UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA

IN MY BABA'S HOUSE, IN MY PARENTS' HOUSE: ^=% Perspectives on Two Houses in Kamsack, Saskatchewan C.

by MAUREEN STEFANKJK

Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS in UKRAINIAN FOLKLORE

DEPARTMENT OF MODERN LANGUAGES AND CULTURAL STUDIES

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1+1 Canada ABSTRACT

This thesis employs four methodologies: autobiography, a review of literature on Ukrainian dwelling architecture, fieldwork interviews and a detailed description of Ukrainian decorated eggs. All these research sources illustrate different perspectives on two particular houses in Kamsack, Saskatchewan, my grandmother's house and my parents' house. Some perspectives present a polarity strongly contrasting the two houses, one being very "traditional" while the other being very "modern." Other perspectives suggest that the two Kamsack dwellings were quite similar. The four different methods, or types of sources, ultimately help to understand the question of what constituted Ukrainian ethnicity in each case. Objects of Ukrainian ethnicity acquire a new diversity, and multiplicity of forms within the contemporary Ukrainian cultural context, as well as a new aesthetic, symbolic, hybrid status. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to God for granting me the grace and fortitude to remain faithful to answering the questions that were uppermost in my heart and mind when I entered the Ukrainian Folklore program. I acknowledge a great debt to my mother Marie and my daughter Ilara for their unfailing love, sacrifice, encouragement and support of me throughout this project. I extend a special thank you to Hans Von Grunwald for his good heart, good humor and his willingness to "be there for me" as an inspiration, and as a loving and soulful companion. This study would not have been possible without the knowledge, guidance, patience, kindness, and wisdom of my two supervisors, Professors Andriy Nahachewsky and Natalie Kononenko who supervised my work at various times over the course of this project. I am very grateful for their compassion, the gift of their time and their generosity of spirit towards me. Without their sensitivity and direction this thesis could never have been born. I would like to thank my fieldwork informants for graciously giving their time and energy to welcome me and freely share information. I owe a great debt of gratitude to Betty Rohr, Louise Henein, Donna Cooley, Donna Eisner, and most recently, Sisters Margaret McGovern and Laurette Belanger and the Sisters of the Marian Community at Providence Center, whose hospitality of heart and home in both Saskatoon and Edmonton have gone far beyond the call of duty. They all prayed, protected, encouraged and nourished me- heart, mind, body, and soul. Their moral support has been invaluable over the past six years. And last but certainly not least, I am grateful for all the administrative and technical assistance of my MLCS Angel, Jane Wilson. TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER ONE 5

AUTOBIOGRAPHIC MATERIAL 5

I IMPRESSIONS OF MY BABA'S HOUSE 5

II IMPRESSIONS OF MY PARENTS' HOUSE 31

III NOTIONS OF HOUSE 54

CHAPTER TWO 55

CANADIAN-UKRAINIAN DWELLING ARCHITECTURE 55

I THEBURDEI 55

II LOG AND PLASTER PEASANT HOUSE 59 A. The Main Features 62 B. House Lay-Out 63 C. House Structure 64 D. House Styles 69 E. House Contents 72 F. House as Interactive Space 73

III WOOD FRAME HOUSE 76 A. Main Features 76 B. House Structure 79 C. House as Interactive Space 80

IV MODERN DWELLINGS 86

V CONCLUSIONS 88

A. Situating My Baba's and My Parents' Houses Along The House Continuum 89

CHAPTER THREE 97

INFORMANT RESPONSES 97

I SOURCES 97

II INFORMANTS ON BURDEI 99

III INFORMANTS ON THE UKRAINIAN PLASTER HOUSE 100 A. Informants on Exterior House Rituals in the Ukrainian Plaster House 101 B. Informants on Interior House Rituals in the Ukrainian Plaster House 101

IV INFORMANTS ON THE UKRAINIAN WOOD FARM HOUSE 105 A. The Stefaniuk Farm House 106 B. The Kryworuchka Farm House 107 C. The Dutka Farm House 110 D. Rituals in the Farm House Ill

V INFORMANTS ON THE ENGLISH HOUSE 115

VI INFORMANT IMPRESSIONS OF UKRAINIAN HOUSES IN THEIR PAST 116

VII INFORMANTS ON THE MODERN HOME 118

VIII CONCLUSIONS 123

CHAPTER FOUR 129

UKRAINIAN OBJECTS WITHIN THE VARIOUS UKRAINIAN HOUSES 129

I INFORMANTS ON OBJECTS WITHIN THE TRADITIONAL UKRAINIAN LOG AND PLASTER HOME 129 A. Objects in the west room/domestic area/ mala khata: 130 B. Objects in the east room/ ceremonial guest area/ velyka khata: 131 A-List Objects in the mala khata of the Ukrainian Log-Plaster House: 133 B-List Objects in the velyka khata of the Ukrainian Log-Plaster House: 133 C-List Total Number of Objects in the Ukrainian Log-Plaster House: 134 (A-List and B List Combined) 134 C. Informants on Ritual Objects in the Log and Plaster House 136

II INFORMANTS ON UKRAINIAN OBJECTS IN THE 137

MODERN HOME 137 A. Visual Art and Craft- 140 B. Religious Imagery- 141 C. Objects of Nature- 141 D. Food- 141 E. Antiques and Ukrainian Pioneer Artifacts- 141 F. Books- 141 G. Music- 142 D-List Informants on Ukrainian Objects in the Modern Home: 142

III UKRAINIAN OBJECTS IN BABA'S HOUSE AND IN MY PARENTS' HOUSE 145 IV CONCLUSIONS 151 A. Ukrainian Pioneer Folk Art 158 B. Ukrainian Nationalist Art in the Context of Urban Modern Culture 162 C. Ukrainian Ethnic Pop Art in the Context of Urban Modern Culture 166 C. Andriy Nahachewsky, Anna Kuranicheva, on Ukrainian Art Objects 168

CHAPTER FIVE 175

THE DECORATED EGG IN THE UKRAINIAN PLASTER HOUSE, 175

IN THE WOOD FRAME HOUSE AND IN THE MODERN HOME 175

I THE DECORATED EGG IN THE UKRAINIAN PLASTER HOUSE 176

II DECORATED EGGS IN BABA'S WOOD FRAME HOUSE 178 A. Primary Sources: 178 B. Preservation: 180 C. Social and Historical Context: 181 D. Baba and Pysanky Rituals 182

III DECORATED EGGS IN MOTHER'S MODERN HOME 185 A Description: 185 B. Preservation 186 C. Social and Historical Context: 186 D. Other Informants on Pysanky: 187

IV CONCLUSION: 191

CHAPTER SIX 199

ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSIONS 199

I METHODOLOGY 199

II A NEW DIVERSITY & MUTIPLICITY OF UKRAINIAN CULTURAL FORMS 202

III SYMBOLISM 207

IV HYBRIDITY 209

V CULTURAL DISPLACEMENT AND EMOTIONAL PROJECTION 212

BIBLIOGRAPHY 215

FIELDWORK INTERVIEWS 219 LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Comparison of Objects inBaba's and Parents' Houses 145

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Baba Stefaniuk's Kamsack House 5 Figure 2. House Interior. Kitchen of Baba's House 7 Figure 3. George Stefaniuk circa 1920 8 Figure 4. Baba Stefaniuk's Kamsack House Floor-Plan 10 Figure 5. Baba Stefaniuk's Kamsack House Interior Floor-Plan 11 Figure 6. Baba Stefaniuk's Sacred Heart Icons of Jesus and Mary 12 Figure 7. One of Baba Stefaniuk's Barrels Crafted into an End Table 14 Figure 8. Interior Kitchen of Baba's House, 1948 15 Figure 9. Baba Stefaniuk's Wooden Clock 17 Figure 10. Kitchen of Baba's House. Baba's Birthday, 1966 18 Figure 11. "Baba Shelf 19 Figure 12. Icon of Child Jesus with Lamb 22 Figure 13. Baba's Icon of St. George and the Dragon 23 Figure 14. Living Room in Baba Stefaniuk's Kamsack House circa 1956 24 Figure 15. Gido's Chest with Blue Lock 25 Figure 16. Gido Stefaniuk's Docking Paper 26 Figure 17. Baba Stefaniuk's Hand Embroidered Ritual Cloth/rushnyk, 27 Figure 18. Baba Stefaniuk's Hand-Crafted Pillow Cover 28 Figure 19. Ukrainian Christmas Eve circa 1960s 29 Figure 20. Baba Stefaniuk circa 1950 31 Figure 21. John and Marie Stefaniuk's Wood Frame House circa 1950 32 Figure 22. Parents' 1920s House Plan 33 Figure 23. An Architectural Sketch of the "Kingsmere" Home circa 1960 38 Figure 24. Parents' Remodeled Kamsack House circa 1970 39 Figure 25. Parents' 1960s Remodeled House Plan 40 Figure 26. John Stefaniuk's Outdoor Garage 42 Figure 27. Petit-Point Picture of Mary 48 Figure 28. Ukrainian Englilsh Dictionary and Two Ukrainian Prayer Books 49 Figure 29. Marie Stefaniuk in Front of Her China Cabinet 50 Figure 30. Mother's Red and Black Embroidery Motif Clay-Ware 51 Figure 31. Father's Ukrainian Belt/poias 51 Figure 32. John Stefaniuk (1921-1999) 53 Figure 33. Burdei, Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village (UCHV), 55 Figure 34. Burdei Interior. UCHV 58 Figure 35. Grekul Log and Plaster House 59 Figure 36. Four Variants of the Log and Plaster House 60 Figure 37. The Demchuk Wood Frame House, 1928 76 Figure 38. Hawreliak House 1919 83 Figure 39. Four House Types on a Continuum 88 Figure 40. My Baba's and Parents' Houses on a Continuum 88 Figure 41. Plaster House near Calder, Saskatchewan 100 Figure 42. Icon Corner in the Stefaniuk Farm House, circa 1924 103 Figure 43. A Portion of the Icon Corner in the Welykholowa Farm House 104 Figure 44. Wood Farm House and Summer Kitchen. Circa 1940 105 Figure 45. Maria and George Stefaniuk Farm House. Circa 1920 106 Figure 46. Log and Plaster Storage Shed 108 Figure 47. Kryworuchka Log-Plaster-Wood Farm House. 1940 108 Figure 48. Dutka Farm House Ill Figure 49. Ukrainian Wedding in Baba and Gido Stefaniuk's Farm Yard 113 Figure 50. Bill Koreliuk With Holy Family Icon 121 Figure 51. Bill Koreliuk's Modern Rural Home Exterior 122 Figure 52. Bill Koreliuk's Modern Rural Home Interior 122 Figure 53. Informant House Continuum 124 Figure 54. Most Informants' Perceptions of House Displacement in the Modern Home

Figure 55. One Informants' Perception of House Implacement in the Modern Home... 125 Figure 56. Baba Stefaniuk's Tiled Wood Stove 132 Figure 57. Made and Purchased Objects in the mala khata 133 Figure 58. Made and Purchased Objects in the velyka khata 133 Figure 59. Informants: Made and Purchased Objects in Plaster House 134 Figure 60. Baba Stefaniuk's Wooden Table. Circa 1920 135 Figure 61. Baba Stefaniuk's Wooden Table & Chairs. Circa 1920 135 Figure 62. Informants: Made and Purchased Objects in the Modern Home 142 Figure 63. Ukrainian Utensils For Poppy-Seed Grinding/ makitra and makohin, 144 Figure 64. Lillian Kobrynsky with Pressed Paper dizha 150 Figure 65. Numbers of Made and Purchased Objects 151 Figure 66. Numbers of Ritual and Non-Ritual Objects 153 Figure 67. Decorative Details of Baba's Hand-Embroidered Bed Spread 155 Figure 68. Baba Stefaniuk's Spice Grinder 156 Figure 69. Baba Stefaniuk's Windev/motovylo and Threader Iberdo 156 Figure 70. Object Classification 157 Figure 71. Baba Stefaniuk's Medium Size Trunk 160 Figure 72. Gido Stefaniuk's Saw 161 Figure 73. Baba Stefaniuk's Large Wooden Trunk 161 Figure 74. One of Baba Stefaniuk's Icons 162 Figure 75. Mother's Petit-Point Picture of Christ Circa. 1970 163 Figure 76. Mother's Printed Ukrainian Motif Tablecloth 164 Figure 77. Mother's Cedar Chest with Printed Ukrainian Motif Tablecloth 164 Figure 78. Mother's Ukrainian Embroidery Motif Glassware 166 Figure 79. Object Classification by Nahachewsky and Kuranicheva 167 Figure 80. Baba Stefaniuk's sorochka/ Shirt 169 Figure 81. Butter Churn 170 Figure 82. Klymasz, Nahachewsky, Kuranicheva On Ukrainian Art Objects 174 Figure 83. Baba's Pysanky Circa. 1960s 179 Figure 84. Pysanky Collection 180 Figure 85. Basement-Storage Pysanka Collection 181 Figure 86. Mother's Wooden Pysanky 185 Figure 90. Ukrainian Pysanka Wall Plaque, Circa. 1970s 187 Figure 87. Mike Ewachiw Holding Pysanka 188 Figure 88. Pysanky by Anne Fedorak 188 Figure 89. Wall Plaque Made from a Goose Egg Pysanka 190 Figure 91. Betty Rohr with Pysanky 195 Figure 92. Pysanka and Ethnicity Continuum 203 Figure 93. Change in My Perspective Regarding Parents' House and Objects 204 Figure 94. Pysanka Museum 205 Figure 95. Pysanky Detail, Fabric Multi-Media Art Piece 205 Figure 96. Pysanka Sculpture 206 Figure 97. Pysanka Multi-Media Drawing, 1975 206 Figure 98. My Initial Perceptions of Ukrainian Ethnicity 209 Figure 99. My Later Perceptions Ukrainian Ethnicity 209 Figure 100. Red and Black Ukrainian Embroidery Motif Vase 214 1

INTRODUCTION

The American folklorist Alan Dundes presents one definition of folklore. "Folk" can refer to any group of people whatsoever who share at least one common factor and the common factor creates a sense of collective identity. "Lore" according to Dundes are the various forms of human expression.1 Applying Dundes' definition of folklore: I am a member of a "folk" group by virtue of being part of a group that share at least one common factor and in this case the shared factor is my Ukrainianness. My "lore" is my expression, my story, of what it means for me to be a member of this particular group "Ukrainians." My story of Ukrainianness is expressed in Chapter One of this document. In it I recount some memories of the life I lived with my paternal Ukrainian grandmother/5a6a in her house, as well as memories of the life I lived with my parents in their home. It is clear from the stories that I have quite different impressions of my Baba's house and my parents' house. My Baba's house felt very Ukrainian to me, traditional, wholesome, connected, and integrated. My parents' house by contrast, felt quite non- Ukrainian, modern, emotionally flat and fragmented in some ways. These differences are personally significant. The goal of this thesis is to place these impressions of difference in a larger context. With this goal I attempt to resolve questions like: If my parents and my grandmother were all Ukrainian how could Baba's house feel Ukrainian and my parents' house not? What constitutes Ukrainianness? Four different methodologies: 1. autobiography and a description of two Kamsack houses, 2. literature on Ukrainian dwelling architecture, 3. fieldwork interviews, and 4. a description of decorated eggs in the two Kamsack houses, all act as windows into the resolution of difference articulated in the autobiographical material presented in Chapter One. These various sources on Ukrainian Canadian dwellings and objects sometimes confirm, elaborate or sometimes counter my personal perspective. In the first thesis chapter I present the autobiographical material from both my Baba's house and my parents' house. Both autobiographical pieces were written before

' Alan Dundes, "What is Folklore?" in The Study of Folklore, ed. Alan Dundes, q. in Elliott Oring, Folk Groups and Folklore Genres An Introduction, (Logan Utah: Utah State University Press, 1986) 1. 2 the main structure of the thesis was set in place. In Chapter Two I review the architectural literature on Ukrainian-Canadian dwellings in order to observe a range of houses being described. Most of this literature deals with houses as material objects, looking at floor plans, construction materials and building techniques. These sources describe four main types of dwelling based on their method of construction: the burdei I or dug-out earth dwellings, the khata/ or the peasant style log and plaster construction, the lumber framed house, and finally the more recent modern dwellings that take a wide variety of forms. In the third thesis chapter, I focus on the interview material of fieldwork informants which again present more subjective impressions regarding differences between the houses of the past with houses in the contemporary Canadian context. During interviews my informants were quite clear in expressing different emotional weighting. Their observations parallel my initial impressions to some degree and indicate a sense of loss and displacement in the modern context as compared with a sense of implacement in the traditional plaster house. In the fourth chapter, I deal with the question of differences between my Baba's house and my parents' house using a third approach, focusing more narrowly on these two buildings and focusing specifically on Ukrainian objects within them. I compare informant responses on objects within the traditional log house and objects in the contemporary urban house with the objects within my Baba's house and my parents' house. Again the informant responses closely parallel my observations of the objects within my family's houses. I make a concrete listing of the Ukrainian objects in each house and compare the lists. One of the challenges of this approach is defining what "Ukrainian" is. In my fifth chapter, I zoom in even more narrowly to explore one specific category of objects from the previous chapter's lists, - the decorated egg. Decorated eggs were found both in my Baba's house and in my parents' home. On that initial level, the two houses might appear to be "the same." However, a closer examination of these decorated eggs in each of the two houses reveals that these eggs are different not only in character, but in location and value as well. The treatment of the eggs in each context sheds light on their significance to their respective owners. This particular approach is useful for re-connecting the physical descriptions of objects with the more subjective, 3 emotional, perhaps spiritual, aspects of my comparison evident within Chapter One and Chapter Three. I conclude my thesis with the observation that both my Baba's and my parents' homes were hybrid dwellings somewhere along a large continuum between a theoretically pure "peasant" ideal and a theoretically pure "modern" model. With the loss of intimate inhabited space, the loss of ritual and ensuing cultural displacement, Ukrainian ethnicity becomes defined by aesthetic symbolic objects which are more prolific and diverse in form. It is no surprise that my grandmother's house connects more strongly to the traditional peasant side of the continuum where an inhabited domestic space was valued, whereas my parents' home approaches the modern end of the scale where the majority of people's time outside the home qualifies life in the modern world. These features are reflected in different ways by the different approaches to the subject, and are visible in the more objective physical descriptions as well as the more subjective memories of people. I also observe that the earlier types of Ukrainian-Canadian dwellings are characterized by a relatively narrow range of structural forms and construction techniques. As we move later in time, the structures and construction techniques merge increasingly into the general Canadian patterns, and we can see less that is specifically Ukrainian about them. This process is not abrupt or absolute, and there are many grey areas. Perhaps the most clearly Ukrainian aspects of homes that are close to the "modern" end of the scale are the symbolic decorative Ukrainian objects such as works of art and decal ceramics. My family's houses illustrate this tendency well. Indeed the number of symbolic Ukrainian objects in my parents' home increased significantly around the 1970s, a period matching the rise of multi-cultural revival and tolerance in the general Canadian milieu. This is a topic of potential further study. Finally the thesis chapters allow me to conclude that assessing the degree of "traditional" or "modern" tendency on some absolute scale is very difficult. Each different approach or method for exploring this question emphasizes different aspects of the topic and emphasizes or de-emphasizes the contrasts and similarities. All of these notions lead to a richer and more balanced understanding of the relationships between my Baba's and my parents' homes. 4

It is a characteristic feature of Ukrainian folklore tradition that the spirit is evident through the material, the transcendent through the immanent. In order to glean a sense of the spiritual reality and core values of Baba's world, and my parents' world, it is valuable to examine the different houses as well as the various material objects that were in their possession in their Kamsack houses and to compare and contrast these objects. 5

CHAPTER ONE

AUTOBIOGRAPHIC MATERIAL

I IMPRESSIONS OF MY BABA'S HOUSE

Figure 1. Baba Stefaniuk's Kamsack House just prior to house demolition in 1968. As evident in the photograph, the #5 highway construction was already underway.

In the Ukrainian language the word baba means "old woman," "grandmother" or "midwife." My Baba was my grandmother. She was old by the time I had arrived to be part of her life. There is one precious, well-remembered family story about the physical strength of my grandmother. When my grandparents lived on their farm in Saskatchewan, it was customary that Sunday was the one day of the week that was allotted to families visiting each other. One particular Sunday when my grandmother was in the latter stages 6 of one of her pregnancies, my grandparents received their expected Sunday company. During the course of the visit, my grandmother felt her labor coming on, so she politely excused herself from the company of her guests and went out of the house. She had her baby by herself, outside in the front yard. After what seemed only a short time to the guests, who were totally unaware of the event which had just transpired, my grandmother returned into their presence with her new baby. The customary Sunday visit had been transformed into a birth-day celebration. I believe that my Baba was also the midwife of my Ukrainian spirit. And if I were to choose one other etymological root of the word "baba " that characterizes my personal experience of my paternal grandmother, it would rest with the Egyptian "Ba, " that element which makes up the human spirit and denotes soul and life. I believe that the cradle of my Ukrainian indigenous spirit was the love and life I lived with my Baba in her house. Her space was my spiritual home, my place of rest, contemplation, and meaningful connection, a place of beauty, pain and love, nurturing and creativity, solitude and ritual. My Baba's name was Maria Stefaniuk (nee: Andrusiak in Canada, Andrushchek in Ukraine). She was born in Davydivtsi, Ukraine in 1888, and she came to Canada with her parents and siblings in 1898 at age nine. She settled with her family on a homestead in Saskatchewan. In February 1905 she married Metro Moskalyk. Within the first year of their marriage Metro was killed on the railway. In June 1906, Baba married her second husband Oleksa Ewachiw. Together they had five children. In 1918 Oleksa contracted the flu and passed away. When in June of 1919 Baba married for the third time, my grandfather, Georges Stefaniuk, she became the stepmother to five of his daughters. Together Baba and Gido had two more sons, John and Bill. My father was John. Thus during the course of her lifetime my Baba parented twelve children, seven of which she had given birth to. She and my grandfather farmed in the East half of Section 3, Township 29, Range 1, W. 2nd in the District of Assiniboia. Grandfather purchased this property in 1912 from Nellie Hicks of Sault Ste. Marie Ontario for $6720.00, He soon built a house on it. In 1947 my grandparents left the farm, renting it out to their son Mike. They moved into the town of Kamsack where my grandfather passed away in 1954. 7

During the final years of her life my Baba lived alone in the Kamsack house, and it is in this small space that my memories of Baba are rooted. To my child mind's eye this domicile represented an entire cosmos that was full of mystery. The world of my Baba's house was different than any of the other worlds that I inhabited at the time, and it was the one that felt most like home. It is a world that I have consciously carried with me since childhood, knowing that my grandmother's world was one I did not fully comprehend. I am here attempting to understand something of that world, and unpack some of that mystery.

I MM. } 1 r» ..*

Figure 2. House Interior. Kitchen of Baba's House.

Baba Stefaniuk's Birthday, 1966. Celebrating a birthday is a Canadian tradition. Persons in Photo: Maria Stefaniuk with two of her grand-daughters, Elizabeth Welykholowa, and Maureen Stefaniuk: Photograph from Personal Collection

My Baba's early years were characterized by child-bearing and a lot of very difficult manual farm labor. According to some family stories, my grandfather/ Gido, was not much of a farmer and my grandmother had to "pick up the slack" so to speak. Gido loved music and he liked to play the violin and the sopilka. He had learned music from the gypsies in Clivestsie, his home village in Bukovyna. Gido had been orphaned in 8

Ukraine and he earned his living there as a shepherd, tending the sheep of his older sister and brother-in-law. Over many years he was able to save enough money to buy his own little plot of land. It was in selling this plot that he was eventually able to leave Ukraine and come to Canada. Once in Canada, Gido played his violin at many Ukrainian weddings in the Saskatchewan countryside. Gido was musically talented and was a religious man, having been actively involved in the 1924 construction and subsequent operation of St. Michael's Ukrainian Orthodox Church, (eight miles south and a half mile east of Verigin, Saskatchewan, S.W. quarter 34-28-1-W. 2nd). He was treasurer and deacon there for many years. Gido had one problem however, he liked his homebrew. Gido constructed and hid his own still in the bushes on the farm. When my grandmother would inevitably discover the whereabouts of grandfather's latest "batch," she would dismantle the still and confiscate the goods. Baba repeatedly incurred grandfather's rage and abuse over this issue but apparently she was relentless in pursuing Gido's ever-new homebrew stash because she feared the local police paying a visit to the farm and seizing their land for breach of the law, "And where would she and her children go then?"

Figure 3. George Stefaniuk circa 1920 9

I have only one memory of my Gido Stefaniuk: He was lying on his deathbed in Baba's house and he reached out to embrace me. I was only two years old at the time. I remember that his unexpected gesture frightened the living daylights out of me. Long grey whiskers and a pair of boney arms suddenly appearing out of the peryna /feather quilt, were coming at me and trying to grab me. I began screaming at the top of my lungs. Gido died September 21, 1954 and is buried in the St. Michael's Ukrainian Orthodox churchyard, now next to my Baba and my father. When I knew Baba in her later years she lived a sedentary life, having been diagnosed with sugar diabetes which eventually took her eye-sight. Physically, my Baba was a big strong woman. I remember as a child, her hugs were a little like tumbling into her peryna: I was nearly lost in all the round softness of rolls and folds. My Baba could not speak English and her house was to some extent an "Old World" house. Because both my parents worked, I spent the bulk of my growing up years in that house. The rather thin, but deep roots of my Ukrainian cultural/spiritual identity, I believe, were firmly implanted there. Baba's house was "Ukrainian" and my parents' house was "modern." The goal in life in my parents' house was above all, to be "modern"; where as in my Baba's house, it was enough to just "be." My Baba's domesticity was mysterious, dynamic, nurturing, contemplative and freeing, a welcome relief from the work, work, work world and house of my parents, who were struggling to survive and keep up to the demands of the modern world in small town Saskatchewan. 10

s

<^ Porch Kitchen Storage

\ Bedroom Living Room

N

Figure 4. Baba Stefaniuk's Kamsack House Floor-Plan 11

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Figure 5. Baba Stefaniuk's Kamsack House Interior Floor-Plan 12

My Baba's house was a humble, yet holy dwelling. True to both the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic spiritual traditions, "icons" of Christ, Mary, and the saints adorned the walls of her house, miniature wax crosses which she made were posted over doors and windows.

Figure 6. Baba Stefaniuk's Sacred Heart Icons of Jesus and Mary Items from Personal Collection, Verigin, Saskatchewan.

While it is true that these western style religious paintings here displayed which were in Baba's house are not Byzantine Icons in the true sense of their style, they are never the less called icons. Many if not all religious pictures in the home and in church were referred to by the Ukrainian peasant folk as ikony/ icons. Many religious paintings in the Ukrainian church icon screens, particularly those in the rural Ukrainian churches, are western style religious paintings which bear little or no resemblance to the highly stylized Byzantine icons. However, these western pieces continue to be housed within the icon screen in church that is rooted in Eastern Christian spiritual tradition. 13

These ritual objects in Baba's house were often the same objects that were also present in church, but the spirit of their being in Baba's house was not the same as that which I encountered in church. What was this spirit in Baba's house? What was this feeling? Ukrainian Easter eggs resting on colorful hand embroidered Ukrainian doilies graced Baba's shelves and cupboards year-round: all as an invocation for God's presence and protection. "But what was inside these pysankyT' I wondered. When I shook them, they rattled. Some rattled more and some less. It felt like there was a ball inside each one, or maybe a baby chick? I conducted my investigative experiment on Baba's front wooden steps. After I retrieved an Easter egg from one of the glass jars outside, one that had the best rattling sound, I cracked it open. No baby chick and no ball! Unraveling that mystery, perhaps prematurely, was not the delight I anticipated. What was worse than the nauseating offensive odor of the brown dried up yoke now smashed to bits, was the fact that I had made Baba unhappy. I can still hear the voice of her chagrin "Ne mozhna to robyty"/ You must not do that. Glass sealer jars withpysanky were planted underneath some of Baba's crab- apple trees in her outside garden. I assumed that since these pysanky were outside and not inside that they had been discarded, after all "why would Baba "plant" Easter eggs in sealers under apple trees in the middle of the summer?" That wouldn't have made any sense, even though that is what it looked like to me at the time. I am sorry now that I never thought to ask her. In the summer, a porch laden with flowering greenery greeted all of my Baba's guests. Sometimes amidst all these greening, blooming, climbing, fragrant plants Baba and I would sit on the little porch cot beside the refrigerator, and shell peas or clean beans. At the same time that the space was very alive, it was also very peaceful with the afternoon sunlight streaming in through the west window. In that little porch, Baba and I had good laughs. Her countless retelling of "la vkrav kovbasu, zavtra rano prynesu"/I stole the sausage, tomorrow morning I will bring it back, never failed to amuse me. In the winter months, a corner of this small porch was graced with a very large wooden barrel of sauerkraut brewing and foaming over the smooth rocks that pressed it. This barrel was an event: strange sounds, pungent odors, little white foamy fingers 14 investigating bubbles between rocks, crunching munching teeth sampling half fermented cabbage. "How could such a stink taste so good?" I wondered.

