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Recollections About the Life of the First Ukrainian Settlers in Canada William A. Czumer Recollections About the Life of the First Ukrainian Settlers in Canada Collected and Written by William A. Czumer Translation by Louis T. Laychuk Introduction by Manoly R. Lupul Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Edmonton 1981 THE ALBERTA LIBRARY IN UKRAINIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES A series of original works and reprints relating to Ukrainians in Canada, issued under the editorial supervision of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton. Editorial Board: Bohdan Bociurkiw, Carleton University (Social Sciences) George S. N. Luckyj, University of Toronto (Humanities) Manoly R. Lupul, University of Alberta (Ukrainians in Canada) Ivan L. Rudnytsky, University of Alberta (History) Copyright © 1981 The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies The University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Czumer, William, A., 1882-1963, Recollections about the life of the first Ukrainian settlers in Canada (The Alberta library in Ukrainian-Canadian studies) Translation of Spomyny pro perezhyvannia pershykh ukrainskykh pereselentsiv v Kanadi Includes index. ISBN 0-920862-08-X (bound). ISBN 0-920862-10-1 (pbk.). 1. Ukrainians in Canada. 2. Ukrainians in Alberta. I. Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. II. Title. III. Series. FC 106.U5C5713 97F.00491791 C81-091011-X F1035.U5C5713 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Cover: Photo of “The Pioneer Family,” a monument by Mr. Leo Mol (Lev Molodozhanyn) of Winnipeg, courtesy of the Ukrainian Heritage Village, near Edmonton. Printed in Canada by Printing Services, University of Alberta Distributed by the University of Toronto Press 5201 Dufferin St. Downsview, Ontario Canada M3H 5T8 Introduction This book is a translation of a work first published in Ukrainian by William (Vasyl) Czumer in Edmonton in 1942. It deals with the history of Ukrainian life in Canada during the most difficult period—the first twenty-five years of settlement. Events during the First World War and its aftermath are little mentioned. It is not difficult to imagine the strong feelings which must have motivated William Czumer in assembling these recollections. The year 1942 marked the fiftieth anniversary of that vanguard of Ukrainian settlers to Western Canada whose coming released a veritable flood of land-hungry peasants from Galicia and Bukovyna in the old Austro-Hungarian empire. In 1941, in the midst of considerable discussion of the anniversary in the Ukrainian press, William Czumer had helped to organize the Ukrainian Pioneers’ Association of Alberta, which is still extant. As its first secretary-treasurer, he began collecting data and funds for a book on the Ukrainian settlers of Alberta. To him, it was the first step toward writing the history of the Ukrainians in Canada outlined in an issue of Ukrainskyi holos (Ukrainian Voice) in September 1939. (The outline is included near the end of this book.) Both were ambitious projects for a people primarily rural, recovering from depressed economic conditions and plunged suddenly into the uncertainties (and opportunities) presented by world-wide military conflict. As a result, William Czumer found himself with a handful of valuable first-hand personal experiences, numerous photographs and several scattered newspaper accounts which, to the astonishment of many, he proceeded with characteristic vigour and determination to weave into a volume at his own expense. William Andrew (Andrii) Czumer was born on 5 February 1882 to Andrii and Mariia (nee Broda) Czumer in the village of VI William A. Czumer Drohoyiv, Peremyshl County, Galicia. The extent of his schooling is uncertain but, as the son of the landlord’s overseer, it likely includ- ed the gymnasium (high school), for Czumer could read and write Ukrainian, Polish and German and was a sergeant in the Austrian army. With his family fairly well established in the Old Country, he alone emigrated to Canada, arriving in Winnipeg in 1903 at the age of twenty-one. After a stint as a railroad worker, he became a member of the first class to enrol in the Ruthenian Training School established in Winnipeg in 1905 by the Government of Manitoba to provide a three-year course for, as Czumer himself put it, “young, intelligent Ukrainian boys who already had some secondary education in their own language but no opportunity to learn English because they lacked finances” (p. 65). The goal was to prepare teachers for schools in the Ukrainian settlements and, besides literacy in the mother tongue, other qualifications were modest: an aptitude for and a willingness to learn English, familiarity with Manitoba’s basic elementary school curriculum through grade eight, sufficient integrity for the government to believe that the original costs of lodging and food would gradually be recovered through monthly payments while teaching, and