land for a few years. It was overgrown with weeds and small shrubs had started to grow here and there. Usually on Saturday and during summer holidays it was my job to work this second quarter of land. Now with half a section of land, more crop will be produced and more funds will come for the family.

Chances looked good. After we had worked that second quarter section of land all summer long and looking forward to seeding it the following year, a bombshell fell. People had seen how well the land was worked up, clean and ready to seed, so someone went and purchased that quarter section from the owners of the land and we were again left with the one quarter were we lived on Shchitka’s farm. I don’t know if father even got one red cent for having worked the neglected land to bring it to productivity. The dark, misfortune evil was always looking where we were, to make things harder and harder for the family.

Moving from Wakaw to Reynaud we traveled as nomads. We borrowed one wagon from a neighbor and piled all our belongings unto it. Mother will drive this wagon. The other wagon which father was driving had the wagon box divided into two parts. In one part went the sow with the piglets and in the other half the poultry. Alice and Oksana were with mother in the wagon. John and I had the job of walking behind and chasing the cows. One oldest cow was tied to the wagon while the others were loose, so John and I had to see that they followed the cavalcade. The trek began at Wakaw sometimes before noon. At about the half way point just east of a small lake, about 7 miles east of Wakaw we stopped for lunch. John and I were still keeping an eye on the cattle and eating with the rest of the family dry bread and drinking water which had been taken from the well at the last place we lived. One piece of bread in one hand and a stick in the other to keep the cattle together. The horses and cows were given hay because it being the time of the year, there was still no green grass. I do not recall the rest of the trip to Shchitka’s but we must have gotten their sometimes in the late afternoon. Things had to be unloaded and placed in the house in their places. The animals had to be put into their place, so that we may start our life in the new place. The house sat on a hill and to the east we could see Basin Lake. It was a large lake. People from the area told us that at one time the place was a meadow where farmers from the area around came and cut hay for winter for the cattle. People told us that one night there was a very large rumbling noise and everybody was afraid of what may have been happening. In the morning when people got up, a large lake met their eyes and is there to this day. It is called Basin Lake because of its round shape looks like a basin.

Having moved to a new area, we now have to find a new school. Again we would start in March or April and that was a bad time to change schools. This school that we would attend was about a mile west of where we lived. It was called Cranberry School. To get to that school by road, it would have been about five or six miles, but to make it closer we would walk across the fields and then through some bush, down a steep hill and there at the bottom was the school. Here we made new friends again. The teacher was Mr. MacFadden. He had a son Garfield who was the same grade as John. We became very good friends with Garfield also with Eddie and Mickey Balon, and other children. Last I heard was that Garfield was a pilot living at Peace River, Alberta.

It was also at this place where father had to spend a few days in the hospital at Cudworth. The year had been good. It was a bumper crop and good harvest. Now came winter and at winter comes the Nativity of Christ (Christmas). The parents had invited some closer friends over for the festive celebrations. Father served refreshments. At that time it was different than today. Father would have a drink to one friend and then give that friend a drink. Than he would have another drink to another friend and than that friend would have a drink. By the time each friend had a drink, father had already had half a dozen drinks or so. At that time that was the tradition. Doing greetings this way gave father maybe more than he could handle. He must have felt bad and somehow slipped outside in the dark for some fresh air. He only had a white shirt on in the -30 degree weather in the month of January. While outside, he lost his balance or what, to which one knows, and he fell into the snow. Someone noticed that father was missing and started to look where he was. Someone checked the rooms in the house and someone went outside to have a look. Near the steps of the house father was found lying in the snow. He was brought into the house. Next day he felt really ill aching all over. Mother drove him to the train station at Reynaud where he caught the train to Wakaw. At Wakaw he took the train to Cudworth, because he knew the doctor in Cudworth. He stayed in the hospital a few days. A young new doctor was substituting for the regular doctor who was away. The young doctor gave father medication to make him sweat. Later father said that the nurses changed his bedding three times a day from the sweating. He returned home from the hospital and till his passing away at the age of 101 he never had any side effects. Till the day he passed away, we had never again seen that our father had too much to drink.

We lived for a year or two on Shchitka’s land. It was