Figure 7. One of Baba Stefaniuk's Barrels Crafted into an End Table by John Stefaniuk. Item in Personal Collection, Verigin, Saskatchewan. 15

Porch Window Porch Doorway Hung Clothes and Tea Towels

Icon of Christ #11 Kitchen Light bulb Icon Calendar Icon Cards in Shelf Door

Paint can Doorway to Living Room

Figure 8. Interior Kitchen of Baba's House, 1948

Photograph features the doorway leading from the kitchen to the porch storage area. Persons in photograph: Harry and Sophia Marteniuk, Maria and George Stefaniuk. (svakhy/ in-laws) Photo from Personal Collection.

When my Baba's company entered the doorway of her kitchen, they crossed themselves and then, they greeted her by saying in Ukrainian, "Slava Isusu Khrystu " / Glory to Jesus Christ, and she would respond, "Slava na viky" /Glorify Him forever. Sometimes as guests voiced this greeting they would turn to the icon of Christ that hung on the south wall just above and behind a wooden clock that sat on top of the kitchen shelf. This big icon of Christ and smaller icons cards inside the cupboard door would be the first holy images seen as one entered the kitchen. After this greeting my Baba's guests would kiss Baba on the cheek, embrace her, and then begin the visit sharing their stories, very often their tears as well as their joys. "But why were those crosses there, out of reach, over the doorway?" Sometimes my Baba's guests would find Baba in her living room reading her Ukrainian newspapers or listening to Ukrainian music on her record player. I remember 16 days arriving at her house after school to find her crying in the living room. She was listening to a 78 RPM record with haunting melodies sung by women's voices. What was this music that made Baba so sad I wondered? "Acho vyplachete? "/Why are you crying, I asked Baba? "la khotchu smert'Vl want to die. The song, I learned much later, was in fact Pisnia syroty/ Song of the Orphan Girl, in which a young girl, after being severely beaten by her cruel stepmother, goes into the mountains to the grave of her birth mother. Here the orphan girl pleads with her real mother to help her die so they could be together again. The loving mother makes her daughter's request known to God, and God sends His angels to bear up the little orphan girl to heaven. Baba explained to me waving her hand in front of her face that she could hardly see, "All I see are shadows. Your mother and father have to step in here everyday to give me a needle and bring me my food. What kind life is this? I just want to die. I bore seven children, raised twelve and they do not come and visit me. How many of them walk or drive by my house and do not call in to see how I am doing? If it wasn't for your mother and father I would be dead. Look at Uncle Nick there. He walks down my back ally everyday on his way to the liquor store. He walks quickly and thinks I don't know he's going right by my house, but my neighbors tell me. Why can't he just once in a while call in and see how I am? All he cares for is a bottle! And then there is Uncle Mike on the farm. On account of his crazy wife, I haven't even seen his little girl and how old is she already? She is my grandchild!" I tried to comfort Baba by telling her that I came to see her almost every day after school and I asked her to stop crying because she was going to make me cry too. She would get hold of herself, apologize to me, admitting that she should not have been saying these things and crying in front of me. Then Baba would ask me to go into the kitchen and make us a cup of tea. Somehow her grief was temporarily assuaged over "harbata." These scenarios were more frequent in the later years of Baba's illness. But in her healthy days during the winter months my Baba's guests usually found Baba sitting close to the warmth of a cream-colored wood stove. In her cozy spot at the kitchen table, she would be making crepe-paper flowers, embroidering cottons, or closer to spring time, painting Easter eggs. Spring came alive when little yellow peeping feather balls made their way into Baba's kitchen. Baby chicks visiting at Baba's was always a joy. They 17

roosted on a metal shelf-like stand that was placed beside Baba near her stove. After a few weeks their visit ended and some of the chicks, now a little grown, were put in Baba's backyard garage. Other chicks went for a vacation to the farm. All these events transpired in Baba's house as the large wooden clock on top of her hand-hewn cupboard loudly ticked away the seconds, and donged the hours.

Figure 9. Baba Stefaniuk's Wooden Clock Note above the clock, a rizba piece/ hand carved cross. Inherited Items in Personal Collection Verigin, Saskatchewan.

Baba's comfy spot during the summer months was always graced by a glass sealer jar of water that was home to a bouquet of garden flowers - yellow, orange and red poppies, blue bachelor buttons, pink and red zinnias, yellow and deep red snapdragons, and inevitably the lacy white baby's breath. I just could not imagine how a baby's breath could be so awful. None of the babies I knew smelled like this, and so, almost as soon as I entered Baba's kitchen, I began pulling these smelly stalks out of Baba's flower jar. And whenever I visited Baba's garden, I remember running quickly around the garden patch of baby's breath, because even outdoors, their syrupy, stinking scent nauseated me. 18

The visual imprinting of my Baba sitting at her kitchen table next to her overly large stove in her overly small kitchen is probably one of the strongest visual images of my psyche. On the top of the stove's warming oven were a pair of glass salt shakers, bright red and mint green, together with a vibrant purple butter dish. These were used for special occasions only. A pink enamel cup with an image of a rabbit incised in black on it sat nearby on a cupboard ledge that encased the chimney where the chimney intersected with the kitchen stove pipe. Even though I could never reach these items or play with them, they were somehow like best friends. My eye always searched out their comforting visual presence, as I absolutely took delight in their shapes and colors. I was told that this pink cup with a couple of sticks protruding out the top, contained wax and kistkyfor pysanka making.

.i -....•..-Is,:1 --fl K * > ;.LiiJL__^ Figure 10. Kitchen of Baba's House. Baba's Birthday, 1966

Persons in Photo: Bill Andrusiak, Baba's brother, Annie Welyholowa, and Elizabeth, Baba's daughter and granddaughter, and Marie Stefaniuk Baba's daughter-in-law. Baba Stefaniuk is seated. Note red and green salt shakers on top of the stove and the protruding chimney casing in upper left corner. Note the small electric kitchen stove or rangette behind Marie and the coal pail and trap door to the root cellar in the bottom left corner of the picture plane. Photograph from Personal Collection 19

I do not remember actually being privy to the ritual of writing pysanky with Baba. However, I do remember her requesting that my father buy her Canadian crepe paper which she would wet and color the eggs with when she could not find the Canadian commercial dyes she needed in the local stores. I also remember her requesting that Dad find sardine cans for her. They used to be opened by turning a little aluminum key that unraveled a strip of the can in order to open it. From pieces of this thin unraveled strip my Baba would make the metal funnel of the kistka, attaching it to a small wooden stick with a piece of wire. Baba's pysanky always brought me joy on Ukrainian Easter. After the church blessing of Easter baskets, at the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church of All Saints, breakfast was always at Baba's house. Visits with my Baba and her guests were inevitably punctuated by harbata - tea, and a little lunch that it was my task to prepare. I extracted carnival glass cups and saucers and a cornucopia of tasty treats from Baba's cupboard. I've had a lifelong love affair with my Baba's cupboard, which presently graces the kitchen of my own house in Saskatchewan. The oversized bottom right drawer of the "Baba shelf stubbornly yielded its treasures: raison muffins with a hint of clove, honey cake, figs, nuts and oranges, but best of all around Christmas - buns with poppy seeds inside, or around Easter- yellow Baba Bread with raisons.

Figure 11. "Baba Shelf Kitchen shelf built by John Stefaniuk. Inherited Item in Personal Collection. 20

The "Baba shelf should perhaps more rightly be called the "Father shelf," as it was actually constructed for Baba by my father. He designed the cupboard to look like the popular kitchen shelving that the neighbors on the farm were purchasing. Not being able to afford a factory made model, my father set out to construct a replica. The discretely covered drawers were made out of wooden apple boxes and the door handles were greenish-brown plastic, candy-like squares that reminded me of a Kraft caramel. On occasion, when company wasn't present, I climbed onto the counter of the cupboard's shelf and clutching the caramel-like handles, I opened its top doors. Although these doors were glass, they concealed the contents of the cupboard because small paper icon cards had been sandwiched in collage-like fashion in between the glass and the wooden door frame with its patterned filigree spine which my father had created with a saw. The icon cards which were usually given as gifts by the local priest during the Epiphany house-blessing always brought me pleasure. They included images of the curly-haired child Jesus in a green robe or in a pink robe carrying a lamb, or images of the adult Christ knocking on a door, or Mary and other Christian saints, particularly Saint Nicholas. There seemed to be a proliferation of Saint Nicholas cards. Once the doors were opened, my eye searched out the color among the glass ware and two pieces stand out in my memory, one was a whisky shot glass with a red and green maple leaf sticker on it and the other was a juice glass that had been hand painted with red hearts and black spades and clubs. Hidden amongst the glassware was another little mystery, a nice round white ball. I remember thinking at the time with my child mind's eye that I too had a ball. My ball at home was a red, blue and white striped rubber ball, but my mother would never allow me to put my ball into the kitchen cupboard. Why would Baba have a ball in her cupboard? And what I noticed about this particular ball was that it appeared sometimes to grow and other times to shrink. Some days when I would come to Baba's house this ball was the size of one of my marble glass boulders at home, and other times it was about the same size as my rubber ball. And then on a different day, the ball was back to being the size of one of my boulders. Once curiosity had finally gotten the better of me, I asked Baba if she liked to play ball, because I noticed that there was this ball in her cupboard. I can still remember her full bellied laughter. She told me that when she was all alone, when 21

nobody else was in her house, she played ball with herself. And she laughed again and I began to laugh too, because somehow even though Baba had this ball in her cupboard, I could not actually imagine her playing anything. Baba was big and fat and she just did not seem like the "playing type." After we both had a good laugh, Baba explained to me that she made the ball in the cupboard out of dough. She was drying this dough ball until it became very hard when it would be crushed as yeast for the next batch of bread. Baha^ invited me to taste it. And this dough tasting became a little ritual of my own. Gnawing to extract the sour taste of the crispy round, web-like inner hardness never failed to delight some primordial instinct. The smell of freshly baked bread was often my special red carpet welcome at Baba's house- kolach, paska, baba bread, poppy-seed buns, buns with cheese and dill inside or dough rolled in beet leaves and baked in a big enamel roaster. These beet rolls later came to be known as "bread dough holubtsi" or "beetniks." Never did I see any of these breads next to white McGavins in the grocery store, only at Baba's house, and sometimes in church. My Baba's living room, particularly in the evening, felt a little ominous to me. Family photographs hung over the west window, with a larger photograph of my deceased grandfather on the west wall. In addition to the photographs, large icons along the east wall adorned the rather small room, creating the sense of a mysterious looming presence. 22

Figure 12. Icon of Child Jesus with Lamb This icon was donated to St. Michael's Ukrainian Orthodox church by John Stefaniuk after his mother Maria's death in 1968.

I remember a large image of a curly-haired child Jesus holding a cross and a softly rendered lamb which hung over Baba's bedroom door, Although most of the images were welcoming, one image was not friendly. In the very back left corner of the room, over the north window, hung an image of St. George slaying a wild undulating dragon. 23

Figure 13. Baba's Icon of St. George and the Dragon. Photograph from Personal Collection.

The icon and the window were just behind a little table of plants - serpentine like plants that entwined and unfurled strongly echoing the gesture of the dragon. I always felt fearful upon entering this corner of the room. The only trouble was that in this corner was the most comfortable arm chair in the house, and this chair happened to be right next to the radio, which I particularly enjoyed listening to once lunch was done, and the adults resumed their conversation. The living room in the evening was dimly lit from the light in the kitchen, where most of the visiting took place. I could never reach the string for the living room light bulb, and didn't feel it my place to interrupt the impassioned sharing of joys and sorrows that was underway around the kitchen table. With a twinge of fear in my heart, I took a deep breath and ran for the arm chair. Once I was comfortably seated and could no longer see grandfather's photo, St. George and the dragon, or the serpentine shadows of the plants on the wall above and behind me, I felt fine. On with the radio! W Gido Stefaniuk's Photo Family Photos Over West Window

St. George Icon

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Chesterfield Plants and Comfy Chair in Corner

Figure 14. Living Room in Baba Stefaniuk's Kamsack House circa 1956 Back Row: Marie Stefaniuk, Mike Ewachiw, Nick and Nettie Ewachiw, John Stefaniuk, Mary Ewachiw Middle Seated: Katie Kyba (nee Ewachiw) Baba Stefaniuk, Annie Welykholowa (nee: Ewachiw) Front Seated: Elizabeth Welykholowa on the lap of Ernie Ewachiw

Baba's bedroom was another happening. The bed, which took up most of the small room, was covered with two or three large peryny. At the foot of the bed was a colorful mound. One hardly noticed that, underneath all the layers of color furnished by rugs and tattered clothes, stood an old trunk which had been hand painted dark green. As a child, I was never privy to its contents. What was under Baba's bed also remained a mystery to me until my adult years. I rarely ventured into this "ne mozhna "/must not domain. Only on rare occasions did I catch a glimpse of the small wooden chest that lived 25 under Baba's bed. And what I particularly noted was a splash of bright blue in the darkness of stray feathers, cob webs and dust bunnies. The little wooden chest had a big blue lock on it. What was I being locked out of?

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Figure 15. Gido's Chest with Blue Lock. Photograph from Personal Collection.

Somehow I knew that this was Gido's chest and since my only memorable encounter with Gido was not all that pleasant, and since I was still afraid of Gido's photograph on the living room wall, perhaps this was enough of a deterrent to curb a natural childhood curiosity. At any rate, the peryny held more fascination for me at that point in time and the chest receded into the background of more potent childhood musings and entertainments. 26

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B. KARLSBERG pfn'pi'awa podoroznyt'l* iiartfU'h<»fltiiii> •xkortmy i pofy.tuivym.v- Figure 16. Gido Stefaniuk's Docking Paper This docking paper was one of the items inside Gido's Wooden Chest with a Blue Lock. The paper was issued when Gido and his original family boarded a ship fromHambur g to Canada. Their destination at the time was Winnipeg. 27

Baba'speryny were covered with a Ukrainian floral hand-embroidered bedspread and pillows, as well as round over-sized purple satin cushions. I repeatedly dove into this feathery softness that embraced me upon first leap. With the furry coats of aunties and uncles laid on the bed, I made tunnels, had naps as well as had jumping and diving contests to my heart's content. All of this took place under the tender gaze of a porcelain sculpture of Mary with a black veil and a large icon of Mary and Jesus, which hung on the east wall just above the bed. Amongst purple gloxinias and an assortment of other house plants, the Mary sculpture, like the Easter eggs in the living room, rested on a Ukrainian embroidered doily which was draped over Baba's Singer sewing machine.

Figure 17. Baba Stefaniuk's Hand Embroidered Ritual Cloth/rushnyk,

the "Ukrainian doily" upon which Baba's plants rested.

Mary's nun-like appearance reflected the spirit of the giver, an older cousin of mine who was a nun in a Ukrainian Catholic order of sisters. I rarely saw her, but always looked forward to her visit, usually at Easter. This cousin had a very warm, jolly demeanor, and never failed to surprise me with some little religious gift or story that I was able to enjoy. 28

Figure 18. Baba Stefaniuk's Hand-Crafted Pillow Cover

Certainly a highlight of my spiritual experience was the celebration of Ukrainian Christmas Eve supper at Baba's house. I believe this was a memorable occasion not only because I loved my Baba and her house, but also because being an only child, it was an opportunity for me to visit with one or two of my cousins, aunties and uncles as well as my Baba and my parents - to feel a sense of intimate belonging to a group, something which I did not experience on a daily basis. When I say intimate, I mean a literal intimacy. My Baba's red imitation brick house was tiny. On Christmas Eve, anywhere from ten to thirteen people sat around three tables put together that extended the entire length of her kitchen. Ukrainian Christmas Eve at Baba's house or "sviatyi vechir" was special also because of the sense of anticipation as all the twelve dishes of the Ukrainian food representing Christ's twelve apostles were being prepared on the wood stove usually by my mom, my grandmother, and two of my aunties. An effort was made by everyone to fast before this meal. On this special evening, I was given a job to do. My task, often together with my cousin Elizabeth, was to set up the vertep, a puzzle-like Nativity scene that went up every year. We also lit a candle in the living room - a large candle with colored sparkles that looked a little like a frosted cake. On this candle, we later roasted pieces of kolach just for amusement and to our stomachs' protesting dismay. Some years my dad would ask me to scratch through the frost on the living room window to see if I could locate Venus, the evening star, the sight of which was to herald the beginning of the meal. When the first star was sighted, the candle on top of the kolach 29 was to be lit and the meal begun. I remember my dad telling me about this ritual observance and I remember scratching Baba's frosty living room window with him, in order to spot the star, but whether our family meal actually began with his and my sighting of the star is doubtful. In my recollection the meal began when all the guests had arrived and not when the star was sighted. The lighting of the kolach candle before the meal was however, ritually observed by our family. Kolach is a round braided bread. Baba's table had one kolach. The Christmas Eve ritual meal began with everyone around the table rising, crossing themselves three times and saying out loud, the Oche nashlOux Father or Lord's Prayer in Ukrainian. Our meal was introduced by my favorite dish of the twelve - pshenytsia, or cooked wheat that was mixed with poppy seeds and walnuts and sweetened with honey. The pshenytsia was served in pink depression-glass fruit nappies that sat inside larger shallow wide rimmed bowls. It was in these larger bowls that the remainder of the meal was to be eaten. The cutlery that circumscribed each place setting came out of a beautiful silver satin box that my mother annually extracted from Baba's wardrobe in the bedroom. The interesting thing about this box was that whenever I would look into Baba's wardrobe, the only thing I was able to see was an assortment of her black and multi-colored floral print dresses and a small collection of sweaters. Try as I might, never was I able to spot the beautiful silver box.

Figure 19. Ukrainian Christmas Eve circa 1960s 30

at Baba Stefaniuk's House. Baba is seated at the head of the table with lit candle inside the kolach in front of her. From left to right in the photo are Bill Andrusiak (Baba's brother), Nick and Nettie Ewachiw, Baba, Steve and Katie Kyba and Annie Welykholowa. Baba's children together with their husbands, wives and their children, are not all present in this photograph.

The dishes that were part of the Christmas feast at Baba's house included: beet borshch, pyrohy with different kinds of fillings like potato, sauerkraut, prune and poppy seed, sour cabbage holubtsij cabbage rolls, fasoli/mashed garlic beans, bib/broad beans, pickled herring, jellied fish and/or fish baked in oil, onions and cornmeal, and last but not least, pidpen 'kyl mushrooms in gravy, which were always just a little too slimy for my palette. The dessert menu included stewed fruit, and best of all, buns and rolls with poppy seeds inside and khrustyky. The kolach, together with a plate of unconsumed food set aside in memory of dead family members formed the centerpiece of the Christmas table. I was always mystified how the dead were going to come and eat their food. How was Gido going to come down from his photograph on the wall to the table and eat? The plate of food remained on the table all night beside a candle which was to have remained lit until the following morning. By the morning, the dead spirits were to have partaken of the meal. I always wondered if any food was actually missing the next day. And no matter how early I tried to arrive at Baba's house the morning of Christmas Day, by the time I got there, the special plate had been removed from the table. I never failed to enquire about the food, and when I did, Baba always told me that the spirits had come during the night and eaten it. On Ukrainian Christmas Eve Baba's house felt to me like the holiest place on earth. Only a few later years, I discovered that Baba's house was considered by the town authorities to be nothing more than a shack standing in the way of town progress. The town coveted her property for highway expansion. Baba's house, right along the Number Five Highway heading straight west out of town, was situated at a fork between two roads: one fork heading into Kamsack's downtown Main Street area and the other fork turning into the poorer area of town euphemistically labeled by the Anglo population as 31

"Little Russia." "Little Russia" was primarily the Slavic area of the town of Kamsack where my parents, grandparents, and other Russian and Ukrainian people lived. When the town fathers, without the permission of my father and our family, began to tear down the fence around Baba's yard in order to prepare for highway construction, my Baba became physically ill, went into the hospital and died. She simply could not face the creation of a new world. In her blindness Baba knew with detailed intimacy every inch of her house and yard. The prospect of losing all those sightless connections undoubtedly contributed to her death in 1968. Vichnaia Pamiat' //Memory Eternal!

Figure 20. Baba Stefaniuk circa 1950. Photograph from Personal Collection.

II IMPRESSIONS OF MY PARENTS' HOUSE 32

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Figure 21. John and Marie Stefaniuk's Wood Frame House circa 1950. 228 Alberta Street, Kamsack, Saskatchewan. 33

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Figure 22. Parents' 1920s House Plan 228 Alberta Street, Kamsack, Saskatchewan

This second set of introductory impressions are a personal retelling of meaningful memory fragments about the life I lived with my parents in one house which had been remodeled into a more modern dwelling. My memories here are of two distinct versions of the same house. The 1920s house on 228 Alberta Street in Kamsack, was rebuilt in the early 1960s into my parents' dream-home, the "Kingsmere, " a modern bungalow style house rebuilt according to a colored architectural sketch which my dad liked very much. According to my father, the original wood house was built by the same Ukrainian man who built Baba's Kamsack house, Mr. Huziak. Shortly after the house re-modeling, the address of my parents' house also changed and became 416 Alberta Street. This address is still in effect. One of my first memories regarding the original house has to do with my first pet cat. On a cloudy, and freezing-cold wintry day, as I walked up the single step of our old house and as the screen door swiped narrowly and clacked shut behind me, I noticed my cat "Goldie." In the upper right corner of the frigid empty porch that hugged the warmth of the kitchen wall, Goldie was lying on his blanket frozen stiff. He was dead and 34

I cried. I had been watching him through the kitchen window that looked out into the porch for several days. I knew he was sick and I had pleaded with my mother to let my cat into the house so he could warm up by the stove. She stubbornly refused my request stating that we could all become sick like the cat if Goldie came in the house and spread his germs. Goldie's stubby half frozen-off ears had begun to pus and develop bloody blistery scabs on the inside. It seemed that every day he moved around less and less, and on this grey January day in the dead of winter, Goldie had finally succumbed to the infection in his body. As I opened the porch door into the kitchen, the warmth of our black kitchen wood stove greeted me. Only today I felt sad thinking about how the stove's warmth could have spared the life of my cat. Instead Goldie needlessly froze to death in the porch. This wood cook stove from my parent's first Kamsack house eventually was removed, sold and replaced by an electric oven in the new kitchen. The first memory I have of the wood stove was throwing my soother into the flames of the opened sliding vent on the bottom left side of the stove. My parents were standing by coaxing me to say good-bye to the soother and shove it into the vent. With one hand I clutched my brown and beige, red eyed teddy, and with the other hand I deposited the soother into the flames. The momentous task was accomplished gloriously, all cheers and no tears. What I also remember about the cook stove was that it constantly had simmering on it, galvanized tubs of hot water. One tub was oblong, brown on the outside, silver on the inside. The other tub was round, silver on the inside and out, with a red stripe encircling the middle outside. This round tub was used as my bath-tub. I remember my mother transferring the tub from the stove onto a towel on the kitchen table. After the tub's short cooling off, I was immersed into the tub, which usually had a skimpy amount of very hot water. I remember at once feeling scorched by the overly hot water on the bottom and chilled to the bone as drafty cool winter air from the kitchen door and window swept over the upper part of my body, my arms and chest. One particular evening as my mother was bathing me and just as I was dealing with the uncomfortable hot-cold sensations, there was a knock on the kitchen door. A strange man walked in, a cousin whom I had never seen before. I remember feeling embarrassed because I wasn't supposed to be seen without clothes in front of strangers, 35 yet here I was in the tub without clothes, and the worst part of it was, that it took my mother a very long time before she made any effort to cover me up. The bath towels were not within my reach and my mother just kept on talking to the stranger as if I wasn't there. It was the original moment "to be seen and not heard," a phrase that was directed towards me as a child as often as "go out and play, but don't you dare get dirty." In my earliest years, I felt more like a dressed up doll than a human child. The big event of the week with my mother was getting "dressed up," often in matching dresses which my maternal grandmother sewed for us, and going "down town" on Saturday afternoons. It was very important to my mother that we be dressed "in the latest modern style." This translated into a healthy wardrobe of colorful hats, gloves and scarves, dirndl skirts, dresses and suits, plus Saturday afternoon trips to the Classic Style Shop to check out the latest fashions. There was definitely hell to pay if I soiled my white knee socks while playing with the next door neighbor's children before the Saturday down town event. I never liked those darn white knee socks anyway. Somehow, despite my very best efforts, I inevitably managed to incur my mother's wrath. I did not want to wear white knee socks that kept sliding down my thin, boney, chicken legs. I really wanted a pair of red or yellow or pink ankle socks with a full color Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck printed on the in-step. These socks didn't have to fall down on me, they were already down and no trouble at all to wear. Even if I did not get to wear these particular socks, I got to look at them every Saturday as they graced the clothing shelves of Nadane's General Department Store. Every once in a very long while I was able to pester my mother long enough and loud enough until she caved into their purchase while she was buying her weekly groceries at Nadane's. I learned that my pestering was more successful if it was strategically conducted in front of Dora Nadane in the fabric department. On a good Saturday afternoon my cartoon socks arrived home in a brown paper shopping bag which the grocery boy delivered directly to our house from Nadane's. The trouble with this scenario was, that even after having received my desired pairs of multi-colored cartoon socks, I was only allowed to wear them on school days and was still compelled to don the white knee socks with a dress on Saturday and Sunday 36

"dress-up in good clothes days," that is, the Saturday walking down town and the Sunday going to church. I very much disliked being torn away from my Saturday morning outdoor play time with my peers and my best friend Lindsay Butt. Sometimes Mother would literally drag a kicking, screaming obnoxious little me away from my buddies just in order to "set my hair." Once inside our house, out came the bobby pins for my pin curls. The bobby pins inevitably pricked my skull, as the heated aluminum wave clips did occasionally sear my scalp. All this excruciating nonsense for a walk! And this wasn't so bad compared with a trip to the hair dressers. Across the street from me lived a girl named Jeannie Holinaty. She was ten years older than I and she had the loveliest long dark natural curly hair I have ever seen. I idolized Jeannie in her pleated grey and yellow, or pink and grey plaid skirts with her bobby socks and white and navy saddle shoes that had buckles on the back. These beautiful wool skirts just seemed to unfurl as Jeannie jived with her mother to the music of the Everly Brother's Wake Up a Little Suzy playing on the hi-fi record player. What fun that was! My mother told me that if I went to the hair dressers for a permanent I would come out of Vicky Swerhun's beauty parlor looking like Jeannie. My hair would be curly just like Jeannie's hair. I eventually gave in to my mother's relentless nagging and went with her for my first perm. I must have been all of four or five years old. And what a nightmare that was! The strong curling solutions made me choke and caused my eyes to tear. I felt like I was being asphyxiated and I began to cry. I attempted to get out of my chair without success. I was mounted on a box that was placed inside the beauty parlor chair so that I was seated high enough for the hair dresser to actually reach my head. And if this wasn't enough, when they were finished with me at the "beauty parlor," I did not look at all beautiful. Worse, I did not look anything at all like Jeannie Holinaty. I looked like a curly haired ram. My hair was so frizzy that my friends would pat my head just to see if all that fluff on top was real. I was embarrassed and humiliated. In my own estimation I looked just terrible. My friends next door never had to go through any of this. No hair sets, no hair dos, no traumatic trips to the hairdressers! They just got to play outside on Saturdays, 37 although many Saturday mornings they went with their mother to the public library where she did volunteer work. If I was quick enough to have my hair set, I got to go with them. Having my own library card was very exciting and choosing my own books was even better. This was an activity that I enjoyed which was pretty much outside my family experience. Books were not a significant part of our home life. As I have said, I also did not enjoy being torn away from my Saturday afternoon playtime in Butt's yard to get dressed up and walk down town. However, Kamsack's Main Street on a Saturday afternoon in the 1950s did have it's own rewards: like having a pink candy floss from Pokey Armstrong's Candy Kitchen, an orange float at Wong's Club Cafe or a glass of cold Pepsi and a plate of French fries at Yee's Star Cafe, or listening to the Salvation Army street corner musicians sing and play the accordion. These musicians moved from corner to corner so one was likely to hear them perform several times during the course of an afternoon. Main Street was filled with cars and people. It was a pretty dynamic place particularly in July when the Mardi Gras or the circus came into town. Mom and I were always likely to meet up with cousins, aunties and uncles and family friends, some of whom would come into town from the surrounding farms and who would later visit us at our house. Rarely were there any children my age in these family social get-togethers, but I enjoyed the events all the same. In the living room of my parent's house, to the right side of the wine-colored brocade chesterfield along the north wall, was an end table with a big black telephone on it and in front of the chesterfield was a coffee table. A furniture style wooden record player stood just opposite the chesterfield along the south west wall of the living room. Directly in front of the telephone table and just past my parents' bedroom doorway on the east wall was the oil stove. With the re-modeling of our old house, the living room oil burning stove was replaced by a basement oil furnace. This was a very welcome change. I remember occasionally during the winter months coming home to the old house from Baba's place late at night, maybe Ukrainian Christmas Eve or on Ukrainian Little Christmas. We walked into a very cold house. The kitchen and living room linoleum carpeting had begun to curl up around the edges from the frost. This late night trauma inevitably led to 38 walked into a very cold house. The kitchen and living room linoleum carpeting had begun to curl up around the edges from the frost. This late night trauma inevitably led to my parents barking at each other because the oil stove had gone out. There was a flurry of activity in the living room, getting the pilot light re-lit and the oil stove functional. I was ordered to get out of the way and crawl into bed. This was hardly any relief as the sheets and blankets on my bed were so cold I thought I would turn into an icicle. But then again there was no telling if and when the oil burner might explode and I was safer in my bed.