a concern approaching missionary zeal to raise the Canadian (and, at least to the teachers, Ukrainian) consciousness of the settlers and their children through a vibrant and thriving community school. No attendance at the Normal School was required and there is no evidence that the special third-class certificates issued entitled their recipients to teach in non-Ukrainian settlements in Manitoba or in a school elsewhere. In Winnipeg the student teachers frequented the homes of such successful Ukrainians as Theodore (Teodor) Stefanyk, a strong supporter of Premier Roblin’s Conservative administration, an interpreter (especially at election times) and a school organizer in Ukrainian settlements whose influence would have been a factor in the establishment of the Training School, and an astute politician with some legal training in Europe who, in 1911, was elected to Winnipeg’s city council to become the first alderman of Ukrainian origin in Canada. In his home, Czumer imbibed the tenets of the Conservative party, which he supported openly and strongly all his life and which may have influenced events at the Bukowina School in strongly Liberal Alberta in 1913—events in which Czumer was a central figure and to which he devotes much space in this book. Recollections vii Theodore Stefanyk had married Olena Braschuk and in their home Czumer also came to know his future wife, Lena Braschuk, who had emigrated in 1897 as a two-year-old with her parents from Babynci, Galicia, to Sifton, Manitoba, and who lived with the Stefanyks while completing her education in Winnipeg. They were married in Sifton in 1916. In the meantime, from 1907 to 1913, William Czumer embarked upon a successful teaching career (mainly in Manitoba), which was as much concerned with community development as schooling. His first position at Bachman School, near Beausejour, was one of the few cases where, because of the school district’s heterogenous population, the teacher under Manitoba’s bilingual school law of 1897 would have had to instruct in four languages—English, German, Polish and Ukrainian. That he managed is clear from his account of the “‘Galician’ Christmas concert,” his sole personal memoir in the book. From his example, in his own words, “The Ukrainians, who had felt like third-class citizens in the district, stood up straight and raised their heads in pride” (p. 69). That—more than anything else—was the main purpose of schooling for the first Ukrainian-English teachers, and to that end they organized educational associations (prosvity ), reading clubs (chytalnyi), drama societies, co-operatives and community halls ( narodnyi domy). They were ‘their people’s’ protectors and ultimately their benefactors. But to succeed, they and their people had to be strong, and strength lay in organization. William Czumer understood this very well. In 1907 he helped to organize the Ukrainian-English Teachers’ Association in Manitoba and served as its first president for three years. He was also president, then secretary-treasurer, of the Brokenhead Farmers’ Trading Company organized by him in Ladywood, Manitoba, in 1910. In 1909 he joined the first executive of the Ukrainian Publishing Company, which in 1910 established the Ukrainskyi holos to help arouse the national consciousness of settlers who spoke Ukrainian but shunned the label, accepting Galician, Bukovynian, Ruthenian, Austrian or any other offered by officials. Such, then, was the background of the man who in the spring of 1913 came to Alberta to assume a teaching post at the Bukowina School, near present-day Andrew. The province was in the midst of an election, and even if Ukrainian interests had not required opposition to the Liberal party, Czumer’s loyalty to the Vlll William A. Czumer Conservatives might have spurred it on. For years, the Liberals, who had manipulated the Ukrainian vote very effectively, had managed to withstand the pressures of prominent Liberal leaders like Peter Svarich (Petro Zvarych) and Andrew (Andrii) Shandro for bilingual schools similar to those in Manitoba. It is not hard to imagine how much classrooms in the hands of veterans of the Boer War or English-speaking summer students incapable of relating to the community must have displeased William Czumer. By suppressing all that was Ukrainian, such teachers reinforced the inferiority complex of the settlers and their children. In Manitoba Czumer had taught successfuly under a very different system, and it would not have been difficult for him to conclude that the educational authorities in Alberta were either inexperienced in the schooling of immigrant children or were consciously following the same policy of forced assimilation that was even then being advanced by the Liberals in Manitoba. In any case, it is clear that Czumer became involved in the election in April on behalf of some disenchanted Liberals who ran as independents in several of the constituencies where the Ukrainian vote was significant.

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