Figure 23. An Architectural Sketch of the "Kingsmere " Home circa 1960.

This sketch was the model for John Stefaniuk's renovations. 39

Figure 24. Parents' Remodeled Kamsack House circa 1970 416 Alberta Street, Kamsack, Saskatchewan Note the third 1970s addition in the form of an attached garage on the right side of the picture. In this photograph the "Kingsmere " modern dream-home built according to the 1960s architectural sketch is incarnate. 40

Kitchen dining and living room

Late 1960s Early 1960s > 2nd Addition ^Addition

Bathroom I Bedroom

Dad's office My Bedroom clos Master Bedroom

Hallway

Attic ceiling Basement stairs trap door Living Room

Bathroom Kitchen

Figure 25. Parents' 1960s Remodeled House Plan 416 Alberta Street, Kamsack, Saskatchewan

Another of my earliest memories of my first parental home was the initial stage of its "modernization." The 1920s house had only a small root-cellar and the first stage of its remodeling required that a basement be dug and a cement foundation be poured underneath the entire portion of the old house. Another Ukrainian man, Mr. William Babiy was responsible for constructing the new basement. This process entailed raising the house off of the ground, and having it rest on very large, heavy wooden beams. The beams were laid like a partial frame along the side of the house and over the outside perimeters of a hole which circumscribed the basement to-be. The house precariously 41 rested on this beam-structure until the rest of the digging, the framing and the cement pouring and drying were complete. The only snag in this scenario was that we as a family had to live in this house while it was resting on these beams that were placed over a grand gaping hole. The first night that the house had been raised we seemed seriously threatened. Sleep was out of the question as gale force winds whipped up. Lightening zigzagged across the night sky and thunder cracked and roared loudly. The house not only rocked back and forth in the wind, but shook with the vibrations of every thunderous blade. Clearly the ominous encroachment of modernization on our family was not all it was cracked up to be. As torrents of rainwater cascaded into the freshly dug hole beneath us, we wondered whether the eroding soil under the beams would drop the house into the muddy cavern beneath us. Or would the raging winds simply topple the house over on its side, smashing its walls to smithereens and snapping up the three of us in pieces like match sticks? Needless to say it was a very long and terrifying night. But by about four in the morning the storm began to subside and some sleep did eventually come to the three of us. Miracle of miracles! The little house was still standing upright on its beams in the morning light and we had not perished during the night. The inauguration of "the modern home" into our family's world had been successfully accomplished with God on our side. Not only had the house been raised that day, but also many prayers, including those of our neighbors across the street. Through out the night, they caught silhouetted glimpses of our ungrounded house rocking to the thunderous rhythms of nature's stormy light show. (As yet, street lights were still unknown in our part of the town and our neighbors could see our house across the street in the dark only when the lightning flashed.) Once the old house was securely resting on its new foundation, I was accorded the title of my father's helper as my father completed the remodeling of his house. Pre­ fabricated wood paneling was installed in the newly cemented basement. On this project I was my father's official "tool passer." In addition to the usual pieces of board, pliers, hammer, nails and screws, I was occasionally privileged to pass dad a manually operated hand drill which held some particular fascination for me. This drill with a varnished wooden handle was the only multi-colored tool in the entire lot. The metal parts of the drill were opaquely painted-a little round red wheel that actually turned, a blue drill shaft 42 and a yellow handle that turned the wheel. Playing with the drill when I wasn't in the "passing mode" surpassed playing with my own toys because I knew that all this color could actually do something real. It wasn't just a pretend thing and it also wasn't as boring looking as the other tools. I did not get to pass or play with the drill very often as it usually lived in dad's outdoor garage, his own little private creative domain.

Figure 26. John Stefaniuk's Outdoor Garage 228 Alberta Street, Kamsack, Saskatchewan

Dad built onto the old house an adjoining structure that took the form of a master bedroom and a large living room. This addition had neither a root cellar nor a basement underneath it. The new addition simply rested on a poured concrete foundation that rested on the leveled ground. Old walls were taken down, new ones were added. The little kitchen in our old house was converted into my bedroom. My color of choice for my new room was mauve and I remember having a matching mauve and pink bed spread with twirling ballerinas on it. I got to share my room and my bed with my grey and white cat number two, "Mitsy." The bed-spread ballerinas did dance moves of a different genre when Mitsy crept under the spread and slunk down to its foot, where she cozily nestled in for the night. Unfortunately my relationship with Mitsy was rather short lived. I brought her home from a friends place in the autumn and in June of the following year she had her first litter of kittens in Dad's outdoor garage. She had two kittens, one was all grey and the other had dark grey and white markings and looked very much like she did. Within the first week of their birth, exactly on Father's Day, Mitsy left her kittens in the garage 43 and went out hunting, never to return. Throughout the day mom, dad and I called and called her name all over the neighborhood with no success. By evening Mitsy's kittens were hungry and mewing. We rustled together my plastic doll bottles, filled them up with warm milk and fed the kittens. By late evening, Mitsy had not returned and we knew that something had happened to her. We just kept feeding her kittens until they grew strong. In the fall of that year I accidentally found Mitsy dead in a ditch along the Pelly highway. She had obviously been hit by car. By that time her kittens were grown. We had given one kitten away and had kept the grey one, naming him Mitsy after his mother. Mitsy Two (cat number three) now replaced his mother at the foot of my bed. My white book case bed was special because Dad had made it for me. However, the most important item in that book case was not books, as I was not an avid reader at that time, but rather, it was my transistor radio. CKCK 620 Regina kept me company as I did homework and studied for exams. Because homework and studying seemed to characterize the bulk of my time spent in that room, being in that space felt more like I was sentenced to it. My radio provided me with an escape and the knowledge that other worlds besides my own did in fact exist. And what was even better was that these worlds sounded so much more sunny, bright, and exciting than the one I happened to be living in at the time. Television was part of our family life from 1959. Initially, watching TV was a family event that my parents and myself shared mostly on weekend evenings. Country Ho Down, Perry Mason, I Love Lucy, Father Knows Best, Ed Sullivan, Bonanza were some of our favorites. If I happened to be home sick from school, I was allowed to watch some of the morning children's programs like The Friendly Giant or Chez Helene. The television occupied the north wall of the new living room. My Aunt and Uncle Welykholowa owned the movie and drive-in theaters in Kamsack since I was born. I watched movies, and worked at the theaters Friday nights, Saturday matinees and/or evenings starting from the age of seven, so television never really dominated my life. Even though we had TV fairly early on, it was never the obsession in our family as it was in many other households at the time. I do remember the 1964 Ed Sullivan Show that hosted the British band The Beatles and changed the face of modern music and culture for my entire generation. Through junior high school I had 44 some supper hour TV favorites like The Monkeys but mostly I enjoyed buying and listening to music, first 45 s, and later 33 LP record albums, beginning with Elvis Presley's album Girls, Girls, Girls, and the Beatles' first album Beatlemania. My growing album collection stayed in a rack along side the living room record player next to albums by the Ukrainian Recording artists Mickey and Bunny, and Nestor Pistor, music and humor that my Baba and my parents very much enjoyed. This type of music was perceived by many in my generation as music for the older generation of Ukrainian people. In my experience there wasn't a fashionable young people's Ukrainian music. If there was, I in small town Saskatchewan, did not know about it. However, Ukrainian music continued to be part of my life through my father's choral pursuits, my participation in the church choir and also through attending many Ukrainian weddings. In our town throughout the summer months, there was a Ukrainian wedding or two almost every weekend, many of these I attended with my family. In the late 1960s my growing interest in popular music and culture led me to become the high school social convener whose task it was to book live rock and roll and soul bands for all the year's school dances. My affection for my Baba, who had by now passed away, was replaced by my affection for my steady boyfriend. In addition to homework and studying for exams in my room, time was taken up by cheerleading, being the social convener on the Student Council, playing trumpet in the school band, singing in the Ukrainian Orthodox church choir and teaching Sunday School as well as attending Ukrainian school in the church basement after school a couple of hours per week. Was I at home? Rarely, to eat supper with my Dad, watch the news on television some nights, and to sleep. It appeared that family, home, cultural tradition and the sense of the importance of a domestic environment was something one graduated out of in order to join the "real world" outside the home, becoming thoroughly "modern" in the process. The living room of the old house was remodeled into a large modern kitchen with built in cupboards and a stainless steel sink for running water. The cupboards were painted in two pastel colors. The upper cupboards were painted in a salmon pink and the bottom cupboards were painted in a turquoise blue. Primarily for warmth, the linoleum flooring in the old house were replaced by wall to wall carpeting in all the rooms of the 45 renovated house, except this one. For practical reasons, the new kitchen retained its linoleum surface until quite some years later when it too was replaced with wall to wall carpets, but of the in-door-out-door variety. All of the new carpets were somewhat of a patchwork quilt with different pieces for different rooms in different colors and different pile. Left over pieces of carpet were less expensive to purchase and install at the time. Because aesthetics were not that much of a consideration to either of my parents in this regard, the less expensive route was chosen. An indoor bathroom with running water was another welcome addition in our remodeled house. A pink enamel bath tub, sink, and toilet, and a mirrored medicine cabinet filled up the entire small space of the newly created room. The bathroom had been created from my parents' bedroom in the old house. A flush toilet now replaced the wood outdoor toilet that had been located at the back of our yard. The outdoor two-seater had been pushed over almost every Halloween. This was the out-house that I always had to enter myself, and never with a boy (like my best friend Lindsay from next door). If this one rule of my mother's was violated, I ran the risk of not receiving Christmas presents from Santa. Several memorable basement incidents feature prominently in my childhood memories. I received my first and only strapping in the root cellar of the old house. The incident was interpreted as being punished for loving by my childhood emotional radar screen. I disobediently ran out of our yard onto the Pelly highway chasing after my father's tow truck when he neglected to kiss me good-bye. It was mandatory for my father to kiss me good-bye whenever he drove out of our yard. His one omission and my stubborn insistence on chasing after father's longed-for kiss became my disastrous root- cellar undoing. I had totally forgotten any safety issues when I left our yard running after the truck. As a child I have no memories of my mother's affection toward either myself or my father and this is likely the reason that I valued my father's kisses so highly. Without them, my world felt like it was falling apart. However, the new basement had its own redemptive features. It was the source of companionship with my father in the building of his dream home and it was also the source of many pleasurable moments inhaling tasty forbidden sweets that my mother conjured up in her modern kitchen. "Modern kitchen," "modern cupboards," "modern 46 house," "modem clothes," "modern shoes,"... "modern," "modern," "modern." My mother's greedy obsession for all things "modern" came to very nearly nauseate me. The word itself still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. When I was ten years old, my mother went to work outside of our "modern home." I was very happy to be instructed to go back to Baba's house after school. It struck me as odd that after all the years of fuss and my mother's constant nagging my father about having a "modern home," it felt like nobody actually lived there. With both parents at work and with myself at school and at Baba's, it felt like very little life was happening there for me. In my child mind's eye "modern home" was translated as, uninhabited, lonely space. Maybe "modern" meant emotionally empty, very nearly devoid of human relationship and meaning? English Christmas in our "modern home" meant ritually ferreting out dainties from my mother's secret cache. Her scrupulously secured Christmas baking was always stashed in some dark, dank corner of our basement. I, feeling a little like Nancy Drew with a mission, was always ecstatic to have resolved the mystery of mom's ever-new Christmas dainty hideout. When I chose not to go to Baba's after school in order to indulge my sweet tooth, I let myself into my parents' house with a key which they had given me. It was always my choice whether I wanted to come home after school or go to Baba's house. Both my parents and myself preferred that I go to Baba's, and I usually did. But English Christmas baking season was definitely one exception when I went home. After my "Dainty Hideout Mystery" had been solved, I could be found in our basement secretly and gleefully indulging in my favorites: party snacks with red and green cherry-walnut centers and a pink icing glaze, chocolate slice with a layer of yellow icing in between two different layers of chocolate (now called Nanaimo bars), and red strawberry coconut dainties with green butter icing leaf configurations on top of the hand-molded strawberries. English Christmas time also meant getting dressed up in "good clothes" and going on the weekends with my mother to local church teas. Yes! More dainties, and how I loved those dainties! Mom and I went to all the teas and bazaars held in the various church basements or church halls: the Ukrainian Orthodox and Ukrainian Catholic, the Roman Catholic, the United Church and the Anglican, the Salvation Army and the Doukhobor Prayer Home. Now that is a lot of tea and dainties in one short season, a 47 season which I learned much later, was regarded by most of the local churches, as advent, the pre-Christmas period of fasting! In addition to the dainties there were all the fancy little colored sandwiches - pink, green, yellow and brown; triangular sandwiches, square sandwiches, double-decker rectangular sandwiches and round sandwiches. The round ones were usually pinwheel peanut butter and banana with a red cherry center or white cream cheese ones with a green cherry center. Other varieties included egg and salmon sandwiches, bologna and ham or canned meat sandwiches with green relish next to a layer of egg. Not only a culinary extravaganza but a visual delight! And what I particularly noticed at the teas, was that, not only were the sandwiches colorful, but so too were the ladies in all their finery. They donned a great variety of hats, from the flamboyant wide-brimmed, to the modest pill box, some with a face-netting, and others with feathers or imitation flowers protruding from any and every possible direction. Hats were usually accompanied by matching gloves and scarf and other fineries like mink, muskrat or mouton shorty jackets, depending on the class of their wearer, whether they were from the Angliky high class or the Ukraintsi and Dukhobortsi low class or from the in-between low class Ukraintsi trying to become high class Angliky. Occasionally a baba in her fustka/ head scarf, shared a table with a lady in a wide- brimmed hat and a mink coat. But it was normative that the babas sat together on a bench or together at a table and conversed in their ethnic tongue. No matter how the invisible class lines were drawn in our small town, many of the boundaries temporarily dissolved as ladies shared tables and indulged equally and generously in the culinary delicacies set before them. As soon as a plate of goodies was empty, it was immediately refilled. One could stay as long as one wished, talk as much as one wanted and eat as much as one cared too, all for a small donation to the church. At the Doukhobor Tea the Doukhobor ladies used to serve perishki/fnxit or cheese tarts with butter and/or sour cream. Cranberry tarts were a favorite with many local people but they always smelled like stinky feet to me and they were probably the only item on any of the tea menus that I passed over. However, in my estimation, the saskatoon and the raspberry perishki, and all the desserts more than made up for this one little tea-time unpleasantry. The Ukrainian ladies, in addition to their dainties included on their tea menu khrustyky/ a triangle of dough, deep fried and then dipped in icing sugar. 48

As Slavic women began to introduce their ethnic pastries at their teas and bazaars, members of the English town community began to enjoy Slavic cuisine. Tea and dainties were after all a British tradition that the Slavic women readily enjoyed, adopted and incorporated into their own church organizations. Besides a fairly regularly spoken Ukrainian language, if any one feature remained consistent between Baba's house and our remodeled modern house, it was the Ukrainian food: perogies, cabbage rolls, borshch, nachynka, nalysnyky, beet rolls with dough or with rice in a dill and onion cream sauce, braided Christmas kolach and Christmas Eve wheat, Easter paska and baba bread. As readily as some of these foods were found at the Ukrainian church bazaar tables as sale items, they were found issuing out of both my mother's old wood stove and then out of her modern electric stove. The first religious item that I remember seeing in our old house was a fake ivory crucifix that hung in my parents' bedroom over their bed. The first religious imagery that I remember seeing in our modern home were two small petit-point images of Mary and Jesus that were cross-stitched by a nurse my mother worked with in the hospital, a nurse named Elly Kilmister (nee: Kindratsky). At work, Mom was very often Elly's nurse's aid, and eventually the two became friends for occasional after-work socializing as well. My mother had a more earthy title for her profession as a nurse's aid. She called herself an "official ass-wiper." Elly's pictures were hung on the south wall of our new modern living room.

Figure 27. Petit-Point Picture of Mary cross stitched by Elly Kilmister and hung on the south wall of my parents' living room. 49

The only other religious images I remember seeing in our house as a child were small icon cards in my father's church prayer books.

Figure 28. Ukrainian Englilsh Dictionary and Two Ukrainian Prayer Books Inherited by John Stefaniuk from his father George Stefaniuk. Inherited Items in Personal Collection

And only on very rare occasions, when older aunties and uncles came to visit my parents' modern home, did I hear the traditional house entrance greeting Slava Isusu Khrystu! What I do remember regarding the infrequent occasions that we had visitors, is that there was a food gift that came into the house with the guests. This was particularly true when we went visiting Ukrainian family as well. My mother always took some kind of food gift, usually in the form of home-baking. If it was very close relatives that we were going to visit my mother usually arrived at their houses with boxes of food that filled the trunk of our car. If mother went to visit somebody's house for the first time she took a live plant. Mother's motto was that "you never go visiting empty-handed." 50

Of course I was accustomed to seeing religious imagery outside of our home, prominently at Baba's house, as well as in our church basement. This basement was a familiar space. It was the church lady's kitchen and dining hall. It was the space where special church feast day dinners were held and where the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Ladies' Teas were held. These two basement rooms also served as the Church Sunday School and Ukrainian School rooms. On the walls of the basement there were photographs of important church hierarchs, like the Metropolitan Ilarion, and Ukrainian writers like Taras Shevchenko and Ivan Franko, as well as icons of religious personages and events, like Christ at the last supper. These images were positioned above eye level, closer to the ceiling. Only one photograph, an image of Queen Elizabeth II, was positioned at eye level. What seemed to occupy the walls of both my parents' first house and then their re-modeled modern home, were images that were more contemporary than religious or Ukrainian. Paintings on black velvet were popular, and a large one occupied the east wall of our living room. Other images on our living room walls were landscape pieces that both my father and I had created in a painting class that we took together in Kamsack. The class was offered by an artist from Yorkton named Milton Achtemichuk.

Figure 29. Marie Stefaniuk in Front of Her China Cabinet displaying her cross-stitch pictures of Mary and Jesus. 51

It was not until a china cabinet arrived in our living room during the early 1970s that I remember seeing specifically "Ukrainian" objects in our modern home. The first ones were casserole dishes with red and black Ukrainian embroidery motifs. These Ukrainian decals were glazed and baked onto the clay mold green-ware in my cousin's Kamsack pottery studio. My parents received many of these pots over the years as Christmas, anniversary and birthday gifts from my aunt and uncle. Another cousin owned a gift shop in Kamsack and imported the red and black Ukrainian embroidery motif glassware from the larger Ukrainian urban centers. The glassware also made its way via gift-giving, into our living room china cabinet. Later in the 1970s other Ukrainian items, like Easter egg wall plaques and wooden craft items purchased at the Dauphin Ukrainian Festival, made their way into our living room.

Figure 30. Mother's Red and Black Embroidery Motif Clay-Ware taken from her china cabinet for a photo

Figure 31. Father's Ukrainian Belt/poias inherited from his father George Stefaniuk 52

When my Baba became ill and went into the hospital after the town had invaded her property my father was compelled to sell her house. The highway would be going through Baba's yard whether he co-operated or not. With the funds he received from the sale of Baba's house he acted quickly and hired my mother's cousin, who was a building contractor, a man by the name of Tommy Marteniuk. Tommy built a small addition onto the back of our house so that it would be convenient for my parents to look after Baba who was now blind, painfully arthritic, and diabetic, needing insulin and meals prepared for her every day. When Baba came out of the hospital she would come to her new home. The space was constructed in such a way that Baba could move freely and feel her way around easily in the small space. My father was able to enter Baba's bedroom from a door in his office. There was a small bathroom attached right to the bedroom. When one went out from the bedroom one entered a small kitchen living room space that had a set of built in cupboards, a small fridge and stove, table and chairs as well as a small comfortable pull-out chesterfield. Given the short space of time between the on-set of Baba's illness and hospital stay, the conflict with the town fathers, the sale of Baba's house and the erection of the attached suite, my parents both managed to survive a heavily stressful time in their lives. We all looked forward to Baba being with us in her new space. But Baba never entered the doorway of her new earthly home. The new home she was to enter was that of her final resting place in heaven. When my Baba died in November of 1968,1 was fifteen years old. Life as I knew it had completely changed without my even realizing it at the time. Perhaps as a function of her death and my bonding with her, the demolition of her house and the loss of my place within it, the loss of my Ukrainian language-speaking skills, as well as the onset of my teen years, life was no longer domestically centered. In my experience, Baba's death marked the point of a great divide between the importance of family life and my cultural heritage and the importance of becoming a modern woman where home-life in a small town environment with it's womanly pursuits, like "Avon calling" "Tupperware parties" and church teas and bake sales were shunned in favor of a peer-centered urbanized social life and education. Home-life for me in my parents' modern home felt emotionally very flat. With both parents working, my father during the day, and my mother after school 53 through to midnight, the majority of my time was spent outside the home. We connected as a family in the domestic environment with one main meal over the lunch hour. This busyness in my high school years prepared me for the final break from life in a small town, and for my entrance into the new world of university life in a completely urban setting. When my Baba passed away, her possessions were moved from her house to ours. These items were preserved out of sight, in the basement of our modern home as well as in my father's outdoor garage.

Vichnaia Pamiat' //Memory Eternal!

Photograph circa 1950 From Personal Collection 54

III NOTIONS OF HOUSE

One purpose of this subjective gaze into my Baba's and my parents' houses is to examine a given topos or place in minute detail. In the case of a domicile it means searching out microtopics like the decorated eggs in both houses. This room by room, object by object sojourn of both my parent's and my Baba's houses are what Gaston Bachelard, in his work The Poetics of Space would describe as topoanalysis. Topoanalysis is the systematic psychological study of the sites of our intimate lives. "With the house image we are in possession of a veritable principle of psychological integration."3 With the house image we are also in possession of a smorgasbord of world mythology. Over the millennia the notion of house has been understood as a reflection of socio-cultural values where it was believed that house shape and size were determined by climate, building materials, technology and site.4 The house has also been understood as a container for sacred fire in a solar creation myth where fire was associated with the sun and the sacred fire in the house was not allowed to be extinguished otherwise the sun may have ceased to shine.5 The form of the house was, by some scholars, believed to derive from the temple, which was understood as a container for the sacred marriage of earth and sky. This marriage rite was performed in order ensure fertility and prosperity. Because this sacred rite was performed in the house, the house was regarded as sacred as well.6 The house has also been understood to symbolize the womb of the great earth mother, the cosmos or the self. The house has a long history of myths and symbols associated with the notion of its very existence.

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas (New York: The Orion Press, 1964) xxxii. Amos Rapoport, House Form and Culture, (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1969) 47. Pierre Deffontaines, q. in Claire Cooper "The House As Symbol of Self (Berkely: University of California, Institute of Urban and Regional Development, Working Paper No. 120, 1971) 10. Lord Raglan, The Temple and The House, (London: Routledge, and Kegan Paul, 1964) 87. Marc Olivier, Psychology of the House, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977) 22-24. Carl Jung, Memories Dreams Reflections, (London: Collins, The Fontana Library, 1969) 182-184. 55

CHAPTER TWO

CANADIAN-UKRAINIAN DWELLING ARCHITECTURE

The literature on Ukrainian Canadian dwelling architecture indicates four main types of dwellings. These include: the burdei - dug-out dwelling, the traditional peasant log and plaster construction, the wood frame house and the urban or modern home.

I THE BURDEI

The Ukrainian dug-out dwelling goes also by the Ukrainian names zemlianka or buda. These structures were most common in Canada from the 1890s to approximately 1905.

Figure 33. Burdei, Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village (UCHV), Edmonton, Alberta. Photograph from Personal Collection. 56

Dug-out dwellings in Canada sheltered families anywhere from their first few months up to ten years. A family lived in the burdei until they had the money and the labor to build a more permanent structure or until the house construction was seasonally appropriate. "Although living in a burdei constituted an unsatisfactory condition, many perceived earning money and establishing a productive farm as more pressing priorities, outside work and land-clearing taking precedence over the building of a permanent house."9 The word burdei was most likely adopted around the fifteenth century from the Tatar word burdiuh that refers to the intact skin of an animal which was turned inside-out and used as a container for fluids. The word zemlianka is a derivative of the word zemlia which means earth. In the context of Ukrainian folk architecture zemlianka refers to a dwelling that is built into the earth so that all of its walls are underground with the planes of its roof sloping to ground level. The napivzemlianka or "half zemlianka or semi-pit dwelling, was built with a section of the vertical walls extending above ground level. The roof of the napiwzemlianka did not reach down and touch the ground itself as in the case of the zemlianka. 10 The word buda is related to the verb buduvaty which means to build. Buda refers to any small, crudely built domestic structure which was designed to protect particular contents from the elements or to temporarily house human inhabitants. In the Ukrainian Canadian context, the Ukrainians from Bukovyna commonly used the word burdei to refer to the dug-out dwellings, while the Ukrainians from Galicia used interchangeably the three terms, burdei, zemlianka and buda.n In Ukraine pit house dwellings have been traced to the Paleolithic Era, 40,000 to 12,000 B.C. n The zemlianka of the Upper Paleolithic Era was constructed in the round.

9 Andriy Nahachewsky, "The First Imprint: The Burdei in the Wilderness," in Continuity and Change: The Cultural Life of Alberta's First Ukrainians, ed. Manoly R. Lupul (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1988) 78.

10 M. Prykhodko, q. in Andriy Nahachewsky, Ukrainian Dug-Out Dwellings in East Central Alberta, (Edmonton: Historic Sites Service, Alberta Culture Occasional Paper No. 11, March 1985) 11.

11 Nahachewsky, Dug-Out, 11.

12 Nahachewsky, Dug-Out, 17. 57

Its roof was built out of poles and covered with earth.13 In the Neolithic Era, 5000 to 3000 B.C, dug-out dwellings were widely used by the inhabitants of the Trypilian culture. The dug-out dwellings of the Trypilians were characterized by thatched roofs angling to the ground. The visual legacy of this angled-to-the-ground roof structure can be seen in burdei construction within the Canadian Ukrainian pioneer context.14 In the context of more recent history in Ukraine, the dug-out dwelling was used as a means of shelter by nineteenth century industrial workers, hermits, first settlers of unpopulated areas, herdsmen, soldiers, construction and railway workers and farm migrants. Dug-out constructions were also widely used in the beginning of the twentieth century by fishermen, lumberjacks and other laborers who again made their living in isolated Ukrainian territories that were a significant distance away from their family homes. At the turn of the twentieth century, temporary structures were also built for night watchmen at schools, vegetable gardens and other large establishments. Survivors of villages destroyed by war built such structures until they could rebuild their houses. The burdei built by Ukrainian Canadian pioneers was, then a continuation of the architectural tradition of eastern Europe.15 In addition, pit and semi-pit dwellings have consistently served as an alternative form of housing for the poor and the destitute.16 In southern Ukraine the poorer peasants lived in dug-out dwellings because the construction of such required only small amounts of wood, which was, at that particular time in Ukrainian history, a scarce and expensive 1 7 building commodity. Like many of their family and friends back in Ukraine, peasant immigrants from Bukovyna or Galicia often found themselves in a state of poverty upon their arrival in Canada. Thus many built their first Canadian homes as dug-out dwellings. While some Ukrainian immigrants to Canada would have been familiar with the construction of the burdei, many of these immigrants would never have built a dug-out

13 Nahachewsky, Dug-Out, 22.

14 Nahachewsky, "First Imprint," 81.

15 Nahachewsky, "First Imprint," 81.

16 Nahachewsky, Dug-Out, 17.

17 Nahachewsky, Dug-Out, 42. 58

dwelling nor a log and plaster house while in their native Ukraine.18 However, the unexpectedly harsh circumstances of their new Canadian environment caused many Ukrainian immigrants to draw on the wealth of their architectural history for their physical survival. It is also true that many other Ukrainian immigrants would not have found it necessary to build a burdei. They likely would have had the financial resources and the manpower to build a log and plaster house immediately upon arrival in Canada. It may thus be safely stated that the dug-out dwelling has been constructed by Early Slavic and later Ukrainian peoples from the beginning of civilized life until the twentieth century.19 Pit and semi-pit constructions both on Ukrainian and Canadian territory have existed not only as homes but also as cold storage facilities for grain, root vegetables and home preserves. In a contemporary twenty-first century context dug-out dwelling re-constructions can be seen in outdoor museums like the one in the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village outside of Edmonton, where Ukrainian history and culture are being represented.

Figure 34. Burdei Interior. UCHV. Note hand mill and bread kneading trough/koryto

Nahachewsky, "First Imprint," 81.

Nahachewsky, Dug-Out, 97. 59

II LOG AND PLASTER PEASANT HOUSE

TnP'"™ "'^w»i *.v. *• 'fipiMwJkjn

tiM&z *<-.&. Figure 35. Grekul Log and Plaster House.

UCHV, Edmonton. Note the house is in the Bukovinian Style with decorative cornice brackets, hipped and gabled roof and pryz 'ba.

The Ukrainian peasant log house of the Canadian prairies, was, in form, style, structure and content essentially the same as its counterpart in Western Ukraine. These Ukrainian houses on the prairies were typically built and inhabited by Ukrainian immigrants who came to Canada between 1891 and 1915.20 They emigrated primarily from Galicia or Bukovyna, two areas of Western Ukraine that were then under the domination of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.21

20 John Lehr, Ukrainian Vernacular Architecture in Alberta, (Edmonton: Historic Sites Service, Alberta Culture, Occasional Paper No. 1, 1976) 8.

21 John Lehr, "Log Buildings of Ukrainian Settlers in Western Canada," Prairie Architecture, ed. Trevor Boddy, spec, issue of Prairie Forum 5.2 (Fall 1980): 183. 60

3 Variants of the Ukrainian - Canadian Log Plaster House Construction

Small Room / Big Room

/

Porch Storage Area Big Room / / Small Room Small Room

/ 1

Porch Storage Small Area ' Big Room Room /

1 Variant of a Ukrainian Log Plaster House Construction

Figure 36. Four Variants of the Log and Plaster House Fourth Variant Illustrates Some Interior Contents and Activity Areas 61

At this point, it is helpful to have some definition of peasant. In his book Defining Peasants, Teodor Shanin ascribes four primary inter-locking characteristics to the social entity of peasantry: 1. The family farm is the basic multi-functional unit of social organization. 2. Land husbandry on the family farm is usually combined with animal rearing as the main source of livelihood. 3. A specific traditional culture is closely connected with a peasant way of life. 4. This peasant way of life is accompanied by a multi-directional social subjugation to powerful outsiders. In 1971 Shanin proposes that peasants were:

small agricultural producers who, with the help of simple equipment and the labour of their families, produce mainly for their own consumption and for the fulfilment of obligations to the holders of political and economic power. The more developed general type of this approximation defined peasants through four interdependent facets: the family farm, agriculture, the village and its culture, as well as a plebeian slot within the system of social domination.22

Some differences existed between the peasant log house of Western Ukraine and the Ukrainian peasant log house of Western Canada, and these differences were due primarily to the unavailability of certain materials in Canada that were present in Ukraine as well as the availability of new materials in Canada like slough grass, aspen, iron stoves. "In the pioneer milieu of Western Canada all Ukrainian dwellings were essentially similar in both concept and execution."23 While no two Ukrainian houses were identical, they were, none the less, clearly recognizable as Ukrainian houses. Each house had slight differences with respect to building materials, design, size, and color- scheme and these differences enabled a wide range of expression.24

Teodor Shanin, Defining Peasants: Essays Concerning Rural Societies, Expolary Economies, and Learning From Them in the Contemporary World (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell Inc., 1990) 98.

23 Lehr, "Log Buildings," 186.

24 Lehr, "Ukrainian Vernacular," 2. 62

The Ukrainian word khata refers either to the entire Ukrainian log house or to any one of the two main rooms within the house. Preceding Ukrainian emigration to Canada, the log house in Ukraine evolved from the basic one room structure of the 17th century, to the multi room variants common in the 19th century. By the 19th century the Ukrainian log house boasted a well- defined form with distinctive regional expressions. Log houses on the Canadian prairies were built in three different formats: 1. the Vertical Format, where logs for wall construction were placed vertically on a wood sill, 2. the Red River Format, where horizontal logs were placed inside corner frames, and finally, 3. the Horizontal Log Format. This format had saddle notched joints and pegs pinned into the logs for rigidity. It was the most commonly used format employed by the vast majority of Ukrainians in Canada. In this thesis, I will deal specifically with the third format.

A. The Main Features The main features of Ukrainian peasant log houses include: a southerly orientation, a single storey, two or three rooms, a mud-plastered log construction, a central chimney, a gabled, a hipped gable or hipped roof, distinctive colors for decorative house trim, a prescribed rectangular house plan, a thatched or shingled roof, a protective base, and a stone foundation.27 The southward facing facade of Ukrainian log houses on the prairies distinguished them from the homes of many other European and Anglo-Saxon settlers. This southern orientation was multi-purpose: it enabled the collection of heat and light from the sun; it protected the home's entrance from cold north and northwesterly winds, and it also fulfilled spiritual tradition by reserving the east wall of the home's largest room for icons, religious calendars, family portraits and other treasures brought to Canada from the

John Lehr, "The Cultural Importance of Vernacular Architecture," in Continuity and Change: The Cultural Life of Alberta's First Ukrainians, ed. Manoly R. Lupul (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1988) 90-94.

26 Lehr, "Log Buildings," 184.

27 John Lehr, "Ukrainian Houses in Alberta," Alberta Historical Review, 21: 4, (1973) 10. 63 homeland. Ukrainian log houses were topped with a thatched roof and bottomed with a wide, heavily plastered protective base called apryz 'ba." In some areas of Ukraine, however, hand-sawn shingles/ gonty, were used to cover the roof. In Ukraine, rye straw/ zhupa, was the preferred material for thatching, while in Canada, it was slough grass/ ocheret.30 Wooden shingles eventually replaced the slough grass in Canada.31 The rectangularity of the houses reflected the structural nature of the building materials.32 In this instance the materials were the horizontal logs that varied in diameter and in length. Larger houses had dimensions in the order of 35 X 18 feet. While the combination of these unifying features marked the structures as Ukrainian peasant log constructions, the design and details which lent each house it's uniqueness were affected by the following factors: environmental, physical, social, economic, as well as the geographic origin of each builder. For example the Galician log houses typically had different features than Bukovynian, Transcarpathian or Romanian houses.34 These log and plaster houses were most dominant between 1900 until the 1940s.

B. House Lay-Out In Alberta in 1917, "according to the Woodsworth survey, 10% of 937 Ukrainian families lived in one room and 56% lived in two room clay-plastered log houses with a thatched or shingled roof." Throughout this period and into the 1920s the clay-plastered

Fodchuk, "Building the Little House on the Prairies: Ukrainian Technology, Canadian Resources," Material History Bulletin #29, 89.

29 Natalia Shostok,(Shostak) "The Ukrainian Peasant Home: Space Domestication," Canadian Folklore Folklore Canadien Vol 17, 2, (1995): 52.

30 Fodchuk, "Little House," 93.

31 Lehr, "Cultural Importance," 92.

32 Fodchuk, "Little House," 89.

33 Lehr, "Ukrainian Vernacular," 28.

34 Lehr, "Ukrainian Houses," 10. 64

log house was the primary type of housing in Ukrainian settlements all across Western Canada.35 The layout of the Ukrainian folk house is one of its most significant ethnographic features.36 Ingrained patterns of social behavior largely determined spacial arrangements within.37 A one room house evolved into a two room dwelling which was divided into the western mala khata /little house, and the eastern velyka khata/ the big house. The mala khata is the remnant of the original one room house where all domestic activities took place: cooking, eating, sleeping, washing, grooming, and socializing. Even with the appearance of the second larger room, velyka khata, the activities of the little room remained the same. The velyka khata of the two room dwelling tended to be reserved for guests, ritual activities and other more formal household functions. The two room dwelling evolved into the three room house which was popular in Western Ukraine at the time of Ukrainian emigration to Canada.' The two rooms became separated by a third room, the entrance hallway/ storage area called the siny, khoromy, or the komora.38

C. House Structure There is little variation in the building materials used in all the various forms of Ukrainian log houses which may be found in different parts of the world. John Lehr outlines some of these materials: fieldstones, hardwood for logs in Ukraine included oak, beech and walnut. In Canada softwoods were used for building and they included

35 Orest T. Martynowych, The Ukrainian Bloc Settlement in East Central Alberta, 1890-1930: A History, (Edmonton: Historic Sites Service, Alberta Culture, Occasional Paper No. 10, 1985) 128.

36 Demjan, Hohol, The Grekul House: A Land Use and Structural History, (Edmonton: Historic Sites Services, Alberta Culture, Occasional Paper No. 14, 1985) 127.

37 Lehr, "Cultural Importance," 94.

Lehr,"Log Buildings," 193. This is still typically called a 2 room house. The central entranceway, siny/khoromy is often not counted as a "room." See Figure 36.

Lehr, "Ukrainian Houses," 10. 65 pine, spruce, polar or aspen. These were the woods most readily available. Hardwoods in Canada were used for tools, spikes and pins. Included in these hardwoods were: birch, willow, wild cherry and saskatoon. Other Canadian building materials included clay, sand, horse or cow manure, straw, rye or slough grass, water, lime, laundry blueing, skim milk, glass, hinges. Tools in the construction of Ukrainian houses included a felling axe, a broad axe for shaping the logs, a saw, an auger, an adze. It is well to note here that most houses were built without nails. Wooden pegs were used instead.40 Statistics drawn in 1924 revealed that in Ukraine 50% of the houses under study were built of wood with either horizontal logs or upright posts, 33% of clay and 6% of 41 stone.

1. Foundation and Root Cellar/ sellier: Nykolai Grekul built his house upon a rock foundation, as was common for Ukrainian houses of horizontally laid log walls, called zrub construction. Vovk and Sopoliga write that at the corners of houses in Ukraine, large stones or stoiany (vertical wooden blocks) would first be placed. Kosmina notes, however, that this stone foundation was preceded by simply laying the lowest course of logs, called the pershyi vinets' (first wreath), directly upon the ground. Laying the vinets' upon a rock foundation was more efficient, for it slowed the deterioration of this bottom course of logs from ground moisture and precipitation.42

Some of Hohol's informants noted that foundational stones would sometimes be set after the base logs had been joined together with several courses of logs placed overtop. The stones would then be packed underneath the already begun log construction.43 In the majority of cases the house rested on large stones that were placed

40 Lehr, "Ukrainian Houses," 10.

41 Kuzela, 304.

42 Hohol, 77.

43 Hohol, 78. 66 underneath the lowest log. The raising up of these base logs or pidvalni away from the earth's surface thus reduced subsequent deterioration.44 The lack of a full foundation allowed for the dug out root cellar. Cellars were common in Ukrainian-Canadian houses once the traditional earthen floor was replaced by wooden flooring. Cold storage areas were on many Ukrainian Canadian farms constructed as separate out buildings. Hohol states that although it was uncommon for cellars to be built inside the house in Ukraine, Ukrainian-Canadians came to build root cellars which were given different Ukrainian names,- iamy, pyvnytsi or sellier. "Although the Grekuls had a root cellar south of the house, they nonetheless dug apyvnytsia too. When they found that it kept their foodstuffs sufficiently chilled, they stopped using the outdoor root cellar altogether, and allowed it gradually to cave in." A hatch door was cut into the floor boards of the Grekul House and a wooden ladder, which was constructed at a shallow angle, led into this earthen storage space. Homemade fruit and vegetable and meat preserves, as well as root vegetables, were commonly stored in this cool vented space underneath the house.46 Storage areas were climate related. Outside pits were favorable in Ukraine but often were too frozen in Canada. Inside cellars were probably not cold enough for Ukrainian winters but were fine for the colder Canadian winters.

2. Mud-Plaster/ mashchennia and the pryz'ba/a mud-plaster house base Unlike the log dwellings of most other settlers in Alberta, those of the Ukrainians were usually plastered with a coating of mud. Ukrainians most often encased their entire timber structure with a protective covering of mud mixed with straw, animal dung and lime. Logs were thus plastered inside and out with a clay plaster, to which water, straw, and horse or cow manure had been added. This added dung, together with the straw, kept

Lehr, "Ukrainian Vernacular," 11.

Ewachiw, Mike, Personal tape recorded interview, April 13, 2004.

Hohol, 134. 67 the plaster from cracking after it had been dried. It was noted that in Canada, Bukovynians tended to use cow dung for plastering, while Galicians tended to use horse dung. The clay plaster was mixed in a pit by being trampled, either by the feet of human beings, or by the hooves of horses and oxen that had purposefully been led through this pit. After plaster coats were applied and completely dried out, and all cracks that may have ensued were patched, an outer whitewashed layer of lime/ vapno or bilennia, was applied with a homemade horsehair brush. Water was added to the lime often together with a little skim milk or laundry blueing. These last ingredients brought out the pure whiteness of the lime. Two or three coats of lime were applied, each taking about a day to dry.48 The lime application fulfilled several functions. In addition to being aesthetically pleasing, it helped protect the clay from the erosive effects of rain, it acted as a deterrent from the invasion of insects, and it provided the house with added insulation.49 Ukrainian log houses in Canada often had a particular construction feature known as the pryz 'ba- a clay embankment that was plastered at the base of the exterior walls. Solidly packed clay was pressed against the wall to a height of approximately 6 inches from ground level.50 This pryz'ba slanted downwards and away from the house to a length of approximately 2 feet, thereby directing rainwater away from the house walls and preventing the base logs from rotting. In addition to the aesthetic and protective features of the embankment, the pryz 'ba also provided insulation for the house floor. This clay embankment was coated either with a layer of dung/ himniak or with a layer of a blue-grey clay called hlei. This coating served to seal the clay surface of the pryz 'ba. Apparently the upkeep of this clay embankment was time consuming, as after each rain the dung or hlei coating would have to be reapplied.51

Martynowych, 18.

48 Hohol, 86.

49 Lehr, "Ukrainian Houses," 12.

50 Hohol, 78.

51 Hohol, 80. 68

3. Flooring/dolivky: Inside traditional Ukrainian-Canadian vernacular houses, practically all the floors were initially earthen floors. They were created by packing down the earth, smoothing it over with clay and then applying a layer of cow dung/ himniak, mixed with water. The mixture produced a glossy surface. This gloss was maintained by repeating the treatment on a weekly basis. It also had the added benefit of regularly keeping the dust down in the house. Usually within a few years of settlement wood floors replaced the earth floors. Wood flooring was installed particularly in the bigger guest room, the velyka khata.

4. Roof/ dakh: Traditional Ukrainian houses in Canada had striking looking roofs. The hipped roof, the gable roof or the hipped-gable roof were all constructions rooted in Ukraine.53 In many cases, the attic space was equal to, or surpassed that of the ground floor of the house.54 This large space under the roof was often ventilated through "eyebrow" openings or vents. Smoke from the house was filtered to the outdoors through these vents in those cases where there was no chimney all the way out. The chimney stopped at ceiling height. Eyebrow vents were small semicircular apertures built into the roof with a thick protective thatch over them. When the attic became a living space these eyebrow vents were replaced by dormer windows by virtue of their location.55 In Western Ukraine at the turn of the century, the majority of house roofs were steeply pitched and thatched with rye straw.56 Rye straw continued to be used to in Canada but to a lesser extent as a more convenient substitute was found. The Ukrainian- Canadian thatching substitute was slough grass. Although thatching presented the same risk of fire in Canada, Ukrainian immigrants used it for building their first homes because

Martynowych, 129.

Lehr, "Ukrainian Houses," 12.

Fodchuk, 91.

Fodchuk, 91.

V. P . Samoilovich, in Lehr, "Cultural Importance," 92. 69 it was readily available, cheap, easy to construct, and it also provided the home with good en insulation. With regular maintenance, roof thatching could last up to forty years. Roofing materials affected the roof shape.58 Traditionally the thatched roofs of Ukrainian houses were highly pitched in order to enable a rapid water run-off over the porous thatching material.59 However, once thatching was no longer utilized, the profile of the Ukrainian house changed radically. By about 1920, thatched roofs were mostly replaced by shingled roofs.60 Shingles were readily available and by then affordable to the majority of Ukrainian settlers. Shingles required less maintenance than thatching and shingled roofs did not require a steep pitch for water run off. 61 Thus the roof pitch was reduced and the roof line lowered. With this adaptation the Ukrainian house style was changed dramatically.62 The transition from thatch to shingle was accelerated by several successive dry summers at the end of World War I. Animal feed became scarce and roof thatching was dismantled in order to be utilized as animal fodder. In this process, new shingled roofs replaced the old thatched ones.63

D. House Styles The following material on house styles is based on the research of John Lehr. While there was some intermixing between the Galicians and the Bukovynians, often these two groups comprised distinctly settled regions on the prairies and maintained their own separate identity. The Galicians had been more culturally influenced by the Germans and Polish, and religiously tended to be Ukrainian Catholic, while the Bukovynians had

Lehr, "Ukrainian Vernacular," 19.

58 Martynowych, 18.

59 Fodchuk, 91.

60 Lehr, "Log Buildings," 190.

61 Martynowych, 130.

62 Martynowych, 130.

63 Bilash, in Martynowych, 130. 70 been more influenced by the Romanians, and religiously tended to be Ukrainian Orthodox. Pioneers who came to Canada from Transcarpathia and northern Romania tended to settle amongst the Bukovynians.64 Galicians' attitude toward Bukovynians was such that they considered the Bukovynian to be unsophisticated and bucolic in spirit. To the Galician mind the Bukovynian was a "rural hayseed." Such an impression may have been created through the later immigration of the Bukovynians, and their settlement on the more marginal lands of the Canadian prairies. The Bukovynians in their turn, considered the Galicians to be thrifty and miserly. The architectural styles of the Galicians and the Bukovynians tend to bear traces of these perceived differences. The Bukovynian house style was flamboyant and decorative, while the Galician style, reflecting the influence of northwestern Europe, tended to be more sober and utilitarian, betraying less evidence of its East European folk origins.65 1. Bukovynian Houses Bukovynian log and plaster houses were characterized by rather heavy looking roofs. These roofs were either hipped or hipped and gabled with wide overhanging eaves. This overhang could vary anywhere from 2 to 5 feet in front. When supported by uprights, these wide eaves often provided a shady porch on the south side of the house, which had the added benefit of protecting the house walls from rainwash.66 Distinctive decorative features of Bukovynian houses, in addition to the eyebrow vents of the southern roof slope, were the eave or cornice brackets/ vuhla. These roof support structures were created by the gradual extension of the top layer of house logs. Decoratively, Bukovynians had these cornice brackets flare out towards these extended topmost wall logs. The degree of flare was dependent upon the extent of the eave projection. The styles of these eave brackets varied, most being in the form of a smooth, outward and slightly convex curve, others being stepped.67 In the house interiors, the

Lehr, "Ukrainian Vernacular," 25.

Lehr, "Ukrainian Vernacular," 25, 26.

Fodchuk, "Little House," 91.

Lehr, "Ukrainian Vernacular," 26. 71 projecting exposed ends of wooden beams were often carved in detail. The main beams were sometimes heavily carved. Even when Bukovynians settled on marginal Canadian prairie lands, they still tended to construct large houses. Bukovynian houses normatively tended to be larger than Galician houses, in the range of 18 by 35 feet.68 These houses were limed white, often with the wooden window and door frames painted in green trim. The color green has a strong association with Bukovyna, whose native folk habitually refer to their province as zelena Bukovyna/ green Bukovyna. This title reflects the pastoral nature of the province's geography, as well as calls to mind the beech wood trce/buk, from which the province takes its name.69 2. Galician Houses Galician folk houses were basically the same as Bukovynian houses in construction and form. They differed in matters of detail. Generally speaking they were more sober and utilitarian looking, less decorative and bucolic in appearance than Bukovynian houses. There were no cornice brackets or eyebrow vents on Galician houses. Galician houses were generally smaller than Bukovynian houses, in the neighborhood of 12 by 26 feet.71 Galician houses sometimes eliminated the hallway storage space/ khoromy and were thus basically two room houses. The roofs of Galician houses appeared less heavy looking because they did not have the pronounced degree of eave projection that Bukovynian houses had. The roofs of Galician houses tended to be

68 Lehr, "Ukrainian Vernacular," 28.

69 John Lehr, "Color Preferences and Building Decoration Among Ukrainians in Western Canada," in Prairie Forum: The Journal of the Canadian Plains Research Center, Regina, Vol. 6, No. 2, Fall 1981,205.

Lehr, "Ukrainian Vernacular," 28.

71 Lehr, q. in Orest Martynowych, The Ukrainian Bloc Settlement in East Central Alberta, 1890- 1930: A History, (Edmonton: Historic Sites Service, Alberta Culture, Occasional Paper No. 10, March 1985) 130.

Lehr, "Ukrainian Vernacular," 29. 72 gabled. Their gabled un-plastered ends were usually filled with vertical weatherboard, a trait which is believed to be rooted in German architectural style. The color of choice for the trim of Galician houses was sky blue set against white lime-washed walls. Usually the sky blue color was applied to the lower portion of the walls. The walls themselves were usually left white, but occasionally they had simple geometric designs in blue. Blue was easy to create both from natural dyes and from the washing blue used in the lime plaster. By increasing the amount of this blueing, a sky blue color could easily be obtained.74

E. House Contents Here it is well to review the basic house plan. Entrance into the house was by way of the main door into the khoromyl siny. This entrance hallway served as vestibule and a storage area. When storage space became available in newly constructed outbuildings on the Canadian prairies, the khoromy lost some of its traditional function.75 The attic of the house was made accessible through a hatch door in the ceiling of the khoromy'16 In the log houses where the chimney ended at the floor of the attic, the smoke dissipated through the vents in the thatch, the attic thus providing an appropriate space for hanging meat and fish to cure. Because the attic area tended to be warm and dry, herbs, fruit and flowers were strung up to dry and clothing was stored there. In larger families the attic was also used as a sleeping space. It was sometimes entered through a trap door on the outside of the house just under the eave.77 Typically the domestic space of the little room/ mala khata, was situated to the left side of the khoromy and the main door, on the west side of the house.78 Here the

Lehr, "Ukrainian Vernacular," 28.

Lehr, "Color Preferences," 204, 205.

Martynowych, 131.

Fodchuk, 95.

Fodchuk, 95.

Martynowych, 131. 73 cooking, eating, sleeping, and washing of day to day living took place. A large clay plastered stove/ pick, used for heating and cooking, visually dominated this domestic area until cast iron stoves replaced the pick. Whether an iron stove was brought in to heat the home or not, another pick was often constructed outside of the house in the yard, or in a small summer kitchen built specifically to accommodate the pick. In some cases there existed an iron stove in the house, a. pick outside and a third stove, iron stove number two, in the summer kitchen. The outdoor pick was typically used for baking bread.79 The bigger room/ velyka khata, was usually located to the right side of the khoromy and main door, on the east side of the house. The southeast corner of the big room was called the "holy corner" or pokuttia. Icons, and other religious items as well as family photographs hung on the easternmost wall, the "Holy Wall" of this larger ceremonial guest room.80 Traditionally a person walking into the room would bow to the icon corner and make the sign of the cross. Guests were welcomed into the icon corner and offered food at the table which was placed underneath the icon corner. The bigger east room or velyka khata "was where the family's weaving and sewing crafts, handiwork and treasures from the Old Country were displayed as well as where social gatherings were held."81 Like its exterior, the interior of the Ukrainian vernacular house had a characteristic identity of its own, right down to the arrangement of furniture within the space. This spatial arrangement within the house interior remained stable during the first few decades of Ukrainian settlement in Canada.82

F. House as Interactive Space Houses were often built by holding a toloka, a working "bee," which involved family, friends, and neighbors, who were often from the same area of Ukraine, thus promoting continuity with the specific regional characteristics of the vernacular

Martynowych, p. 131.

0 Lehr, "Cultural Importance," 94.

1 Hohol, 134.

2 Lehr,"Log Buildings," 193. architecture. Through this collective approach to the construction, the time it took for building could have been as little as two to three days, with a few additional days that allowed for the clay-plastering to dry.83 In Ukraine, plastering and whitewashing was done by men. In Canada this task of home construction was more often allocated to women. For proper home maintenance, this lime whitewashing was done by the women • 84. several times a year, and particularly before the celebration of Easter. Because plaster had a tendency to crack, it would deteriorate rapidly if improperly maintained. As protection against the two great wall plaster hazards - children and poultry, many houses were later covered up to the window sills with a layer of shiplap boarding. When the plastered walls were well maintained they were long-lasting. Ritual is according to Ukrainian folklorist Olena Boriak, a patterned, repetitive and symbolic enactment of a cultural belief or value whose primary purpose is transformation.86 It is significant to note that folk rituals accompanied the construction of several aspects of the traditional log house. An abundance of material on these house rituals in Central Ukraine may be gleaned from an article by Ukrainian folklorist Natalia Shostak: "The Ukrainian Peasant Home: Space Domestication." According to Shostak there were rituals in choosing a house site performed with the assistance of cattle, sacred plants or water. There was also a ritual demarcation of the four corners and center of the prospective house and the symbols in these demarcations included the use of wheat or rye kernels, coins, wool, decorated eggs, spiders and cream. Vestiges of these traditional rituals can be found in the construction of Ukrainian log and plaster houses in Canada even though these Ukrainian Canadian builders were primarily from Western Ukraine:

Lehr, "Ukrainian Vernacular," 8.

Lehr, "Cultural Importance," 96. Fodchuk, 94.

Olena Boriak, Rites of Passage Lecture Series. University of Alberta, Edmonton. 2002-2003. 75

The corner stones are dug deep into the earth, for the braces, and he measures the size of the building with a rope, judging the length and width according to the length of the tree poles. When these underpin logs are tied together, work is held up until he carves out a cross on the southeast end. On this the owner places three silver pieces of money, dried flowers and vegetation from the Thanksgiving Basket which was blessed in church in autumn and seeds from cones of the wood used. They sprinkle everything with Holy Blessed Water as they repeat the Lord's Prayer, then begin the next round of logs from this corner and build the house in the vzrub pattern that is cutting in logs to fit and extend from the corner of the house.

After the log house construction was complete, the house was blessed. Svarych recalls another ritual in this regard:

A newly built home was usually blessed and then the priest, dressed in robes, would sprinkle it with holy water, insert into each corner stone space a small picture of a disciple, and seal the pictures in. These holy duties were followed by a dinner at which offerings of bread (the small round kolachi) were handed out as gifts in memory of their deceased ones.88

87 Peter Svarych q. in Fodchuk, 90.

Peter Svarych q. in Fodchuk, 96. 76

III WOOD FRAME HOUSE

UCHV Edmonton, Alberta Photograph From Personal Collection

A. Main Features Wood frame houses began to be commonly built by Ukrainian Canadians between 1914 and 1925 and they are still being built. The houses were and are constructed with two by four inch studs spaced at intervals within a wood frame. With this construction the walls of the structure are secured and then they are most often filled with some manner of insulation between the studs. The entire structure of the wall is then covered with some form of wood sheathing. The wood frame house is a structure in which hand crafted logs have been replaced with lumberyard purchased items: lumber, nails, wooden shingles, spruce wood joists, spruce shiplap sheathing, and plaster board. Other materials purchased at a local lumberyard for wood frame construction included: wood stain, shellac, paint, linoleum flooring and electrical supplies. Larger items like a an iron wood stove, a furnace, rain pipes or water tanks were typically ordered through catalogues or local specialized 77 businesses. All the lumberyard purchased items used in the construction of wood frame houses are modern materials, modern in the sense of the most recent. The most significant feature that distinguished the frame house from the log house was the wood-frame lumber construction that allowed for greater versatility of design and structure and didn't require as much wood. With a framed structure, the house floor plan was no longer restricted by the length of horizontal logs. Structures became much easier and less time consuming to construct and enabled families to respond and adapt more easily to their changing environment. With wood frame houses a greater diversity in house construction became visible, at the same time that Ukrainian log and plaster peasant houses began to diminish from the Canadian prairie landscape. Capitalizing on the new versatility of wood frame construction, heating efficiency and local style, early wood frame houses often were two storey structures. Two-storey wood frame houses indicated a concrete measure of agricultural prosperity. 9 Between 1914 and 1925 agricultural markets were good and prices for agricultural produce were high. This situation facilitated a degree of material abundance for Ukrainian farmers. They were now often able to purchase more land as well as construct new homes. These new homes were typically larger than traditional log houses. One may assume that Ukrainian traditional building values were always to build an aesthetically pleasing home given one's material and financial resources as well as one's personal circumstances. In this context Ukrainian people, like my father building his dream home, continued to construct their houses somewhat according to traditional values even when building houses that looked different from their parents' generations. These houses also incorporated some individual creative expression. Lehr observes that some of the wealthier farmers built their new homes in a completely North American style, North American in both design and construction.90 Some of these homes, at least had the "appearance" of being completely North American. In their work on the Demchuk and the Hawreliak houses, now both located at the

Swyripa, Frances, Wedded To The Cause: Ukrainian-Canadian Women and Ethnic Identity 1891-1991, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993) 43.

Lehr, "Changing Ukrainian," 27. 78

Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village (UCHV) Marie Lesoway and Jaroslaw Iwanus demonstrate that traditional Ukrainian elements can be found within North American looking houses. They contest Lehr's strict categorizations of what constitutes traditional Ukrainian or modern Canadian dwellings. In this scholarship the houses are seen in the context of the occupant's personal family lives as well as their Ukrainian and Canadian histories. A much more comprehensive picture regarding wood frame houses is developed. Increased demands on the Ukrainian farmer working a large homestead meant that time for maintaining all of his cultural building traditions was limited. The farmer no longer had time to fell trees and prepare logs for building his own house. One consequence was that some of the new homes were built by hired carpenters with materials that were bought at local lumberyards and the houses were then constructed in accordance with purchased blueprints.91 It is not only that the farmer did not have time given his new circumstances, but that in his new situation he now had more options. He could now choose to invest either his time or his money when thinking about building a new home. Many farmers often felt it was a wiser decision to invest money into the construction of their new home, particularly when new versatility and diversity were the final result that made life a little easier than it had been. With the construction of these houses, Lehr contends that the ethnicity of the owner became irrelevant and that there was little or no opportunity for ethnic expression in this manner of house construction.92 Many improved their houses without the designs.Again this is Lehr's bias which Lesoway and Iwanus challenge. In my own estimation one's inherited culture and/ or contemporary cultural milieu is never irrelevant. In the case of my father building his dream home, both cultural contexts, the inherited Ukrainian and the Anglo-Canadian, are relevant and important.

91 Martynowych, 151.

92 Lehr, "Changing Ukrainian," 27. 79

B. House Structure

1. Foundation Foundations for wood frame houses are typically concrete. Wood forms were constructed into a dug hole and cement was poured into these forms. Joists were laid on top of the foundation. Sometimes these joists were made of spruce. 2. Walls Wood frames, two by four inch lumber studs and spruce shiplap sheathing were used for constructing the exterior walls. In many cases the building was clad with horizontal feathered siding or clapboard that was joined to corner-boards. A material called plasterboard was used for surfacing interior walls. Later gyprock was used. 3. Flooring Wood floors were constructed in the wood frame house. In some cases the new wood floors were comprised of tongue and groove boards nailed onto a shiplap sub-floor. 4. Roof Because of the versatility of design the shapes of roofs varied, (being shed shaped, A-frame or dormer style with decorative cresting), while roofing materials remained generally consistent. Roofs of the wood frame house most often were surfaced with sawn cedar shingles that were attached to shiplap sheathing. Sometimes these wood shingles were stained or painted. In the days of log and plaster construction, it had been relatively easy to identify a Ukrainian house in contrast to a non-Ukrainian one. With versatility in construction and diversity of design, structure and spatial arrangements within the wood frame house, it becomes more difficult to separate these Ukrainian Canadian dwellings from other Canadian dwellings. It therefore becomes more beneficial to examine particular houses of Ukrainian inhabitants in order to glean more information about Ukrainian traditional elements within the wood frame house. While wood frame houses are part of the Canadian architectural city-scape, for the purposes of this thesis, it is the wood frame houses in the rural and small town setting that are of primarily interest and discussion. 80

C. House as Interactive Space Interactions within the traditional log house appear to be more a function of traditional ritual practices that were a transfer of practices from the Ukrainian's country of origin,-a kind of insular interactivity, whereas the interactions within the wood-frame house appear to reflect a greater dialogue with the Canadian cultural environment in which Ukrainians were immersed. Ukrainian Canadian Folklorist Robert Klymasz, in his book Svieto: Celebrating Ukrainian-Canadian Ritual in East Central Alberta Through The Generations observes that the milieu of Ukrainian Peasant Folklore in Alberta in 1894 was the pioneering farm and rural community, subsistence agriculture and a focus on the home. In contrast the milieu of Ukrainian Immigrant folklore in 1930 was town and country, surplus productivity, focus on institutions outside the home: hall, school, church.93 A wood frame building in the Canadian milieu represented success: if not an owner who had already made a success of himself, then one who seemed to be in the process of doing so. It was the idea that one might even consider expanding in the future that was the actual status symbol as far as housing in the 1920s was concerned. Generally speaking frame construction was seen as "progressive" among many Ukrainian settlers, while log was considered to be primitive or rudimentary.94 With these notions of success and progress, there appears to be a wide range of Ukrainian-Canadian hybrid houses within the wood frame category. Ukrainian assimilation and acculturation into the Canadian environment with respect to house construction was not a quick or abrupt happening. It was a gradual process over time (anywhere from one to four generations as in the case of the Hawreliak house) that witnessed several adapted constructions before a more or less complete assimilation took place. Two examples which follow reflect two different wood frame houses and both may be regarded as ethnically adapted houses.

Robert Klymasz, Svieto: Celebrating Ukrainian-Canadian Ritual in East Central Alberta Through The Generations, (Edmonton: Alberta Culture: Historic Sites Service, Occasional Paper No. 21, March 1992) 172. 94 Weatherall, q. in Iwanus, 33. 81

1. Demchuk House The Demchuk House, originally constructed in the Alberta town of Myrnam and now part of the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village Museum near Edmonton, has a wood frame construction. While the log and plaster construction materials have not been used in any of the four phases of modernization, the original floor plan in 1928 had two rooms with a southerly orientation. In phase one of the Demchuk house construction, even though it was made using a wood-frame technique, the traditional Ukrainian log house floor plan was still retained. The fact that John Demchuk had hired a contractor who had emigrated from western Ukraine most likely influenced the building choices that reflected a good measure of traditional sensibility. Another example of such traditional design retention with respect to the interior space of the Demchuk house was the single main room that was intended to encompass virtually all daily activities. This multi­ purpose space was clearly a remnant of turn of the century western Ukrainian housing concepts. However, the choice of the second room for a single purpose that is as a bedroom, likely reflected a greater sensibility of the Canadian milieu.95 In phase two of the Demchuk house construction a large kitchen and pantry were added to the west side of the house. In phase three a bathroom and porch were added onto the kitchen and an extension to the front of the house increased the dining room and added an extra bedroom. In phase four indoor plumbing was added in the bathroom. These phases of house additions and remodeling, (1934-1943, 1943-1977) presented greater complexity of design and reflected greater and greater assimilation into the modern Canadian environment. By 1977 there were no vestiges of traditional western Ukrainian house design externally visible in the Demchuk house. Development was understood as a progression from the small and simple to the larger and more complex.96 It is important to note here that the first structure on Mr. Demchuk's property was a business structure, a blacksmith shop which he ran successfully for thirty years. John

Jaroslaw Iwanus, The Demchuk House: A Land Use and Structural History, (Edmonton: Historic Sites Service, Alberta Culture) 83.

Iwanus, 4. 82

Demchuk set up one of the first businesses in Myrnam, Alberta and John's family lived in the shop for a short time until the first phase of house construction was complete.

2. Hawreliak House Mike Hawreliak, like John Demchuk, was born in Ukraine. He was a successful business man in addition to being a Ukrainian farmer. Mike Hawreliak, in his early years, worked as a brick-layer in Calgary. This job enabled him to purchase his own homestead. Mike became a successful businessman because he knew how to study the market and supply the appropriate materials at the right time. He was educated and broad-minded and a leader in his community. This is all reflected in his capacity to purchase modern conveniences for his home and farm operation. When Mike rented out his farm land he devoted more of his time to being an entrepreneur who bought stocks, as well as sold homebrew to folks in the rural areas near Shandro, Alberta.97 When Mike married, he and his wife Vaselina first lived in a shingled log house. Mike and Vaselina had nine children. When space was at a premium in this house, they constructed another out-building, a summer kitchen, which functioned as the little room/mala khata of the traditional house. The interior layout of the summer kitchen was the same as in the mala khata. The summer kitchen was divided into three functional parts. The pich and cooking area were located closest to the entrance because cooking was the activity most closely related to the food storage buildings and the yard. The table and eating area were located across from the entrance in the most lit part of the house, and the sleeping area was in the warmest part of the house. With the summer kitchen serving the functions of the mala khata, the entire house became primarily a sleeping area. The main functional areas of the ancestral pattern were retained when Mike Hawreliak had his second manor-style home built. Like Demchuk, he hired a Ukrainian contractor to oversee the construction of the house.98 With a much larger investment of

Marie Lesoway, Out of the Peasant Mold: A Structural History of The M. Hawreliak Home in Shandro, Alberta (Edmonton: Alberta Culture, Historic Sites Service, Occasional Paper No. 16, March 1989) 33. 98 Lesoway, 26-28. 83 capital, namely, five thousand dollars, Hawreliak constructed his second home. It was a large wood frame house. This elegant manor-style structure reflected Mike's greater experience with and success within the Canadian milieu. By 1919, when Mike Hawreliak began construction on this house, he was already a successful farmer and business man, and a well integrated Ukrainian-Canadian, wearing the latest fashions and driving the latest model of automobile on the market.

Figure 38. Hawreliak House 1919 UCHV Edmonton, Alberta Photograph from Personal Collection

The over-all appearance of the Hawreliak house is very much Anglo-Canadian, and yet this house in fact still has many references to traditional Ukrainian building practice. "Aesthetically and architecturally the Hawreliak house was a marriage of two traditions."99 How did these two traditions manifest? The Anglo-Canadian features of the time period during which the Hawreliak House was constructed were: 1. the house was built out of lumber using the wood frame technique and it was built by a hired contractor who worked from blue prints, and who in turn hired a construction crew, 2. the foundation of the house was a poured cement

Lesoway, 68. 84

concrete basement that was vented with windows, 3. the house was heated by a coal and wood furnace and had a water cistern for collecting rainwater used in the home. 4. the house was built with purchased materials, (doors, stained-glass windows and hardwood floors) and not with home-crafted materials, 5. the house had a roof that consisted of painted green cedar shingles, crested dormer roofs, and a window walk. 6. The overall shape of the house was square as opposed to the typical rectangular shape of log houses. 7. the house floor plan visibly changed from tradition in that the main floor of the Hawreliak house contained five rooms plus a hallway, and the same number of rooms upstairs, (not the two rooms plus hallway of traditional Ukrainian log house construction.) 8. the Hawreliak house, keeping up with modern times, had electricity installed in 1921. At the same time that many contemporary materials, contents and structural innovations were employed, traditional Ukrainian features were retained in the construction of the Hawreliak House. Some of these included: 1. the "straight-line" design features of a relatively simple exterior configuration, a design that was originally the result of the use of horizontal log construction . Simplicity of form and a simple, linear configuration of plan was considered by Lesoway to be a remnant of building with logs in the traditional log house construction, 2. the decorative features of the veranda which derive from traditional Ukrainian styles, 3. the traditional paint scheme of the house where the exterior was painted white with dark trim. White was traditionally the color of choice for the exterior because white reflected the heat, thus keeping the house cool in the summer. By contrast, doors and window frames were painted in darker more vibrant colors in order to emphasize the overall design of the structure. Trim on the white Hawreliak house was painted brown. The traditional paint scheme of the Hawreliak house interior was commonly a two color, or two-tone scheme where the top half of a wall was painted in a light color while the bottom half was painted in a darker color or tone, since this area was more readily scuffed and soiled, 4. the asymmetrical arrangement of non-structural elements like windows and doors, as these were orchestrated according to the interior function of the space. Asymmetry in the Hawreliak house is evident on the positioning of doors and windows on the west side of the 85 house,100 5. the plastering of the house interior walls with traditional materials for added insulation, as opposed to the walls being surfaced with the purchased plaster board then available on the market.

Despite the various traditional elements evident in its architecture, the Hawreliak House does not actually resemble a "traditional" Ukrainian dwelling. Its design incorporates many additional elements of contemporary "Canadian" architecture. Its size, shape, the number of rooms it contains, and the spatial arrangement of these rooms were all influenced by Canadian house designs.101

In Mike Hawreliak's case the difference between Mike's second wood-frame farm house and his first log farm house or his father's traditional log house, can be ascribed to Mike's prosperity. The difference between the first traditional houses and the second wood frame dwelling can also be ascribed to Mike's assimilation of Canadian aesthetic values and Canadian architectural styles.102 Mike Hawreliak expediently adopted modern values like upward social mobility and economic progress.

100 Samoilovych, q. in Lesoway, 69,70. 101 Lesoway, 71. 102 Lesoway, 71. 86

IV MODERN DWELLINGS

The fourth category of architectural construction is the Modern Dwelling. The continuity of house types being characterized solely by construction techniques breaks down with modernism. A variety of construction techniques characterize modern dwelling architecture. A modern dwelling may be a wood frame house, a brick house, or a concrete and steel construction. Modern dwellings display complete diversity and versatility of materials, design, structure and spatial arrangements. Modern dwellings may be houses, high-rise apartment buildings, town-houses or condominiums. They exist today primarily in an urban environment, the Canadian village, town, or city. Other criteria besides construction technique define modern dwellings. "Modern" may be defined as that which is most recent during a specific time period. The modern time period under discussion is that from 1940 to the present.

.. .framed or brick houses were identified as "modern" buildings while log and other forms were "primitive." Perhaps one reason for this view was that frame houses, unlike those with log-bearing walls, could be enlarged easily. A house that could not be enlarged could hardly represent personal, economic, and social improvement.103

For the purposes of this thesis we will look at modern dwellings from the 1960s onward, the wood frame houses in rural or small town settings. The wood frame modern bungalow or two story house, for the most part, typifies a complete integration into the Canadian architectural urban landscape where no visible Ukrainian elements have been considered in the house construction itself. The first three house types in addition to being characterized by construction types are also characterized by their rural location and their Ukrainian cultural presence.

103 Don G. Weatherall, A History of Housing in Alberta, 1870-1967, (Edmonton: Alberta Culture: Historic Sites Service, 1988) 20, q. in Iwanus, 1. 87

While the early wood frame construction of the Hawreliak house is still a farm house, the modern wood frame house is more likely to be in an urban environment (village, town or city). What is also noticeable in the context of this study is that the modern home in a small town, like the Demchuk house or my parents' house, is likely to have undergone more than one construction phase. It is likely to have undergone several interior spatial revisions as well as more than one exterior addition. The final result is not like the first frame houses that may have been cold and uncomfortable to live in. A modern home by today's standards is also a very comfortable dwelling with many of the latest purchased conveniences and aesthetic furnishings. Modernity is characterized in this context by the comfort of its inhabitants in a primarily urban setting. Perhaps one can say that Ukrainian tradition, as an inherited body of knowledge, beliefs and practices with respect to house construction that were passed down from one generation to the next until the early 20th century, are very nearly dispensed with at the very modern end of the house continuum scale. Exceptions in this regard do exist. Two exceptions would be two modern brick homes constructed in Edmonton (the Sembaliuk and the Sokolowski houses), which have an outdoor pick /bake oven, built in their back yards. Here the Ukrainian presence with respect to house construction is an exceptional external one, rather than the normative internal Ukrainian presence within the contemporary modern home or apartment. While the exterior structure of the modern wood frame bungalow or concrete and steel contemporary apartment does not for the most part take into consideration Ukrainian traditional building practices, it is the interior elements and possessions that still might mark a Ukrainian cultural presence within the modern urban home. If the interior contents primarily contribute to ascribing a Ukrainian presence within a modern structure, it is important to observe what some of these contents are. Some interior objects will be listed and discussed in Chapter Three. 88

V CONCLUSIONS

1890-1905 1900-1940 1914-1925 1940-2008 BURDEI LOG & PLASTER WOOD FRAME MODERN

1 2 -3- —4

Figure 39. Four House Types on a Continuum

1890-1905 1900-1940 1914-1925 1940-2008 BURDEI LOG PLASTER WOOD FRAME MODERN (Wood Frame, Brick, Concrete & Steel)

1 2 3** 4*

Baba's 1920s House Parents' 1960s House Parents'1920s House Remodeled Wood Frame Before Renovation

Figure 40. My Baba's and Parents' Houses on a Continuum

Within the range of possibilities on the four-fold continuum as presented by the literature on Ukrainian dwellings since the arrival of the first Ukrainians to Canada we are looking to situate both my Baba's and my parents' Kamsack houses. These Kamsack houses are not dug out dwellings, nor log houses, but they are wood frame houses. They are urban constructions and they were both built sometime during the 1920s. It must be concluded that these two 1920s family houses fit into the third Wood Frame House category where this technique of housing construction began between 1914 and 1925. Both family houses are lumber constructions that employ two by four inch wood studs inside a wood frame. The studs together with the frame structure hold up the walls of the house. In between the studs of both my Baba's and my parents' houses wood shavings were used for insulation. The new 1960s additions in my parents' house were insulated 89 with thick sheets of pink fiberglass. My parents' 1960s remodeled wood frame house is also a modern urban dwelling. I will argue that these Kamsack family houses are also culturally adapted structures bearing elements of both traditional Ukrainian aesthetics and architecture, as well as elements of modern aesthetic sensibility, and house construction practice. Within Lehr's categorization the "ethnic hybrid" was described to include the log house covered over with wood siding, bearing elements of both Ukrainian and Canadian building traditions. This narrowly defined hybridity, according to Lehr, ended with the North American style wood frame house when elements of traditional Ukrainian, aesthetics and architecture were no longer visible. I argue that this ethnically or culturally adapted house style has not ended yet. While the hybridity may or may not be externally visible and while it may have changed over time, it still exists today. It exists in a wide variety of forms, two of which are my Baba's former house and my parents' houses.

A. Situating My Baba's and My Parents' Houses Along The House Continuum

Baba's house may be regarded as an early 1920s wood frame construction by virtue of the materials used, lumber and two by four inch studs, not log and plaster. In the 1940s it was a structure with some modern elements such as its exterior asphalt red imitation brick siding, and blue asphalt shingles as well as interior additions like indoor plumbing with a sink and toilet, the modern bedroom suite with a blond colored wood dresser, chest of drawers and headboard, a chesterfield and chair, as well as the oil burning stove in her living room. My parent's original 1920s house, like my Baba's Kamsack Boulevard house is also structurally an early 1920s wood frame house. The traditional Ukrainian features of my parent's original house, like my Baba's Kamsack house include: a root cellar basement, a high pitched roof, a half storey attic space that was originally accessible only from the outside by a ladder, similar interior room division, storage porch entrance, a small and a big room being it's primary features, the predominance of a large wood stove in the smaller kitchen space. 90

With the new versatility of wood frame construction, two of my father's revisions to our old house included: 1. making the half storey attic space accessible through a newly constructed inside trap door located in the ceiling of one of the bedrooms, 2. creating an additional office-bedroom type area in the half storey attic space. This half story attic space was newly divided into two parts, the new paneled and painted office- bedroom that had a window in it, and the old original attic with ceiling joists visible along the roof line. The old attic had wooden shavings on its floor and it contained the chimney. This room had no window or light and one needed a flash light in order to locate contents within it. These two parts of the half storey attic space were separated by a wall with a heavy door in it. In the old and cold, dark half of the attic one could sometimes see light coming from the outside through cracks in the wood. This area of the attic was a storage area for Christmas decorations, old magazines and clothes. This half- storey attic space retains its same function even now. One enters the attic now, as before, with a ladder going up through a ceiling trap door. Presently, the trap door is in the newly reconstructed hallway instead of the old bedroom. In Baba's case and my parents' case, the wood frame houses bear elements of both the traditional Ukrainian log house, as well as elements from modern house construction. Baba's Kamsack house did not reflect the typical Ukrainian log house floor plan, but there are a few remnants of this traditional house pattern. Baba's house was built sometime between 1920 and 1940, and to my knowledge, it was built by a Ukrainian man whose name was Mr. Huziak. When my grandparents moved into the house, it was already an old house in need of painting which is evident from the paint for purchase on their 1948 grocery list as well as from the photograph of the two sets of grandparents in Fig. 4. On the left side of the photo a paint can is situated by the kitchen door. According to Lehr two features characterize the modernity of wood frame construction: 1. having additional rooms in the floor plan, 2. having a second storey or half storey. The peasant log and plaster house by contrast was primarily a one storey single floor space. Some traditional Ukrainian houses did have attics too. Both 1920s Kamsack houses had extra rooms in their floor plan. In both cases a bedroom was added, and later a bathroom as well. (This was done in some log houses as well.) Both these 91 renovations were made to the 1920s houses by internally subdividing already existing spaces. The materials also rendered the house modern. The log and plaster construction of the traditional Ukrainian log and plaster house was replaced by wood frame construction. The building materials with the visual wood exterior, and in Baba's case, its red imitation brick siding, situated both houses moving along the house continuum from wood frame towards modernity. While the two 1920 s houses were early wood-frame, positioned closest on our continuum to the peasant folk house, my parents' remodeled modern bungalow might be considered a modern home. I argue is in fact a hybrid house positioned closest to the modern end of the spectrum. Its hybridity rests with the fact that vestiges of its original construction still exist. For example, while the original root cellar dug into the earth, similar in technique to the earthen dug out burdei construction, and a prominent feature of the wood frame construction, was extended into a small poured concrete basement, the entire house with the new additions does not have a full basement. The structure of the original house defines the basement. Any additions to the old structure rest on leveled concrete blocks. It should be noted here that, in addition to the revisions within the old house, there were three more additions to that house, the early 1960s addition already discussed, with a master bedroom and living room. A second addition was constructed by my mother's cousin Tommy Marteniuk in the late 1960s. This addition took the form of a small 3 room apartment consisting of a large kitchen day-room with a chesterfield, a smaller bedroom and a bathroom. This space resembled that of Baba's previous house and was intended for my Baba after the town took over her property for highway construction. The final addition was made in the 1970s after I had already left my parents' home. This was a garage added onto the west side of the house. It is located in front of and next to the old garage that my father originally constructed as a separate outbuilding. My father told me that Mr. Huziak also built our original Kamsack house as well as the small colony of similar looking houses on Alberta Street in Kamsack. I was familiar with three of these houses: Baba's house, my parents' house, and the house of Mike, Mary and Jeannie Holinaty, our neighbors who lived across the street. All of these 92 small houses on Alberta Street had a similar plan, in that one walked into a porch area, proceeded into a small kitchen and then into a larger living room. In each of the three houses, a small bedroom was attached to the right side of the living room. While there was no continuity between these houses and the traditional log and plaster Ukrainian house in terms of the building's south orientation or door and window placement, there was a consistency between these houses that were constructed in this little colony on Alberta Street in Kamsack. They were all originally painted white and they all had turquoise trim around the doors and windows. They were all part of an area in the town of Kamsack known as "Little Russia." Baba's red imitation brick house had a northern orientation with the entrance into the building and three windows on the north side. The south side only had one window in the kitchen and a very small porch window situated close to the porch ceiling. The 'south only' orientation of the traditional Ukrainian log and plaster house was not a priority with street layout in a town setting. People's relationship with the street was more of a priority than their traditional relationship with the sun. The west wall and the east wall of Baba's house had one window each. My parents' house, like Baba's had a northern orientation while our neighbor's house across the street had a southern orientation. Another possible discernable connection with Ukrainian log-house construction might be with respect to room size, that is: the smaller kitchen and larger living room, the entrance into a porch storage area, the attic under a fairly high pitched roof which had a separate outside entrance accessible only by ladder, as well as a cold storage root cellar dug into the earth underneath the house, which all three houses did have. In Baba's house the porch was not just an entrance vestibule, it was also a storage space. Her refrigerator was in the porch as was her barrel for making sauerkraut. When she baked bread or made khrustyky and pysanky for the holidays, they were stored in brown paper shopping bags in the porch. The door between the kitchen and the porch remained shut most of the winter and spring so the temperature in the porch was quite cool and much lower than in the rest of the house. This cooler temperature enabled food preservation without freezing. As in the traditional log house, the porch was the primary transitional space. The doorway between the kitchen and the porch, the one in the Baba's House story, with the wax cross over it, was the doorway that marked the guest's main entrance into the 93 domestic space. The epiphany ritual practice of marking the space above doors and windows with wax crosses is thus part of a traditional threshold ritual complex where the divine was invoked for added protection over the more vulnerable and mediatorial areas of the house such as windows and doors. Visiting with guests in Baba's house took place primarily in the kitchen space near the kitchen table. Similar to the traditional log house, this guest area was just inside the kitchen door, along the south wall of the house. A row of wooden chairs was set against the kitchen's south wall, as opposed to the more traditional wooden bench. And yet, it is visually noticeable that the row of chairs along the wall has a different sensibility than chairs being placed around the four sides of the table itself. This placement of a row of chairs looked like, and functioned like, the traditional bench. Wooden benches were still part of Baba's domestic setting, only now they were placed outside of the house instead of inside. One bench, hugging the exterior west wall, was placed underneath the west living room window just outside the main porch entrance door. In the summer it was not uncommon for Baba to visit out doors with her guests all seated together on this bench. The second wooden bench, again facing west, was placed next to a large wood pile on the south side of the house. It provided a place to rest while working in the garden or recreating in the back yard. Only when large numbers of guests visited Baba, as on the major holidays like Christmas, did the living room become the guest area. There was also a clear distinction within the kitchen between the work and guest area. The wood stove, with a kitchen sink and cupboard across from it in the back corner of the kitchen, marked the work area, while the area nearest the entrance marked the guest area. As in the traditional folk house, the stove was a dominant visual presence. In Baba's house it was located at the back left side of the kitchen. The household activities tended to revolve around it year round, but more so in winter. Bread dough was put to rise and to bake on or in the stove, meals were prepared there and in the early spring yellow baby chicks lived close to the stove on a kind of aluminum shelving. There were ritual objects in every corner of my Baba's house. They were on top of the kitchen shelf nearest the kitchen door. They were around the kitchen stove and chimney, and they were beside the living room doorway. Large icons were hung on the 94 east walls of both the living room and bedroom, although a smaller icon of St. George was on the north wall. The placement of Baba's icons above eye level and nearer to the ceiling reflects a traditional placement associated with the notion of the saints occupying the heavenly realms. On Baba's dresser in the living room were contemporary family photographs and bowls of pysanky and pussy willow shoots. The older family photographs were, like the icons, placed above eye level, but on the west wall of the living room over the west window. These photographs were for the most part, of deceased family members. I do not know exactly what manner of oral invocations my Baba exercised in her space, but I do know that she carried out many rituals including the many and various ritual bread preparations for Christmas and Easter, pysanky-making, and her round of daily prayers in the presence of her icons. Undoubtedly, it was these rituals that conferred a different "spirit" in her house. There was most certainly the sense to me, that everything was consciously and meaningfully connected and that Baba, herself, was connected to everything. This sensibility parallels Gaston Bachelard's notion of intimate inhabited space: "From one object in a room to another, housewifely care weaves the ties that unite a very ancient past to the new epoch." 104 For Bachelard the purpose of the house was to protect and house a daydreamer in peace. Here Bachelard places important value to solitude, imagination and emotional connectivity within the space of the house. It is these very qualities that distinguish a house from a home. Here the purely physical structure of the building with a real estate dollar value in contemporary society, is distinguished from an intimate inhabited space where the lived space of the home is foremost, where this space is importantly regarded as an intimate emotional environment. I can certainly confirm that my Baba did her job as a memory reservoir with respect to the orchestration of her house and the impartation of the value of a sacred domestic space within a Ukrainian cultural context as a potentially creative, dynamic and nurturing state of well being. My special feeling in Baba's house, consistent with Bachelard's understanding, was the feeling of emotional connection, wholeness and mystery. This feeling was undoubtedly facilitated by the visual orchestration of a

104 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas (New York: The Orion Press, 1964), 68. 95 cosmology through the icons of Jesus, Mary and the saints, the photos of deceased ancestors as well as through the home-created ritual objects, all of which together, sacralized the space, and lent it an air of mystery similar to the traditional house. On a more practical note, perhaps this sense of connection in Baba's house was also facilitated by Baba's deteriorating eyesight. As Baba grew blind she had to consciously connect to and remember her space and all of its contents in minute detail in a more focused way, and then when necessary, verbalize these connections to have some of her needs met. By the time I arrived on the scene in the early 1950s there was a house and a small garage on my parents' property. According to my mother, my father constructed this garage from the boards of a barn that originally was located at the back of the property next to the outhouse. My mother recounted in a recent story that when my parents first married they kept chickens in that back barn. When Baba and Gido moved off the farm and into town in the late 1940s, they moved in with my parents for the better part of a year until they were able to locate and purchase their own little house. Together my grandparents and my parents all shared the care of the chickens and a large garden. While the house exterior of my parent's home at present is visually completely modern in appearance, the house interior with its objects of Ukrainian heritage, both the preserved collection of Baba and Gido's pioneer artifacts, as well as the more contemporary manufactured Ukrainian art objects like printed embroidery motif linens and clay and glassware items, as well as the hand-crafted decorated egg wall plaques, all render the house a modern hybrid space. Baba's house and my parents' house can be characterized as cultural hybrids bearing characteristics from both the traditional folk culture and modern culture. The object lists that characterize the contents of each house also reveal cultural hybridity. One such object is the decorated egg. Both the Baba's house story and the parents' house story as well as the informants' responses to both the traditional log and plaster house and the modern house indicate not only a cultural hybridity but also culture loss and the concomitant grief that accompanies these losses. It is my observation and experience that with the loss of ritual in the domestic environment, there is loss of intimacy of human relationship and there is loss of the importance of family and of community. These will be observed in the following chapter. 96

My Baba's house and my parents' house are not as far apart on the house continuum as I initially imagined. As a matter of fact, in their original forms, the two houses would occupy the same point on our house continuum scale. With both Baba's house and my parents' original wood frame house being constructed by the same Ukrainian man, with a very similar house lay out at a similar point in time, one could say that there is extremely little difference between these two houses on the physical material plane of reality. These observations counter the initial sentiment of the two introductory stories where life in the two different houses feels like worlds apart. What then contributes to this incongruence? Chapter Three sheds some light in this regard. 97

CHAPTER THREE

INFORMANT RESPONSES

I SOURCES

I conducted twenty-four interviews with twenty-nine informants related to my goal of learning about Ukrainian Canadian domestic life. Nine of these informants were family members who knew my Baba personally and knew her house as well through visiting Baba. These nine family informants include: 1. Marie Stefaniuk, my mother, and on her side of the family, her sister, 2. Virginia Henderson (nee: Marteniuk,) my great aunt, 3. Helen Kryworuchka whose family was from Kryvche, Borshchiv in Galicia. On my father's side of the family and more closely related to my Baba were: 4. Katie Andrusiak, my paternal great aunt who was married to Metro Andrusiak, one of my Baba's brothers; and Katie's daughters, my second cousins, 5. Gloria Filipchuk and 6. Florence Slywka; my great aunt's niece, 7. Edna Krasnikoff; 8. my Baba Stefaniuk's son and my father's half brother, Mike Ewachiw, my uncle; 9. Anne Fedorak, my third cousin. Other important fieldwork informants include Alex and Tinni Dutka. Alex's parents were from Pilipcha, Borshchiv in Galicia. I learned about the Dutkas from another informant Rosella Diduck. Rosella showed me her copy of the book that Alex had written. At the same time, the Dutkas and their parents lived in close geographic proximity to my Baba's family on the farm in Saskatchewan, and according to my mother there may be a distant relational connection. My mother told me that when our family went to visit my maternal grandparents in Melville, Saskatchewan, they often took Baba with them because Baba wanted to visit distant relatives of hers near Melville by the name of Skihar. The family of Alex's wife Tinnie Dutka (nee: Skihar) lived near Melville and were originally from the village of Zavlintsi in Ukraine. When Alex's parents came from Ukraine to the Canora area they converted from Catholicism to Orthodoxy, and it is quite possible that Baba's parents and Alex's parents may have known each other, not 98 only because of the relatively close geographical proximity of their farms, but also through an Orthodox church context as well. Five other fieldwork informants were descendants of families who originated in the Bukovyna area of Ukraine. These five people would thus be contributors to a body of knowledge regarding both the area and the traditions that may have been familiar to my Baba. These informants included: Lena Gulutzan, Mary Gulutzan, William Koreliuk, Fr. Dennis Pihach and Betty Rohr, (nee: Gulutzan). Ten informants with roots in Western Ukraine, but in areas other than Bukovyna include: Natalia and Fr. Petro Anhel both from the village of Probizhnia, in the TernopiF Region. Fr. Petro was careful to point out that his mother's maiden name was Stefaniuk. Savelia Curniski's family was from Nesvitch, Volyn' near Lutsk. Nadia Cyncar was from Ivanivtsi, Haidach. Rosella Diduck's family was from Suchastov, near Ternopil'. Lillian Kobrynsky's family was from the village of Burdiakivtsi also in Borshchiv near Ternopil'. Maria Lesiv is from Horodenka, Ivano Frankivsk Region. Four informants from Central Ukraine include: Ludvik Marianych whose family was from Zavallia, Mykola Rylskiy from Uman, an anonymous female informant also from Central Ukraine, and Natalia Shostak from Kyiv. Twenty-one informants were female and seven informants were male. The last two groups of informants were more randomly chosen. They were often people I knew or acquaintances of acquaintances. Initially I was interested in interviewing people from Ukraine because I assumed they would have a greater knowledge of rituals than Ukrainian Canadians. Baba was from Bukovyna. Her Ukrainian Canadian experience, through her own three marriages as well as the marriages of her 12 siblings and then again through the marriages of her own 7 children, and 5 step children, as well as through her reading of Ukrainian newspapers and her listening to Ukrainian music-records and radio programs, reflected a broader cultural experience. Her seven decades in Canada exposed her to regional variants of Ukrainian culture, as well as the new layer of Ukrainian national symbols. According to my Aunt Annie Welykholowa, Baba's second marriage at 18 years of age to Oleksa Ewachiw 36 years of age, was qualified by another cultural experience. Oleksa was of Polish ancestry. According to my Aunt, Baba was happily married to 99

Oleksa and they attended a Polish Catholic Church. So, for the thirteen years of her second marriage, Baba was also part of a Polish Catholic family. When I conducted my interviews, it was in context of my interest in feminine myth and women's rituals in Ukrainian folklore. I interviewed to that end. The first part of my questionnaire was regarding the various Ukrainian breads and the rituals which accompanied them. The second part of my questionnaire explored my informants' memories on the "Ukrainian house." At this point in time I had not yet carried out the empirical investigation into the various house designations, so I did not ask them to elaborate much on these topics. Had I done the empirical research on houses prior to my informant questionnaire my questions could have been more focused and more detailed. Because initially I was interested in women's activities within the Ukrainian houses of the past there is less information regarding informant responses to the more contemporary houses. The wood frame and the modern house have less informant data. The first question I posed to my informants in the second half of my questionnaire was regarding their memories of their own grandparents' houses or the "Ukrainian house." The "Ukrainian house," was at this time the way I had categorized my Baba's house. The significant point to be highlighted here is that in discussing houses the informants have different categories and priorities than the scholars in the previous chapter who dealt primarily with the different types of house construction. While scholars dealt with construction types IE: dug-out earth, log and plaster, wood-frame, informants dealt more with exterior visual surface treatment of the structure like plaster or wood. In the autobiographical material, I also had different categories of house and different priorities. II INFORMANTS ON BURDEI

Some of my informants called this domicile a cave, while others called it a mud house. Most of my informants referred to it as a burdei, and none of them referred to it as a buda. According to informant descriptions, the burdei was one room dug into the earth. Marie Stefaniuk noted that her father Harry Marteniuk was born in a burdei in 1905 at Logberg, Assiniboia, North West Territories, which is near what is now Calder, 100

Saskatchewan. Lillian Kobrynsky remembers that her grandparents lived in a burdei near Rhein, Saskatchewan, when they first came to Canada from the Old Country. However, both of these women did not actually see a burdei. They only knew about it as a part of their respective family histories. Mike Ewachiw noted that his grandparents Stephan and Domna Andrusiak and their children, one of whom was his mother and my Baba Stefaniuk, all lived together in a burdei when they first arrived in Canada in 1898. Mike noted that during his own time (1914- 2006), a burdei-\ike dug out structure, a separate storage building on their farm called the sellier or cellar, was used for storing root vegetables as well as five gallon containers of jam made by Baba Stefaniuk. A discussion of the burdei was very important to my most senior informants because, according to them, it illustrated the dire poverty of their families and the extreme difficulties which they had to overcome in being Ukrainian-Canadian pioneers.

Ill INFORMANTS ON THE UKRAINIAN PLASTER HOUSE

Figure 41. Plaster House near Calder, Saskatchewan. Photograph from the collection of fieldwork informant Helen Kryworuchka, original home of her parents Wasylena and Panko Kryworuchka. 101

"Ukrainian plaster house," is the most popular term used by my informants to describe the traditional Ukrainian log and plaster house construction. They used several other ways to describe this dwelling: "Old Ukrainian house," "Plaster house," or "Ukrainian house." The second house that my Baba Stefaniuk, and most other Ukrainian immigrants in Canada lived in was the traditional two room house made of logs, plaster and thatching. Mike Ewachiw noted that during my Baba's second marriage to his father Oleksa Ewachiw, they all lived on a farm in this log plaster house with a thatched roof. Thatching, Mike stated, was made from slough grass. Mike remembered living in this house until he was nine years old.

A. Informants on Exterior House Rituals in the Ukrainian Plaster House Rare as they were, there were exterior house construction rituals that accompanied the building of the traditional Ukrainian log plaster house in Canada as already noted by Peter Svarych in his memoirs.105 These rituals appear to have been lost by the second, third and subsequent generations of Ukrainian-Canadians. My fieldwork informants did not know of any such rituals when I inquired about them in my interviews. I posed the question: "Were there any rituals that were performed on the land before the house was built or any rituals as the house was being constructed? Were there any rituals outside the house after it was built?" Only one informant alluded in any way to the exterior construction. That reference was to the pryzba. Informant Marie Stefaniuk stated that during the summer months, towards evening, her grandmother would sit outside on the pryzba and sing, and then Marie and the other children would be summoned to say their evening prayers on the pryzba with their grandmother. Saying morning and evening prayers is a traditional Ukrainian ritual practice.

B. Informants on Interior House Rituals in the Ukrainian Plaster House Two of my informants commented on Ukrainian home births. Marie Stefaniuk, noted a relationship between a sick child and it's placement near the stove. She stated that if a child was born premature or was in any way sickly looking at birth, the infant was

105 Peter Svarych q. in Fodchuk, 90, 96. 102 placed in a little box which was kept beside the stove. According to my mother, the child with the box was placed beside the stove in order to keep the child warm. This may be a remnant of a traditional Ukrainian childbirth ritual called "rebaking the child." According to Ukrainian Folklorist Olena Boriak, in this ritual a sick newborn child was placed inside the oven three times to the singing and chanting of Ukrainian village women. They invoked the re-creation of the formless newborn into a healthy baby by the ritual act of inserting the child into the stove's oven. The oven was a symbol of the mother's womb. So ritually speaking the women were re-inserting the sick child back into the mother's womb, invoking it to be reborn again as a healthy child. 106 Lena Gulutzan stated that birth was considered an ordinary event in the log house and it was readily accepted. She told a little story to illustrate her point: When her husband's mother was giving birth, it was exactly in the New Year Season. Malanka singers and merry-makers arrived at the house exactly as two mid-wives were assisting with the child's delivery. The fact that something serious was going on in the next room, that is the woman giving birth, did not deter the Malanka guests from their merry-making activities. They stayed and partied. The birth was accepted as an ordinary part of life. My informants were all familiar with the importance of icons and their placement in the log house. According to my informants "holy pictures" or icons were part of the traditional plaster house, the wood farm house, the wood-frame English house as well as, for some informants, part of their modern homes. All of my informants were aware of house entrance rituals in the plaster house and the farm house. They observed that house entrance rituals included bodily gestures such as shaking hands, kissing three times on the cheek, embracing, and the removal of men's hats. These physical gestures were accompanied by various verbal greetings. During ordinary time "Glorify God"/ Slava Bohu or "Glorify Jesus Christ"/ Slava Isusa Khrystu was the appropriate entrance greeting, to which the host/hostess responded "Glorify Him Forever/ Slava na viky. At Christmas the appropriate greeting was "Christ

Olena Boriak, "The Anthropology of Birth in Russia And Ukraine: The Midwife in Traditional Ukrainian Culture: Ritual, Folklore and Mythology." SEEFA Journal. Vol. VII, Number 2, Fall (2002): 29-49. 103

is Born"/ Khrystos rozhdaietsia with the response being "Glorify Him"/ Slavity Ioho, and at Easter it was "Christ is Risen"/ Khrystos voskres, with the response "Indeed He Has Risen"/ Voyisteno voskres. One informant noted that when some people walked into the plaster house they went directly to the icon corner and crossed themselves. Lena Gulutzan noted that when coming into a new house or a new community, bread was carried over the threshold and into the new space. This gesture was accompanied by greetings wishing the house inhabitants God's blessings for joy, happiness and prosperity.

Figure 42. Icon Corner in the Stefaniuk Farm House, circa 1924. Standing in back row: Katie (nee: Ewachiw) and Steve Kyba, unknown, John and Lena Ewachiw, Annie,Welykholow (nee: Ewachiw), unknown. Seated in middle row: Stephan and Domna Andrusiak, George and Maria Stefaniuk. Children standing in front row: Nick Ewachiw, unknown, John Stefaniuk. Note icons and family photos above eye level, as well as dried flowers hanging on the right side of the picture plane. Photograph from Personal Collection. Figure 43. A Portion of the Icon Corner in the Welykholowa Farm House. Circa 1925 Bill and Annie (nee: Ewachiw) Welykholowa are photographed here. The farm house owned by Bill's father, Dmetro Welykholowa, was located south of Verigin, Saskatchewan and in close proximity to the Stefaniuk farm house. Note icons above eye level on east wall and the woven nalavnyk on the bench behind Annie and Bill. The family table, not in this photo, was located on the couple's left side, (to the right outside the photograph). More icons above eye level were placed on both the east and the south walls over and above the table. Photograph from Personal Collection. IV INFORMANTS ON THE UKRAINIAN WOOD FARM HOUSE

Figure 44. Wood Farm House and Summer Kitchen. Circa 1940. Located south of Verigin, Saskatchewan. Property owned by Bill and Annie Welykholowa. Photograph from Personal Collection.

"Farm house" is the popular term used by my informants to describe a log- lumber combination structure which sometimes was in fact a dual structured building, a log structure and a wood-frame structure together. Other times this house was a log structure whose surface treatment was wood sheathing applied directly onto the logs with no frame construction technique at all. Yet other times the Ukrainian farm house was simply the new wood frame construction. My informants used other phrases to describe the log-lumber combination dwelling. They were: "wood farm house," "wood house," "Ukrainian wood house," or simply "farm house." ' ,Y'.

Figure 45. Maria and George Stefaniuk Farm House. Circa 1920. Located south of Verigin, Saskatchewan. Photograph from Personal Collection.

A. The Stefaniuk Farm House Possibly, the first Ukrainian wood farm house that Baba Stefaniuk lived in was this two-storey wood house covered with wood shingles. Mike Ewachiw stated that underneath the wood siding of the Stefaniuk farm house was the original log and plaster construction. Uncle Mike and Aunt Mary lived in the Stefaniuk farm house from the 1940s to the 1960s. The interior space of this house retained its two room floor plan with a small room to the west and a big room to the east. One entered the house through a south door in the small room. Directly opposite the door was a large iron cook stove and a wash basin. A smaller pot belly stove was connected to the chimney on the east side of the kitchen wall close to the door. When one entered the space there was a large wood box immediately to the east side and a bench and a table in front of a window on the west side. A south window next to the entrance door just above the bench gave added light to the room. The house was lit by coal oil lamps in the evening and it never had electricity or running water, even in the 1960s. There was a very small window on the north wall. On the east wall of the small room there were calendars with holy pictures. The big room housed another small heating pot bellied stove connected to the chimney on the west 107 wall. The chimney bordered the two rooms. The big room also had a sewing machine and a brass bed and large icons of Mary and Jesus on the east wall. This structure was the Stefaniuk farm house built by George Stefaniuk in 1919. At 30 years of age Baba Stefaniuk was now twice widowed with five of her own children. Upon the strong admonition of her father Stephan, Baba hesitantly married George Stefaniuk, then 46 years of age. Gido Stefaniuk had five of his own daughters which he brought into the marriage. Baba moved into his farm house upon her third marriage to my grandfather.

B. The Kryworuchka Farm House Helen Kryworuchka of Roblin, Manitoba is my only informant who still actually lives in a farm house. She plants a large garden, sells raspberries and garden vegetables and writes poetry. Helen's family home, like the Stefaniuk farm house, was made of logs and either encased in wood siding. Substantially smaller than the Stefaniuk farm house, Helen's house was originally a two room log house. In recent years a porch was added before the kitchen door entrance, and the larger of the two interior spaces was divided to make room for a small bathroom. As I remember from in the late 1950s and early 1960s, one entered from the outside into the kitchen. The kitchen was also the room for visiting guests, and the second room was a large bedroom. This was a modification of the use of the velyka khata. The bedroom also became a guest room particularly for children and house pets, but also for adults on family occasions when there wasn't enough room in the kitchen. Helen's house and its log outbuilding, as well as a summer kitchen, were constructed by Helen's father, Panko Kryworuchka. At the time these structures were built they were part of a farm yard on the outskirts of the town of Roblin. However, since then, the town has expanded and grown up all around Helen's property, and Helen is now an urban dweller in her log-wood farm house. This is evident in the photograph. 108

Figure 46. Log and Plaster Storage Shed Marie Stefaniuk and Helen Kryworuchka seated in front of Helen's log storage shed. The shed was built by her father Panko Kryworuchka. Originally the shed was a chicken coop. In the photograph the Ukrainian log and plaster structure is juxtaposed with a contemporary modern home.

Figure 47. Kryworuchka Log-Plaster-Wood Farm House. 1940 House of informant Helen Kryworuchka, of Roblin Manitoba. Underneath the wood siding of this house is the traditional log and plaster construction of the two room Ukrainian log house. 109

Helen wrote a nostalgic poem regarding her memories of the building of her family's farm house. She titled her poem My Little Log Shack:

I am looking at my floor, And my mind drifts back To 1940, when we built this log shack.

The bedroom floor had been laid that day And the kitchen part-ground- Was scraped clean They couldn't floor it till the cellar was dug So the men worked on the roof in-between.

The women were busy plastering walls with a mixture of wet straw and clay. That was the "poor man's plaster" then Their bare feet danced in it all day.

Now supper was picnic-style-outside. The weather was balmy and fair Each worker had worked up a good appetite And all had some story to share.

Then Dad picked up his old violin And we all sang a chorus or two Soon barefooted women were dancing again On that ground in the kitchen so new.

I sat on the edge of that bedroom floor And watched these old people have fun. Though tired and weary 110

They were happy to know They had done a good deed for someone.

That's how things got done in those olden days.

Folks shared work and happiness, too Now-lost-somewhere along life's highway Good times and real friendships are few!

C. The Dutka Farm House Alex Dutka speaks in The Journey, The Rewards about his parents building their new house. Wood siding was later added to the original log house construction. The L- shape house attests to some diversity within the log and plaster construction technique.

In 1908, it was decided by my parents to build a new house. During the winter, logs were brought home from the bush and during the spring and early summer, the bark was peeled off. Early in 1909 the new house was started. A man was hired to help Dad build this house. It was built about 250 feet east of the thatched house. It was an L-shaped house with three rooms. A fourth room was built a few years later. The house was 28 by 32 feet after the fourth room was added. The log walls were plastered with clay as before. The inside walls were whitewashed with lime. A few years later, siding was put on the outside walls and painted white. Floors were put in all the rooms. The ceilings were varnished; in the other two rooms, they were painted. The doors, windows and the finishing around the doors and windows were painted. The trimming on the outside was painted green. The roof had cedar shingles. My parents moved into this house in the summer of 1910 and lived there the rest of their lives. After their death, I continued to live in the house with my wife, Teenie until 1961. 107

107 Alex Dutka, The Journey, The Rewards: Biography of Wasyl and Annie Dutka of Canora, Saskatchewan For The Period of 1863 to 1953, eds. Les Lewchuk, Adeline Pasichnyk, Sylvia Lewchuk, (Richmond B.C.:Strategic Concepts, 2000) 102- 105. Ill

The third house was built using materials that were bought to make it more tttnfortable. The core walls were still made from logs. 'Photograph taken in 1954)

Figure 48. Dutka Farm House Photographs from Alex Dutka, The Journey, The Rewards: Biography of Wasyl and Annie Dutka ofCanora, Saskatchewan For The Period of 1863 to 1953, eds. Les Lewchuk, Adeline Pasichnyk, Sylvia Lewchuk, (Richmond B.C.:Strategic Concepts, 2000) 103. Note the hipped and gabled roof.

D. Rituals in the Farm House Informants remembered the traditional house plan and could name traditional furnishings within the house. It was, however, more what happened within the house that was emotionally invested and memorable for them. These ritual happenings reflected intimacy of human relationship that informants contrasted with their contemporary situation. The biological events that they described were births and deaths and the house rituals they described were baptisms, marriages, and funerals. 1. Birth Rituals in the Farm House According to almost all of my informants, births took place in the house. Mrs. Gulutzan noted that in her family there was also a special Ukrainian ritual for a birthday or a names-day celebration. Wreaths were made of wheat or rye. Sometimes ribbons were attached. Lena remembers the wreath was put on the head of her father who was having 112 the birthday, then the wreath was lifted three times over his head while the family sang "God Grant You Many Years"/ mnohaia lita. Only one of my informants, Mrs. Mary Gulutzan of Canora, Saskatchewan, reported that births in her immediate family took place, not in the house, but in the granary. Two of my informants Marie Stefaniuk and Gloria Philipchuk noted that after the birth of a child, a cake with red on it was part of the birth celebration. Philipchuk noted that when the ladies came to see the mother and child they brought both bread and cake. The cake had either red coloring on it and/or in it, like a red marble cake. She remembers that when the ladies brought this cake after the birth of one of her younger sisters, she secretly hoped that her mother would keep having more babies so she could eat this flavorful cake more often. Katie Andrusiak, born in 1912, noted that Mrs. Kushner and Mrs. Boychuk were the midwives in her area near Stornoway, Saskatchewan. Lillian Kobrynsky stated that the midwives who attended a birth always prayed, and they welcomed the child into the world with bread, an invocation for the child to have bread all through its life, never to experience hunger. After the birth, the new mother was given a red apple.

2. Wedding Rituals in the Farm House Mike Ewachiw noted that all twelve weddings of my Baba Stefaniuk's children took place in the farm house, with the wedding dance taking place either in the granary or outside in the farm yard. Sometimes, as in the case of my parents, the summer kitchen provided the private space for the married couple on their wedding night. My mother remembers hearing the mice running around in the summer kitchen keeping her and dad company on their wedding night. 113

Figure 49. Ukrainian Wedding in Baba and Gido Stefaniuk's Farm Yard. The wedding takes place in front of their wood farm house located south of Verigin, Saskatchewan. Photograph from Personal Collection. Circa 1920-1930.

William Koreliuk remembers all the furniture being moved out of the living room of his grandparents' farm house near Cote, Saskatchewan. Furniture was removed in order to prepare for dancing, which in this instance took place inside the farm house. Lena Gulutzan, originally from the Sheho area of Saskatchewan, noted several wedding rituals, the first being in the house where the couple were blessed by their parents, who lifted up a kolach and touched the heads of the couple with it. This was followed by another wedding ritual, vinchannia that took place in the church. However, before these two marriage ceremonies of the actual wedding day took place, there were preliminary wedding preparation rituals. During one of these rituals called the vinkopletenia, the wedding couple's head wreaths were woven out of periwinkle or myrtle. There was a blessing with a kolach before the girls started to weave wreaths. This blessing was accompanied by a song which Mrs. Gulutzan sang for me: Blahoslovy Bozhe, i otets i maty svoiemu detiati vinochok zachynaty/Bless God and father and mother for their child to begin the wreath. Mrs Gulutzan noted another wedding 114 preparation ritual where a group of people including young men helped to decorate the wedding tree/ derevtse/hil 'tse which was a table decoration for the wedding. This ritual was called zavyvania. Mrs. Gulutzan said that this ritual took place the same evening as the wreath plaiting and that there were more rituals associated with the tree besides its decoration. She said the tree represented the generations of the family.

3. Death or Funeral Rituals in the Farm House Fr. Dennis Pihach noted that at some funerals at Macnutt, a village in the Yorkton area of Saskatchewan, a decorated tree was also part of the funeral ritual. Dennis noted that this little funeral spruce tree was decorated with ginger snap cookies. Marie Stefaniuk remembered the funeral of her grandmother Yalyna Marteniuk (nee: Kosteniuk) which took place in the farm house. The body remained in the house of Yalyna's son Mike Marteniuk, where prayers were said for three days. Yalyna was buried on the fourth day. The coffin was home-made out of wood and lined with straw. A white cloth was draped over the straw. What mother remembers as a child was that the body began to smell as body fluids began to drip from it. These fluids were collected in a pail. Mom remembers family members sitting up all night with the body during which time they prayed and sang. Mother noted that there was a table with kolachi and a lit svitchka/ candle situated near the head of the body in the coffin. While family and friends prayed and sang at the all night vigil, the kolachi were raised up and down to the singing. Mother remembered that on the fourth day the funeral service was conducted by a priest who came to the farm house to officiate. The body was buried in a small graveyard that was on the family's farm land near Calder, Saskatchewan. Yalyna was originally from the village of Chernowka in Ukraine and she passed away in 1944. Canora informant Lillian Kobrynsky noted that the ritual cloth/rushnyk was also an important aspect of the Ukrainian farm house funeral. There was a ritual cloth placed on the coffin and there were ritual cloths for each pall bearer. The pall bearers carried the coffin with their rushnyky. Mike Ewachiw and Lillian Kobrynsky both noted a particular bread, the perepichka which was associated with Ukrainian funeral customs in the Ukrainian farm house. This was a small braided kolach-like loaf with a cheese, egg, onion and dill filling in the middle. These small loaves were given na 115 pomano/ in memory, of deceased family members. In her pick on the farm, my Baba would make two to three dozen of these loaves before Easter. Mike also noted that, for Ukrainian holidays and weddings, Baba often had all three of her ovens baking at once. These three ovens were an iron wood stove in the farm house, a clay pick which Baba herself made, just outside and a very short distance west of her farm house door, and the third, a floral-tiled iron wood stove in Baba's small summer kitchen located in the farm yard much further west of the pich and farm house. During the Easter ritual cycle these little loaves were given in memory of loved ones, together with a decorated Easter egg/ pysanka, nesting over the indented centered cheese filling.

V INFORMANTS ON THE ENGLISH HOUSE

"English house" is the way some of my informants described the wood frame constructions made from lumber, wood sheathing, and two by four inch studs. They perceived this structure as a new English innovation in contrast to the Ukrainian structures of their past. They also called these wood-frame constructions their "English house," "new English house," "English lumber house" or their "wood lumber house." Both the Ukrainian farm house and the English house were primarily rural dwellings. The English house in contrast to the Ukrainian farm house was often a two storey structure that was not well insulated. The inhabitants of these English farm houses were uncomfortably cold during the winter months. In some situations Ukrainian families did not build their wood houses by covering over their log houses with siding. They constructed their wood-frame houses with lumber only, as in the Demchuk and Hawreliak cases already described. Some Ukrainian families bore unexpected difficulties in their new houses. Two of my informants, Gloria Filiphchuk and Lillian Kobrynsky, associated the wood-frame house with the influence of English Canadian culture. Gloria Filipchuk stated that she and other family members literally froze in their "English house." Lillian Kobrynsky stated that the third house in her family was a two-storey house made of lumber and that it was a very, very cold house. In Gloria's experience, the English house was constructed of wood and it had no 116 insulation, as compared to the log and plaster house. Gloria also noted another difference: the Ukrainian house had a root cellar, the English house did not.

VI INFORMANT IMPRESSIONS OF UKRAINIAN HOUSES IN THEIR PAST

Many of the interviews were conducted in the spring of 2004 in my Edmonton apartment. One interview was conducted at St. Hermans of Alaska Orthodox Church, also in Edmonton. Other interviews were conducted in Saskatchewan, in Saskatoon, Yorkton, Kamsack and one at the Ukrainian Museum in Canora. I asked my informants what, from their own experience, was their general attitude towards the Ukrainian house of the past? We were specifically making reference to their parents' or their grandparents' houses. Through visiting, they may have experienced these houses, but did not necessarily live in them. Only a few of my elderly informants actually lived in these houses. For the most part it was either the parents or grandparents of my informants who actually lived in the houses of the past. In the exact quotations from my informants, the responses I received were: 1. -A Place of Respect (Gloria Filipchuk) (Rosella Diduck) (Dennis Pihach) 2. -A Special Place (Maria Lesiv)

3. -A Sacred Place (Marie Stefaniuk) (Lillian Kobrynsky) 4. -A Place of Protection/Safety (Mykola Rylsky) (Betty Rohr) 5. -A Place of Shelter (Rosella Diduck)

6. -A Secure Place (Rosella Diduck)

7. -A Place with a Sense of Permanence (Ludvik Marianych) 117

8. -A Place of Generational Connection (Natalia Shostak)

-A Place of Connection to the Land- (Dennis Pihach) Old Houses Remained When New Ones Were Constructed

10. -A Place for Many Rituals (Dennis Pihach)

11. -A Place of Peace (Dennis Pihach)

12. -Not A Transient Place (Dennis Pihach)

13. -A Family Centered Place (Betty Rohr) More Unified, More Whole

14. -A Place of Hospitality and Generosity (Betty Rohr) (Lena Gulutzan) 15. -A Place Where Visiting Activities (Ludvik Marianych) Gravitated Towards the Table

16. -A Place Where Time Was (Virginia Henderson) Mostly Spent in the House

17. -A Place Where the (Rosella Diduck) Work Ethic was Cultivated

18. -A Place Where (Anne Fedorak) Life Encloses You

19. -A Place of Memories (Marie Stefaniuk) 118

VII INFORMANTS ON THE MODERN HOME

It is well to note here that the contemporary house may be a reference to a modern bungalow or an urban apartment. The modern category is primarily a structure that is located in a Canadian village, town, or city. The modern urban dwelling may be a wood frame structure, or the concrete and steel structure of a contemporary apartment building or condominium. A modern dwelling is a structure that may have been built anytime between 1940 to the present day. The modern home is likely to have undergone more than one construction phase, several interior spatial revisions as well as more than one exterior addition. A modern home by today's standards is a very comfortable dwelling with many of the latest purchased conveniences, appliances and aesthetic furnishings. In this context modernity is characterized by the comfort of its inhabitants in a primarily urban setting. The classification of house types by construction techniques breaks down with modernism. Modernization breaks continuity with the past including traditional construction types and building practices. I was interested in the informant attitudes towards the houses of the present. For both houses past and present, informants did not have to actually live in either one. I was interviewing about their memories and their experiences of their parents' or grandparents' houses and secondly about their ideas and experiences regarding present contemporary modern homes. The modern house, for this interview purpose, is a structure which is integrated into the contemporary Canadian environment without any visual reference to log and plaster house design. Informant attitudes in their own words, regarding the contemporary house in a contemporary environment were:

1. -A Place of Impermanence (Ludvik Marianych) (Dennis Pihach)

2. -A Transient Space (Dennis Pihach) -Real Estate Property (Dennis Pihach) With a Dollar Value

-Not A Cohesive Space (Betty Rohr) Children and Meals in Separate Rooms

-No Longer A Family Centered But (Betty Rohr) An Individual Centered Space

-Where Family Members Are (Betty Rohr) Spatially Distant From Each Other

-Loss of House Rituals Which (Gloria Filipchuk) Now Interfere With Material Values

-Time Spent Mostly (Virginia Henderson) Outside the Home at Work

-Material Goods In the Home (Gloria Filipchuk) Are Too Important (Lillian Kobrynsky)

-Modern House Creates Barriers (Lillian Kobrynsky) ie: Children No Longer Welcome

-A Place of Good Etiquette (Lillian Kobrynsky) And Pretense

-A Place Where We (Marie Stefaniuk) Can Still Pray 120

William Koreliuk was my only informant who felt more emotional connection to his present home than to the Ukrainian farm house of his grandparents. In my opinion this difference may be explained by the fact that Bill remodeled this former gas station into his own home after its purchase. He invested his own creative energy into its reconstruction. This reconstruction, being a typically modern process, was also a collective effort preserving and extending the emotional bonds of friendship and familial connection. Bill's house, unlike those of my other informants, is in a rural setting, approximately four miles north of his grandparents' original home place, and one mile south of his parents' farm land. The location of his house maintains generational connections. While Bill lived out his childhood in the town of Kamsack, he remembered seeing the gas station as a child when he went for walks with his grandfather. Bill went on these walks while visiting his grandparents' farm. The house on this farm did not represent for Bill the positive emotional connections that he was able to later cultivate within his own contemporary rural home. Bill felt that people inside the family farm house were so preoccupied with agricultural work that they did not have time or interest in cultivating emotional connections that he could personally relate too. Presently, Bill is editor of a local newspaper, The Kamsack Times, and does much of his creative writing and graphic design at his computer inside the creative space of his home. When he is not working, he is entertaining or experimenting with growing different varieties of plants in his kitchen greenhouse and in his outside garden. Bill's contemporary house shares some common features with the traditional Ukrainian farm house. His home is situated in a rural setting and generational connections have been maintained at multiple levels. The physical space of the house is connected with past positive memories of his Ukrainian grandfather and, is in close proximity to where both Bill's parents and grandparents lived and farmed. The house is situated on an elevated piece of property that is picturesquely nestled in the rolling hills and cultivated fields of a prairie landscape. The stunning landscape announcing nature's presence, the cultivation of an interior greenhouse and the exterior gardens that are shared with family members, all facilitate an ongoing relationship with nature. Bill's space continues to be one that nurtures the creative process in a multitude of ways, but 121 primarily in the graphic arts as well as in journalism, with the writing and editing of weekly newspaper stories. Bill's house is a hybrid space being very modern in appearance and construction practice, while at the same time bearing many of the features and core values of Ukrainian house construction practice. In Bill's mind, apart from Ukrainian cuisine, only one traditional Ukrainian object in his modern home, which he called an icon of the Holy family, connects Bill to his Ukrainian heritage. The icon came from his grandparent's house.

Figure 50. Bill Koreliuk With Holy Family Icon

Bill is standing at the entrance way of his remodeled contemporary home in Cote Siding, Saskatchewan. Figure 51. Bill Koreliuk's Modern Rural Home Exterior

In the photograph, William Koreliuk sits outside of his rural home near Cote Siding, Saskatchewan.

Figure 52. Bill Koreliuk's Modern Rural Home Interior.

The photograph depicts one interior corner of Bill's living room. The kitchen greenhouse can be seen through the round and oval doorways. VIII CONCLUSIONS

Most of my informants described three different houses which they associated with their Ukrainian family heritage and cultural identity. The eldest informants like Alex Dutka, Mike Ewachiw, and Marie Stefaniuk, described four houses (burdei, log and plaster house, farm house, modern home). Lillian Kobrynsky and Gloria Filipchuk described five houses adding to their list the wood-frame house. The words my informants used to describe the houses of their past were: the burdei to describe the dug out earthen structure, the "Ukrainian plaster house" to describe the log and plaster construction, the "Ukrainian wood farm house" or just "farm house" to describe the log- lumber combination structure, the "English house" or "lumber house" to describe the earliest wood-frame construction, and "modern home" to describe their contemporary dwellings. The "English house" was the earliest two storey wood frame construction often still in the rural setting. My informants remembered this particular farm house because of its lack of comfort and warmth due to improper insulation. According to my informants it was the upstairs bedrooms of the English house that were particularly cold. This English house stands in marked contrast to the modern home, which can be characterized by the comfort of its inhabitants. The modern home by contrast to all of the above, is primarily built in an urban context, a village, town or city. My informants describe five distinct dwelling types with which they were familiar. They were familiar with these structures because they either lived in them or, as in the case of the burdei, they heard stories about them or remembered them from childhood. Informants have their own ways of describing these categories. Their categories are related to cultural designations, (IE: Ukrainian or English;) geographical designations, (farm house or modern home in town;) time designations, (IE: old and new, the old Ukrainian farm house or the new English house). Informant house designations can be contrasted to those presented by the Ukrainian Canadian dwelling architecture literature in Chapter Two. The Chapter Two categories do not engage with issues such as ritual or emotional connections regarding 124 the various houses. Informant house categories add a personal and a more full bodied cultural dimension to their house descriptions. On the other hand they are not as clear in terms of construction method. Informants also have different categories than those expressed by me in the Chapter One stories. I understood there to be only two house types, the Ukrainian and the Modem. When first conducting my house interviews, I associated my Baba with only one "Ukrainian" house, the one I was familiar with. It was only through my informants that I learned that during her lifetime Baba lived in many different houses, an earthen burdei, a log and plaster house, a log-lumber farm house and a wood frame house. I had incorrectly assumed that when I asked my informants to remember the house of their parents and grandparents that they too would describe only one "Ukrainian" house that had been indelibly imprinted on their memories. This was not so. This was the point at which my research on the house took a turn. I was interested to know something more about the other houses Baba lived in. If her Kamsack house was special and "Ukrainian" to me and held a good deal of mystery for me, there must be some good reasons for it. I have come to learn through the material presented here, that I had with Baba, the privilege to taste only a few very nourishing morsels of a rich "Ukrainian house" folklore feast. While Bill Koreliuk is one exception, my other informants in their responses indicate alienation from traditional values within their contemporary homes and their vocabulary indicates grief over the cultural losses that they have witnessed between the move from the Ukrainian houses to the new modern home. If we were to draw another continuum to chart the more abstract attitudes based on informant responses to their old and new houses it might look something like this:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. * * * * * Burdei Ukrainian Plaster Ukrainian Wood Farm English Lumber Modern House House House Home

Figure 53. Informant House Continuum 125

Implacement Displacement * * Ukrainian Plaster House & New English Lumber House Ukrainian Wood Farm House Modern Home

Figure 54. Most Informants' Perceptions of House Displacement in the Modern Home

Displacement Implacement * * Ukrainian Plaster House & New English Lumber House Ukrainian Wood Farm House Modern Home

Figure 55. One Informants' Perception of House Implacement in the Modern Home

There is a very large gap between informants' perceptions of the past Ukrainian house and the present modern home. These informant perceptions are quite consistent with my own subjective impressions in the two introductory stories. To some extent, this may reflect my own unconscious bias. The question I posed to my informants was: "What can you tell me about your memories of your own parents' and grandparents' houses? How was the house regarded?" If informants had difficulty answering, I would lead them with another question: "Was the house regarded as ordinary? special? respected? sacred or holy? In other words what was the general attitude towards the Ukrainian house?" It is obvious by the consistency of informant responses that only a few informants needed any prompting with a second question. With respect to the contemporary house, I posed this question, "Do you regard your house in the same way as your parents' and grandparents'? How is today's attitude about the house different than that of the Ukrainian house in the past?" Between the informant responses to the two houses, there is what Edward Casey would note as a movement from implacement in the traditional Ukrainian houses to displacement in the modern home. In his book Getting Back Into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World, Edward Casey philosophically underlines 126 the importance of place over the modern preoccupation with time and space. Casey defines two notions in this regard: To implace is to anchor, to orient, and this process eventually becomes an integral part of human identity. Implacement is to be concretely placed and this concrete placement is intrinsically particular. To be in place is to be somewhere in particular. Implacement is personal, social and collective in character. "To exist at all as a material or mental object or as an experience or observed event is to have place - to be unplaced."108 Displacement, on the other hand can be qualified by the feeling of "not being at home," or by literally not being there. Symptoms of displacement are disorientation, memory loss, homelessness, depression and various modes of estrangement from self and others.109 From the informant interviews, my own memories, and the poem by Helen Kryworuchka, it is possible to perceive a movement from implacement to displacement. These sources suggest that the informants felt implaced in the Ukrainian houses of the past. Adjectives like: sacred, special, respectful, safe, permanent, secure, family-centered, connected (to land and ancestors); virtues like: hospitality, generosity, peace; descriptives like: place where life encloses you, place of rituals, place of memories, place of visiting, place of unity, place of wholesomeness, a place where most of one's time was spent. All these words indicate a positive sense of well being, a sense of "being at home," a sense of "being in place." We observe here that implacement is personal, (where one is safe, secure, enclosed); social (family centered, visiting) and collective (rituals, memories, connections to land and ancestors). While it may also be argued that the more subjective Chapter One stories together with the informant responses here may be pieces of nostalgia and that my nostalgic bias may have influenced the responses of my informants, this argument serves only to strengthen the notion of displacement. Nostalgia ( from nostos-xeixxm home, algia-

Edward Casey, Getting Back Into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993) 13-23. Casey, 38. 127

longing, the longing for home that no longer exists or has never existed),110 is itself a form of displacement. The attitudes expressed toward the contemporary home suggest that the people who live in these spaces do, at least to a certain extent, feel displaced and lonely. One would expect this information to primarily characterize the attitudes of my elderly informants, whose children have perhaps left home and have busy lives, or whose peers have passed on with the diminishing of meaningful social relationships. However, this is not the case. Half of my informants like Betty Rohr, Dennis Pihach, and Ludvik Marianych are younger and they articulate in even more graphic detail their displacement within the contemporary context. Adjectives like: impermanent, transient, not cohesive, pretentious; descriptives like: the house is not family but individual centered, it is a place where family members are spatially distant from one another, the house is a place where material goods have replaced rituals, where material goods are too important and where they create barriers between people, the house is real estate property with a dollar value, time spent today is mostly outside the house. These adjectives and descriptives do not indicate a sense of well being. They indicate a lack of intimacy both between the physical space of the domicile and human beings, between human beings and objects within that space, and between human beings themselves that inhabit the space. They indicate the lack of intimate inhabited space as Bachelard described. The attitudinal descriptives indicate the triumph of individualism and materialism where the importance of the social, collective and creative, have to a very large extent been displaced. We begin to see the fruit of displacement as Casey described- the estrangement from self and others. With the displacement of ritual, the land and the ancestors are no longer as important a part of daily life. The honoring of earth as part of ancestral place is no longer as important. The connection between the land and the ancestors is no longer a visible reality and they are no longer connected to the contemporary house in the same geographical way. There appears to be a progressive severance of human relationship from the ancestors, from the land, from the house and from human beings themselves. Ritual appears to have been the glue that held this complex of relationships together. And perhaps what we also begin to

110 Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books) xiii. 128 see here is that meaningful family and community relationships disintegrate without creative domestic ritual. Rituals are one of the greatest losses with respect to accommodating the hyphenated hybridity of the Ukrainian-Canadian status. The loss of the importance of the domestic environment and the creative process within it may be on par with language loss as a function of Ukrainian culture loss. A closer examination of this topic would be worthy of future research. What about the positive gains? For these we will turn to the next chapter. The exterior structure of the modern bungalow, or contemporary apartment do not take into consideration Ukrainian traditional building practices. It is the interior elements and possessions that identify a Ukrainian cultural presence within the modern urban home. If it is the interior contents which contribute to ascribing a Ukrainian presence within a modern structure, it is important to observe what some of these objects and contents are. CHAPTER FOUR

UKRAINIAN OBJECTS WITHIN THE VARIOUS UKRAINIAN HOUSES

It is possible that a careful examination of domestic utilitarian and ritual objects may reveal other insights into the similarities and differences between my Baba's house and my parents' home. My informants, from the interviews discussed in the previous chapter, described many objects that they associated with life lived in the early Ukrainian Canadian houses. I have substantially less information from my informants regarding the objects in their modern homes. The object lists generated by my informants follow.

I INFORMANTS ON OBJECTS WITHIN THE TRADITIONAL UKRAINIAN LOG AND PLASTER HOME

The interior house divisions of the big and little rooms of the Ukrainian log and plaster house were clearly remembered by all of my informants. They remembered the contents within the traditional Ukrainian house. Objects in the following lists would often be found in both the log and plaster house, as well as in the farm house, remembering here that the wood farm house was often the log and plaster house covered with wood shingles and siding. The interior spaces within these farm houses often remained the same. Each informant did not necessarily remember all the items in the Ukrainian houses of the past, but each informant contributed some items, often many items, to the following lists. Some specific items that my informants remembered with respect to the later farm house have been noted as later additions. The made or purchased classifications after each object were made both by my informants and by myself. 130

A. Objects in the west room/ domestic area/ mala khata:

1. clay plaster stove/ pich /made 2. iron wood stove/ purchased 3. poker/ pich or stove instrument/ made or purchased 4. lopata/ instrument for taking bread out of the pich,/made 5. kotisuba/ instrument for raking coals out of the pich/ made or purchased 6. pil/ sleeping platform by the pich/ made 7. wooden table/ made or purchased 8. wooden chairs/ purchased 9. wooden benches/ made 10. wooden stools/ made 11. firewood often stored underneath a large wooden bench beside the stove/ hand- chopped/made 12. shafy/ kitchen shelving/ made or purchased 13. mas lor obka/wooden butter churn/ made 14. bochkka/ large wooden barrel for pickling or homebrew/ made or purchased 15. dizha/ small wooden barrel for bread kneading made by a &o«cfar/craftsman/ made or purchased 16. clay pitchers, plates, bowls/ purchased 17. makitra/ large clay bowl or mortar for grinding poppy seeds/ purchased 18. makohin/ large wooden pestle for grinding poppy seeds/ made 19. large winnowing sieve/ resheto, for sifting grain and seeds/ made 20. small sieve for sifting flour/ syto/ made 21. hand mill/ zhorna/ made 22. wooden chests/ made 23. cradle -hung from the ceiling/ made 24. koryto/ wooden trough used for kneading bread, bathing a baby or feeding animals made 25. wash basin - added later/ purchased 131

B. Objects in the east room/ ceremonial guest area/ velyka khata:

1. wooden table/ made or purchased 2. wooden chairs/ made or purchased 3. wooden benches/ made 4. wooden stools/ made 5. bed with straw mattresses/ made 6. brass bed- added later/ purchased 7. podushkyl feather pillows/ made 8. peryna/ feather tick/ made 9. straw mattresses/ made 10. icons- often adorned with dried herbs and flowers or wreaths made of paper flowers depicting Christ, Mary, The Saints, Holy Events, Feast Days/ marriage icons -often placed in pairs like Christ and Mary/ purchased or given by the church 11. calendars with holy pictures/ purchased or given by the church 12. family photographs/ purchased 13. ritual eggs/ pysankyl made 14. ritual cloths/ rushnykyl made 15. ritual breads/ made 16. embroidered clothes/ shirts/ made 17. skrynia/ trunk- wood and/or carved chest where clothes and hand embroidered items were stored/ made or purchased 18. stove / heater/ purchased 19. kylymy/ tapestries- woven from hemp, flax, wool and hung on walls or/ made 20. nalavnyky- narrow tapestries covering wooden benches/ made 21. woven rugs/ made 23. couch and chair -added later/ purchased 24. sewing machine -added later/ purchased 25. radio -added later/purchased 26. closet -added later/purchased Figure 56. Baba Stefaniuk's Tiled Wood Stove in the log and plaster Summer Kitchen of the Stefaniuk farm yard, south of Verigin, Saskatchewan.

It is helpful to chart the preceding data with respect to the numbers of objects in each room and the respective treatment of each object, whether the object was hand­ made or purchased: 133

A-List Objects in the mala khata of the Ukrainian Log-Plaster House: Number of Obj ects Treatment of Obj ects

14 Made -Hand-made, Home-made 6 Made and/ or Purchased Objects 5 Purchased Objects

Total 25 Informant-Remembered Objects in the Small West Room

Figure 57. Made and Purchased Objects in the mala khata

of the Ukrainian Log-Plaster House

B-List Objects in the velyka khata of the Ukrainian Log-Plaster House:

Number of Obj ects Treatment of Obj ects

13 Made -Hand-made, Home-made 3 Made and/ or Purchased Objects 10 Purchased

Total 26 Informant-Remembered Objects in Large East Room

Figure 58. Made and Purchased Objects in the velyka khata of the Ukrainian Log-Plaster House 134

C-List Total Number of Objects in the Ukrainian Log-Plaster House:

(A-List and B List Combined)

Number of Obj ects Treatment of Obj ects

27 Made -Hand-made, Home-made 9 Made and/ or Purchased Objects 15 Purchased

Total 51 Informant-Remembered Objects in the Ukrainian Log-Plaster House

Figure 59. Informants: Made and Purchased Objects in Plaster House

When we examine the informant lists we notice that there are fifty-one objects listed. Of these fifty-one objects, twenty-seven objects were hand made; nine objects were most likely hand made within the earlier house but probably purchased at a later time for the wood farm house; and fifteen objects out of the fifty-one which had to have been purchased by the majority of Ukrainian Canadians during the time of both the log and plaster and the wood farm house. We notice that while there were a majority of had- made, home-made objects, there were also a number of purchased objects within the log and plaster house as well. It is thus possible to conclude that according to my informants, there were in the Ukrainian log and plaster house, a greater number of objects that were home-made than objects that were purchased outside of the home. 135

Figure 60. Baba Stefaniuk's Wooden Table. Circa 1920. Quite possibly home-made or purchased, but definitely hand repaired, this table was brought from Baba's farm house and stored in in her Kamsack outdoor garage/ chicken coop. Upon her death it was stored in father's outdoor garage. In 1988 it was transported to Verigin, Sk., closer to it's original farm home. It was then repainted. Inherited Item in Personal Collection.

Figure 61. Baba Stefaniuk's Wooden Table & Chairs. Circa 1920. This factory made wooden table with six pressed back chairs was in the kitchen of Baba's Kamsack house until the late 1950s early 1960s. The set was then transported back to its original home at the Stefaniuk farm house. It was stored there until the early 1970s when the set was again transported back to Kamsack and restored. Item in Personal Collection. 136

C. Informants on Ritual Objects in the Log and Plaster House

A ritual object is an object that in some way facilitates transformation. Traditionally within Ukrainian folk culture peasants believed in a spiritual universe where particular objects could have properties to assist in effecting both spiritual and material changes. These objects, known as ritual objects, were regarded by the peasantry as sacred or holy. For the purpose of discussion I zeroed in more narrowly on the category of ritual objects within the Ukrainian plaster house. The following objects are extracted from the B.-List. In my field work questionnaire I asked my informants more specifically, "What were the ritual objects in the Ukrainian house of the past, that is, the objects that were considered holy or sacred?" According to my informants these objects were: 1. Ukrainian ritual breads/ perepichky, pasky, babky, kolachi (Mike Ewachiw)

2. Ukrainian Easter eggs/ pysanky (Mike Ewachiw) 3. Ukrainian hand-embroidered ritual cloths/ rushnyky (Lillian Kobrynsky) 4. Ukrainian hand-embroidered clothes and pillows/ podushky (Mary Gulutzan) 5. Woven rugs or bench coverings nalavnyky (Lena Gulutzan) 6. Holy pictures or icons (Marie Stefaniuk) 7. Calendars with holy pictures portrayed (Ludvik Marianych) 8. Portraits of the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko (Lena Gulutzan)

What is noteworthy and important is the discussion which followed the articulation of the preceding informant listings. My informants were careful to tell me that most of the items inside the plaster house were items that were also made within this house. The majority of ritual objects in the log and plaster house as well as many utilitarian objects were created, hand-made, home-made and often, in the case of ritual objects, prominently displayed within the domestic environment of the log and plaster house. The informant data in the object lists verifies those initial memories. While one of my informants stated that everything in this house was home-made, it can be safely 137 concluded from the data that, while the majority of items in the log and plaster house were in fact made, a good number of items were also purchased.

II INFORMANTS ON UKRAINIAN OBJECTS IN THE

MODERN HOME

In my informant interviews while on the topic of the contemporary home environment, I posed this question, "What in your own house do you see as related to the Ukrainian tradition?" "Ukrainian tradition," needs some amplification at this point. Webster's Dictionary defines "tradition" as a set of beliefs, customs or narratives that have been transmitted by word of mouth from one generation to the next.11l Tradition within a Ukrainian Canadian context would be those beliefs, customs or narratives primarily based on Ukrainian peasant culture. Peasant symbolism is important in Ukrainian cultural expression because of the history of the national movement in Ukraine and the development of a Ukrainian national consciousness. The concept of nationhood based on ethnic culture evolved and began spreading in the 18th century. This notion is rooted in the German philosophy of Johann Herder. Herder contrasted the "artificial," "degrading" society of royalty and nobility with the "natural vibrant," culture of the common people. In Herder's estimation a people's unique cultural traits were rooted in the authentic, unspoiled and rich culture of the peasantry. Elliot Oring in his book Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: An Introduction, states that the early folklore scholars betray a particular set of assumptions about the materials that have been labeled folklore: 1. The unlettered peasants, uncorrupted by civilization, were the remnants and spiritual heirs of a native heathen nation.

Allee, John Gage, ed. Webster's Dictionary, (USA: The Literary Press, 1958) 394.

Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988) 228. 138

2. Their distinctive tales, songs, speech forms, and customs reflected the past. They were fragments of the philosophy and way of life of an ancient people. 3. The material and spiritual life of these ancient peoples could be reconstructed through the judicious analysis and comparison of contemporary tales and customs. It is important to recognize that the serious and scientific study of the earliest folklorists was based upon the belief that peasants were the remnant of an ancient people who once lived upon the land, and their lore- peasant tales, songs, sayings and customs echoed the life and spirit of their ancestors.113 Ukrainian intellectuals welcomed Herder's ideas. Their interest in Ukrainian folklore developed in part as a result of their own progressive estrangement from the imperial establishment that coincided with both the political dominance of Russia in Eastern Ukraine and the dominance of Poland in western Ukraine. For Ukrainian intelligentsia turning to their own people meant turning to the Ukrainian peasants, as 90% of Ukraine's population in the late 18th and 19th centuries was rural.114 One of the most widespread endeavors of the Ukrainian intellectuals was to build links to the peasantry through the study of folklore. These Ukrainian folklorists collected and wrote ethnographic accounts on oral lore, customs, art and material culture. Folklore was regarded as the most prominent characteristic of a distinctively Ukrainian culture.115 Folklore in this context is understood as the lore or expression of the Ukrainian peasant. Where objects in the rest of this thesis are preceded by the word "folk" or "traditional Ukrainian folk" or "Ukrainian traditional" the reference is to Ukrainian peasant folk in the context of a Ukrainian nationalist consciousness. This stands in contrast to the notion of folklore as presented by Alan Dundes in the introduction of this thesis, where "folk" can refer to any group of people who share at

Elliot Oring, Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: An Introduction, (Logan Utah: Utah State University Press, 1986) 5, 6. 114 Subtelny, 269. 115 Anna Kuranicheva, "Art and Ethnicity: the Expression of Ukrainian Identity through Art Objects Displayed in the Home, " MA Thesis, University of Alberta, 2002. 139 least one common attribute that creates a sense of collective identity. "Lore" in Dundes' case may be any of the^/brms of their human expression. 116 Notions of nationalism and ethnicity have been extricated by Dundes' usage of the term. Rapid industrialization and the growth of factory production in Eastern Europe that was progressively removing home-based practices like weaving, embroidering and pottery, also fueled the work of the early Ukrainian folklorists.117 In the late 19th and early 20th century there was a scholarly exploration of peasant themes. In a relatively short period of time, these folklorists gathered and documented Ukrainian oral lore, arts, crafts, and other Ukrainian material objects which held the possibility of soon becoming extinct. The objects associated with Ukrainianness or Ukrainian ethnicity as mentioned by my informants have been classified into six categories. It is important here, before making our way through these six categories of the informant list, to discuss the notion of Ukrainianness or Ukrainian ethnicity. This discussion will bear light on appreciating what and how Ukrainian ethnicity was cultivated in each of the two family homes described in the biographical material of Chapter 1. Academic definitions of ethnicity are diverse. Attributes of ethnicity will be delineated here by three different scholars. "Ethnic identity" is defined by Ukrainian sociologist Wsovolod Isajiw as "a phenomenon indicated by the attributes and behavior patterns that derive from membership in an ethnic group."118 Ethnic identity has, according to Isajiw, both external and internal aspects. The external aspects are qualified by: 1. language retention, 2. possession of ethnic art, 3. ethnic group friendships, 4.

Alan Dundes, "What is Folklore?" in The Study of Folklore, ed. Alan Dundes, q. in Elliott Oring, Folk Groups and Folklore Genres An Introduction, (Logan Utah: Utah State University Press, 1986) 1.

117 Kuranicheva, 69.

118 Wsevolod, Isajiw, " Definitions of Ethnicity," Ethnicity 1 1974, 112. participation in ethnic group functions, 5. ethnic media, 6. ethnic traditions. Internal aspects are qualified by: 1. ethnic group obligations, 2. ethnic socialization.119 A German graduate student, Kornelia Nelle stated that the home is the most important space in North America for communicating ethnicity. For Nelle the adherence to an ethnic group is qualified by: 1. food styles, 2. values, 3. language retention, 4. material items that include decorative objects.120 For one other scholar Leo Driedger there are six factors which qualify ethnic identification and they are: 1. territory, 2. institutions, 3. culture, 4. historical symbols, 5. ideology, 6. charismatic leadership.121 We will observe many of these different qualifiers of ethnicity operative in the following list of informant responses to my question: "What in your own house do you see as related to the Ukrainian tradition?" The made ox purchased designations alongside each object are made both by informants and myself.

A. Visual Art and Craft- 1. carved wooden crosses with Ukrainian designs (Anne Fedorak) purchased 2. paintings by Ukrainian artists from Canada, United States and Ukraine (Lena Gulutzan) (Betty Rohr) purchased 3. family picture collages (Anne Fedorak) purchased 4. hand-embroidered ritual cloths/ rushnyky, costumes (Lillian Kobrynsky) made 5. hand-written Easter-eggs/ pysanky (Betty Rohr, Anne Fedorak) made 6. Trypilian Style pottery (Lena Gulutzan) purchased 7. portraits of Ukrainian writers like Taras Shevchenko (Maria Lesiv) purchased

Wsevolod, Isajiw, Ethnic Identity Retention , Center for Urban and Community Studies, Research Paper 125. ( Toronto: University of Toronto, 1981) 1-4.

120 Kornelia Jutta Doris Nelle, "An Ethnographic Study of Ethnicity in German Immigrants' Homes," MA Thesis. University of Alberta, 1993, 97, 98.

121 Leo Dreidger, The Ethnic Factor: Identity in Diversity, (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1989) 143-148. 8. red and black Ukrainian embroidery design ceramics and glass-ware (Marie Stefaniuk) purchased

B. Religious Imagery- 9. icons with and without ritual cloths (Dennis Pihach) purchased 10. religious calendars /"holy pictures" (Mike Ewachiw) purchased

C. Objects of Nature- 11. dried, or imitation flower arrangements (Anne Fedorak) made or purchased 12. wheat weavings (Anne Fedorak) made or purchased 13. blessed pussy willow branches (Rosella Diduck) unclear 14. Christmas didukh and baba (Ludvik Marianych) (Maria Lesiv) made

D. Food- 15. ritual breads like kolach for Christmas, and paska and baba for Easter purchased 16. pshynetsia/ wheat for Christmas (Virginia Henderson nee: Marteniuk,) made 17. varnished ritual breads like kolach and korovai for weddings (Lillian Kobrynsky) made or purchased 18. perogies or holubtsi in the deep freeze (Marie Stefaniuk) made or purchased

E. Antiques and Ukrainian Pioneer Artifacts- 19. butter churn/ maslorobka (Lena Gulutzan) inherited 20. large sieve/ resheto (Helen Kryworuchka) inherited 21. small sieve/ syto (Anne Fedorak) inherited 22. clay bowl and wooden grinder for poppy-seeds/ makitra and makohin (Marie Stefaniuk) inherited 23. clay, pressed paper, wooden or enamel container for bread-making/dizha purchased 24. nytskyl wooden container for bathing a child (Nadia Cyncar) inherited 25. korytol wooden container for making bread (Lillian Kobrynsky) inherited 26. skrynia/ trunk (Marie Stefaniuk) inherited

F. Books- 27. liturgical prayer books written in Ukrainian and English (Lillian Kobrynsky) (Betty Rohr) purchased 28. literary books by Ukrainian writers like Taras Shevchenko, or Lesia Ukrainka written in Ukrainian and English (Lillian Kobrynsky) purchased

G. Music- 29. violin (Marie Stefaniuk) inherited 30. sopilka/ flute (Marie Stefaniuk) inherited 31. Ukrainian records, and radio programs (Lillian Kobrynsky) (Marie Stefaniuk) purchased 32. Ukrainian song books (Lillian Kobrynsky) (Marie Stefaniuk) purchased

D-List Informants on Ukrainian Objects in the Modern Home: Number of Obj ects Treatment of Obj ects 1 Unclear 4 Made -Hand-made, Home-made, Home-displayed Objects 4 Made and/ or Purchased Objects 14 Purchased Objects _9 Inherited Objects

Total 32 Objects That Informants Associated With Ukrainianness in Their Modern Homes

Figure 62. Informants: Made and Purchased Objects in the Modern Home

It is noteworthy that fourteen of the thirty-two objects were purchased objects, nine objects were inherited, five objects were made and/or purchased, but most likely purchased, and only four of the thirty-two objects were hand made within the modern home. Interestingly enough it is the traditional folk ritual objects that are still sometimes hand-made within the contemporary context- the decorated eggs, the embroidered cloths, the decorative breads for Easter and Christmas and the wheat dish for Christmas. These were the objects from the previous lists that were made, displayed and employed in 143 rituals within the domestic context of the traditional Ukrainian log and plaster house. The objects in the present list for the most part are not made in the modern urban home, but they are still displayed within this domestic context after their purchase. The creative domestic ritual activity has in very large measure been dropped. The vast majority of objects are those associated with visual arts and crafts based on traditional Ukrainian peasant folk art or those inherited artifacts associated with the daily life and work of Ukrainian peasants. In her Ukrainian folklore masters thesis titled Art and Ethnicity: the Expression of Ukrainian Identity through Art Objects Displayed in the Home, Anna Kuranicheva observed similar patterns in her informant data where only a small minority of Ukrainian objects within the contemporary home are hand-made, while the majority of Ukrainian cultural objects are purchased. Anna found that in her sample of informants 46% of Ukrainian people's Ukrainian objects in their contemporary homes were purchased with only 9% being hand-made. It is interesting to compare the previous informant lists with the lists of selected objects in the family homes that form the core of this thesis. These objects will be identified according to four different schemes of classifying Ukrainian art objects and they are: 1. whether the objects have been made or purchased, 2. whether the objects are considered ritual or non-ritual objects, 3. whether the objects are regarded as Ukrainian Pioneer Folk, Ukrainian Nationalist, or Ukrainian Ethnic Pop according to the scheme of Ukrainian-Canadian folklorist Robert Klymasz, 4. whether the objects are identified by Geography, Derivation or Symbolism according to the scheme of Ukrainian-Canadian folklorist Andriy Nahachewsky. The Geography category has been modified by Anna Kuranicheva, and I adopt her definition of geography. All these categories will be more fully discussed following the table. It is important to note that there may be transitional situations within each of these schemes. For example, an object may be regarded as both ritual and non-ritual, it may be made and /or purchased, it may be Nationalist and Ethnic Pop or it may be Derived and Symbolic at the same time. The labels in the chart present What appears to me to be the most dominant characteristic within each scheme.

Kuranicheva, 50. 144

Figure 63. Ukrainian Utensils For Poppy-Seed Grinding/ makitra and makohin,

The clay bowl is a piece of Pioneer Folk Art. It was crafted by Ukrainian pioneer artist Peter Rupchan. Rupchan traveled by wagon and oxen to sell his pottery in the Verigin/Kamsack area of Saskatchewan and he would have charged 45 cents for such a bowl in 1920. Today the bowl in antique stores is worth anywhere between 200 to 400 dollars. This situation illustrates the movement from objects being valued for their utility and ritual use within the domestic context of pioneer folk culture to objects within contemporary culture being monetarily valued within a market economy outside the home. Makitra and makohin, are inherited items from Baba Stefaniuk in my personal collection. 145

III UKRAINIAN OBJECTS IN BABA'S HOUSE AND IN MY PARENTS' HOUSE

Table 1. Comparison of Objects in Baba's and Parents' Houses

BABA'S HOUSE PARENTS' HOUSE A. Decorated Eggs -Raw chicken eggs hand decorated by Baba at home -Raw chicken eggs not hand-decorated by Mother at Made/ Ritual Objects/ Nationalist/ Derived home. Unclear -Displayed in a clear plastic bowl on living room -Raw eggs hand decorated by Ukrainian church dresser women and purchased by mother at church teas Made/ Ritual Objects/ Nationalist/ Derived Purchased/ Ritual/ Nationalist Art/ Derived/ -Decorated eggs displayed in glass sealer jars under -Wood crafted eggs and plate turned on a lathe and crab-apple trees in the garden. painted. Eggs purchased at a Ukrainian Festival. Made/ Ritual Objects/ Nationalist/ Derived Purchased/ Ritual/ Nationalist/ Symbol -Decorated eggs for Easter basket stored in brown -Cartons of hand-decorated eggs stored in basement paper shopping bags in porch. by a window. Made/ Ritual Objects/ Nationalist/ Derived Made/ Ritual/ Nationalist/ Derived -Hand-decorated and wood crafted eggs displayed in living room china cabinet. Purchased/ Ritual/ Nationalist/ Symbol - Hand decorated eggs inside square wood and glass frames as 2 hung wall plaques in living room. Purchased/ Non-Ritual/ Ethnic Pop/ Symbol -Hand decorated goose egg cut in half & mounted on a black velvet oval. Wall plaque hung on living room wall. Purchased/ Non-Ritual/ Ethnic Pop/ Symbol -Wood crafted eggs for Easter Basket stored in china cabinet Purchased/ Ritual/ Nationalist/ Symbol -Wooden decorated egg fridge magnet Purchased/ Non-Ritual/Ethnic Pop Art / Symbol 146

B. Decorated Cloth and Clothing -Baba's sorochka/ embroidered shirt & skirt, -Mother's 2 Ukrainian table-cloths, printed with a (originally one piece) Ukrainian embroidery design stored in a hope chest Made/ Ritual/ Pioneer Folk Art/ Geography Purchased/ Ritual/ Nationalist/ Symbol -Baba's rushnyk/ embroidered ritual cloth -Mother's Red and Black Ukrainian Embroidery Made/ Ritual/ Pioneer Folk Art/ Derived Motif Decal Ceramics & Glassware. 20 pieces displayed in living room china cabinet Purchased/ Non-Ritual/ Popular Ethnic/ Symbol -Baba's embroidered bed spread -Dad's colourfully wovenpoias/belt inherited from Unclear Gido Stefaniuk and stored in Dad's bedroom chest of drawers. Dad wore it under his shirt with a safety pin when he had a sore back Made/ Non-Ritual/ Pioneer Folk / Geography

-Baba's 2 hand-made pillow covers on her living-room couch Made/ Non-Ritual/ Pioneer Folk Art/ Derived -Baba's koralilbeads, one strand Purchased/ Ritual/ Pioneer Folk Art/ Geography -All these pieces were stored in Baba's bedroom chest of drawers. Just prior to Baba's death this piece of bedroom furniture was transported to the basement of my parent's house with Baba's decorative cloths and clothing still inside its drawers. C. Visual Religious Art -Large Icon of the Sacred Heart of Mary -Two small purchased hand embroidered images of Purchased/ Ritual/ Pioneer Folk Art/ Symbol Christ and Mary Purchased/ Non-Ritual/ Nationalist/ Symbol -Large Icon of the Sacred Heart of Jesus -Ukrainian Prayer Book with icon cards inside Purchased/ Ritual/ Pioneer Folk Art/ Symbol Purchased/ Ritual/ Nationalist/ Symbol -Small Icon of St. George -Small ivory cross in master bedroom above the bed Purchased/ Ritual/ Pioneer Folk Art/ Symbol Purchased/ Ritual/ Nationalist/ Symbol -Small Icon of St. Nicholas -Small icon of Mary in parents' bedroom Purchased/ Ritual/ Pioneer Folk Art/ Symbol Purchased/ Ritual/ Nationalist/ Symbol -Small icon cards tucked in the glass of the middle -Small icon of Christ on kitchen table 147 kitchen cupboard door Purchased/ Ritual/ Nationalist/ Symbol Purchased/ Ritual/ Pioneer Folk Art/ Symbol -Large icon of Christ's bloody face above the kitchen cupboard just below the ceiling Purchased/ Ritual/ Pioneer Folk Art/ Symbol -Large Icon of Infant Jesus with Lamb (Donated to St. Michael's Church after Baba's death) Purchased/ Ritual/ Pioneer Folk Art/ Symbol

D. Photographs -Photo of Gido above eye level on west wall -Photo of Stefaniuk, Andrusiak and Ewachiw Purchased/ Ritual/ Pioneer Folk/ Symbol families hung on east wall Purchased/ Non-Ritual/ Pioneer Folk/ Symbol -Photo of Stefaniuk, Andrusiak and Ewachiw family -Photos of mother's parents and siblings, daughter members hung on west wall above the living room and granddaughter with icon cards tucked inside window photo frames. Photos are set on top of living room Purchased/ Ritual/ Pioneer Folk/ Symbol stereo just underneath the hung photos. Purchased/ Ritual/ Pioneer Folk / Symbol E. Objects of Nature -Vase with cut garden flowers or hand-made crepe -Vase with cut garden flowers or plastic flowers paper flowers Purchased/ Non-Ritual/ Pioneer Folk/ Derived Made/ Non-Ritual/ Pioneer Folk Art/ Derived -Hay under table for Christmas Eve -Vase with wheat stalks for Christmas Eve Made/ Ritual/ Pioneer Folk Art/ Derived Made/ Ritual/ Nationalist/Symbol

-Baby chicks -House cat Unclear Unclear -Flower, fruit and vegetable garden -Flower, fruit and vegetable garden Made/ Non Ritual/ Pioneer Folk/ Derived Made/ Non Ritual/ Pioneer Folk / Derived -Cut pussy willow branches -Cut pussy willow branches Unclear Unclear F. Objects of Daily Life -berdol a wooden device for separating threads -Wooden/metal hand-saw which my father inherited separating threads on a loom from Gido and used. Its stored in his outdoor garage Made/ Non-Ritual/ Pioneer Folk/Geography Made/ Non-Ritual/ Pioneer Folk/ Derived -Wooden spindle for winding thread on a loom 148

Made/ Non-Ritual/ Pioneer Folk/Derived -Large skrynia/ wooden trunk Made/ Non-Ritual/ Pioneer Folk/ Geography -Medium wooden and tooled tin trunk- floral motif Purchased/Non-Ritual/ Pioneer Folk/ Geography -Small wooden chest with blue lock -Mother's Cedar Chest Made/ Non-Ritual/ Pioneer Folk Art/ Geography Purchased/ Non-Ritual/ Pioneer Folk/ Derived -Wooden spice grinder Purchased/ Non-Ritual/ Pioneer Folk / Derived -Wooden cupboard Made/ Non-Ritual/ Pioneer Folk Art/ Derived -Factory-made wooden table and chair set Purchased/ Non-Ritual/ Pioneer Folk/ Derived -Wooden clock Purchased/ Non-Ritual/ Pioneer Folk/ Derived -All these wooden items were stored in -Baba's wooden barrel made into an end-table Baba's out door garage at the back south Made/ Non-Ritual/ Ethnic Pop/ Derived end of her yard then upon her death transported to my father's out door garage.

G. Ukrainian Books & Music -One Ukrainian / English dictionary Purchased/ Non-Ritual/ Nationalist/ Derived -Two Old Slavonic Prayer Books Purchased/ Ritual/ Pioneer Folk/ Geography -Two Family Memorial Books for the dead Purchased/ Ritual/ Nationalist/ Derived -Ukrainian Newspapers -Ukrainian Newspapers Purchased/ Non-Ritual/ Nationalist/ Derived Purchased/ Non-Ritual/ Nationalist/ Derived -Ukrainian Records 78 rpm -Ukrainian Records 78 and 33rpm Purchased/ Non-Ritual/ Nationalist/ Derived Purchased/ Non-Ritual/ Nationalist/ Derived -Ukrainian violin music Purchased/ Non-Ritual/ Nationalist/ Derived -Ukrainian choral music Purchased/ Non-Ritual/ Nationalist/ Derived -Violin (originally Gido Stefaniuk's) 149

Purchased/ Non-Ritual/ Pioneer Folk/ Derived -Metal Jew's harp Purchased/ Non-Ritual/ Nationalist/ Derived -Wooden sopilka/ flute ( Gido Stefaniuk's) Purchased/ Non-Ritual/ Pioneer Folk/ Derived

Unless Otherwise Specified All Of The Following 19 Food Items In Baba's House Are Categorized As: Made/ Ritual/ Pioneer Folk/ Derived

H. Breads -kolach for Christmas, weddings, funerals -kolach for Christmas, weddings, funerals Purchased -paska for Easter -paska for Easter Purchased -baba bread for Easter -baba bread for Easter -perepichky for ancestors at Easter -holubky for Easter -holubky for Easter Purchased - korovai for weddings & anniversaries Purchased -pampushky for Christmas -pampushky for Christmas Purchased -medianyky for Christmas

I. Whole Grains, Cereal, Seed and Flour Related Dishes -kasha -kasha -kulesha -kulesha -kutia/pshenetsia for ancestors at Christmas -kutia/pshenetsia for ancestors at Christmas -kolyvo for ancestors at funerals -kolyvo for ancestors at funerals -perohy for Christmas, weddings, funerals -perohy for Christmas, Easter, weddings, funerals Purchased -beet leaf holubtsi with rice and bread dough -beet leaf holubtsi with rice and bread dough -sour cabbage holubtsi-Chiistmas, Easter, weddings, -sour and sweet cabbage holubtsi- Christmas, Easter funerals weddings, funerals 150

Purchased -nachenka for Christmas, Easter, weddings, funerals -nachenka for Christmas, Easter, weddings, funerals -fasoli/ mashed garlic beans for Christmas -fasoli/ mashed garlic beans for Christmas -nalysnyky for Easter -nalysnyky for Christmas and Easter Purchased -bib/broad beans for Christmas -bibAxoad beans for Christmas -makovyi knysh/ poppy-seed roll for Christmas -makovyi knysh/ poppy-seed roll for Christmas Purchased J. Bread-making utensils -dizha/ enamel tub for making bread dough Purchased/ Ritual/ Pioneer Folk/ Derived -makitra clay bowl/mortar for grinding poppy-seeds -bakery purchased crushed poppy-seeds Purchased/ Ritual/ Pioneer Folk/ Derived Purchased -makohin wooden pestle for grinding poppy-seeds Made/ Ritual/ Pioneer Folk/ Derived -resheto Isyto, sieves for sifting grain, seeds or flour Made/ Ritual/ Pioneer Folk/ Derived

Figure 64. Lillian Kobrynsky with Pressed Paper dizha

at the Ukrainian Museum in Canora, Saskatchewan 151

IV CONCLUSIONS

E-List Numbers of Made and Purchased Objects Associated with

Ukrainian Ethnicity in Baba's and Parents' House Lists

Baba's House

Number of Obj ects Classification of Obj ects 3 Unclear 37 Made Objects 23 Purchased Objects

Total 63 Objects Associated with Ukrainianness In Baba's House

Parents' House

Number of Obj ects Classification of Obj ects 3 Unclear 16 Made Objects 56 Purchased Objects

Total 75 Objects Associated with Ukrainianness in Parents' House

Figure 65. Numbers of Made and Purchased Objects

associated with Ukrainian Ethnicity in Baba's and Parents' House Lists

In Baba's house the number of made objects is in the majority while in my parents' house the number of purchased objects is in the majority. With the contemporary home no longer visually exhibiting traditional Ukrainian architectural features it is the Ukrainian contents within the home that maintain and define its Ukrainian ethnicity. Many of the same objects are present in both houses and are in both lists. The informant 152 list and the family list both reflect the: create vs. consume, the make vs. buy, the domestic economy vs. the market economy, many of the dichotomies that distinguish quality of cultural life in the traditional log house from its contemporary dwelling. Ukrainian folklorist Natalie Kononenko first articulated for me the movement in the meaning of traditional Ukrainian objects, from being valued and cherished for their emotional investment, their hand-made, home-made, ritual status within traditional culture to their greater value within the contemporary context being a monetary one. There still are however, within the modern context other values as well such as utilitarian, nostalgic, spiritual or emotional. The informant interviews validate Kononenko's perception where in the traditional house more objects were created and in the contemporary context more Ukrainian objects are purchased by the majority of Ukrainians.

F-List Numbers of Ritual and Non Ritual Objects Associated with Ukrainian Ethnicity in Baba's and Parents' House Lists

Baba's House

Number of Obj ects Classification of Obj ects 3 Unclear 44 Ritual Objects 16 Non-Ritual Objects

Total 63 Objects Associated with Ukrainianness In Baba's House

Parents' House

Number of Obj ects Classification of Obj ects 3 Unclear 30 Ritual Objects 42 Non-Ritual Objects

Total 75 Objects Associated with Ukrainianness in Parents' House

123 Natalie Kononenko, Personal Communication, 2003. 153

Figure 66. Numbers of Ritual and Non-Ritual Objects associated with Ukrainian Ethnicity in Baba's and Parents' House Lists

In my Baba's House the number of ritual objects is in the majority while in my Parents' house the number of non ritual objects is in the majority. The ritual objects within the traditional Ukrainian house of the past were created for the purpose of ritual transformation. The creative transformative processes in the creation of the objects were then ritually applied to human life cycle transformative processes.124 And the end result or purpose of these ritual and creative dimensions was the celebration of life- birth, sexuality and death. These transitional stages of human existence were celebrated through human rites of passage rituals. Ukrainian rituals also honored nature's seasonal transitions through the observance of the Ukrainian calendar cycle. Rituals and their objects were created to emotionally facilitate, connect and mediate through transitional phases of human life and nature. In the second case within the modern urban home and the present Canadian multi­ cultural environment these same objects, now for the most part purchased, engage the market economy. The purchaser may have a sentimental, cultural or religious intent, and may appreciate an object's value with respect to Ukrainian aesthetics or ethnic identity, however, the physical hands-on material contact with the object is a business transaction. The intent is to buy not to make. None of these new meanings are very closely related to the old. With the old meanings the first hands-on material contact with the object was to transform it by the creative process into the ritual object. Bearing this in mind, it is also true that within the modern home many families still retain the older meanings and create ritual objects likepysanky. This observation needs some qualification. While it may be true perhaps that none of my informants would look at the pysanka in their china cabinet and think "what a great

124 Olena Boriak, Rites of Passage Lectures. University of Alberta, Edmonton, 2002-2003. 154 business transaction!" However, the fact is that in contemporary capitalist society the majority of Ukrainians purchase their culture in contrast to creating it. Today we remain connected with our culture primarily through purchasing Ukrainian art objects as aesthetic identity markers: "The possession of Ukrainian decorative objects has become one of the most common means for Canadian Ukrainians to identify with Ukrainian culture as their heritage."125 Other ways of maintaining cultural connections in a contemporary context are through purchasing books, CDs, DVDs, tickets for Ukrainian dance and musical concerts, paying for university courses and instructional courses in Ukrainian dance, egg decorating, or fabric arts where weaving and embroidering are taught. These endeavors are no longer a culture of the folk as in the poor peasantry, but rather the purchased culture of various social classes. How do the informant list of ritual objects within the traditional Ukrainian log and plaster house and the list of objects within their modern homes compare to the objects found in Baba's Kamsack house, as well as to the more detailed object list of Ukrainian items in the modern home of my parents? The two informant lists are similar to the Baba's house list and the parents' house lists. There is the overlap with respect to many of the same Ukrainian objects: decorated cloth, decorated eggs, and the decorative breads, objects which are in all four lists. Baba's Kamsack house had some of the same objects in use as were used in the Ukrainian plaster house remembered by my informants. It is also true that some objects in Baba's house were not the same as those found in the log and plaster house of her past. There is however, an uninterrupted continuity with respect to the performance of some Ukrainian rituals: the embroidering of cloth, the cooking and baking of ethnic cuisine, the writing and burying of decorated eggs as well as the celebrating of Ukrainian Christmas, Easter and saints' days. Baba also continued to cultivate her relationship with nature: the chickens, the fruit trees, the vegetable and flower gardens that she tended in her town space.

Isajiw Wsevold, "Symbols and Ukrainian Canadian Identity: Their Meaning and Significance," in Manoly Lupul, Visible Symbols: Cultural Expression Among Canada's Ukrainians. (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1984) 119. 155

Figure 67. Decorative Details of Baba's Hand-Embroidered Bed Spread

Note the multi-colored plant motifs are embroidered with two solid stitchs/ rushnykovi shyvy for the flowers and popered holky/ a running stitch for the stems. Inherited Item from Personal Collection.

There are, however, changes in Baba's Kamsack house from her house on the farm. These changes are also perceptible through the object list as well as from the autobiographical material, particularly with respect to the objects of daily life. Some of these newer innovative objects were: Baba's radio, her records and record player, her Ukrainian newspapers. Other objects from daily life that indicate changes from farm house living would be some of the items alluded to in the autobiographical material of Chapter One, items like her factory made chesterfield, arm chair, and bedroom suite, her oil burning stove, her iron and electric kitchen stoves, (see Figure 10) her plumbed in toilet and sink. While it is true that Baba brought many objects with her from the farm, objects like: her resheto, makitra and makohin, berdo, prayer books, icons, wooden cupboard, 156 table and chairs, trunks and chest, clock, and spice grinder, it is also true that there were many objects which did not come with Baba into town.

Figure 68. Baba Stefaniuk's Spice Grinder advertised in a 1912 Marshall-Wells Catalogue. Pioneer

Folk Object, Inherited Item in Personal Collection.

Figure 69. Baba Stefaniuk's Winder/motovylo and Threader Iberdo for a Loom, Gido's Flute Isopilka. Ukrainian Pioneer Folk Artifacts. Inherited Items in Personal Collection

The objects from the farm which never made it to Baba's Kamsack house in town were items like her pich/ plaster oven, and the utensils that went with it, the lopata, and kocherha. 157

In my Baba's house there is both cultural continuity and change according to the understanding of Robert Klymasz. It is interesting to note that the only house Baba did not live in was the modern home, even though one was created for her. Her cultural life simply did not fit the house.

G-List Numbers of Ukrainian Pioneer Folk Art Objects,

Ukrainian Nationalist Art Objects or Ukrainian Pop Art

Associated with Ukrainian Ethnicity in Baba's and

Parents' House Lists. This Tri-Partite Scheme is based on

the Research of Ukrainian Canadian Folklorist Robert Klymasz

Baba's House

Number of Objects Classification of Objects 3 Unclear 54 Ukrainian Pioneer Folk Art Objects 6 Ukrainian Nationalist Art Objects 0 Ukrainian Pop Art Objects

Total 63 Objects Associated with Ukrainianness In Baba's House

Parents' House

Number of Objects Classification of Objects 3 Unclear 30 Ukrainian Pioneer Folk Art Objects 17 Ukrainian Nationalist Art Obj ects 25 Ukrainian Pop Art Object

Total 75 Objects Associated with Ukrainianness in Parents' House

Figure 70. Object Classification Numbers of Ukrainian Pioneer Folk Art Objects, Ukrainian Nationalist Art Objects and Ukrainian Pop Art Associated with Ukrainian Ethnicity in Baba's and Parents' HouseLists. 158

The vast majority of objects in my Baba's house, according to Robert Klymasz's classification are the Ukrainian Pioneer Folk Art Objects. Many of the objects in my parents' modern home are also the Ukrainian Pioneer Folk Art Objects.

A. Ukrainian Pioneer Folk Art Upon a cursory glance at all four lists, it is obvious that all contain references to Ukrainian cultural and spiritual objects and many of these objects are the same. The greatest correlation between objects happens in the last list between the food items. This phenomena corresponds to a notion by Ukrainian Canadian folklorist Robert Klymasz who observed that with Ukrainian language loss, the Ukrainian culture was largely preserved in Canada by its cuisine and visual symbols.126 In the two subsections of the informant list, Traditional Ukrainian Ritual Objects and Contemporary Visual Art and Craft, there appears to be a movement in meaning and understanding from pioneer folk ritual objects of peasant culture in the first list to aesthetic objects of modern Ukrainian cultural identity in the second list. Baba'spysanky and embroidery are for the most part, hand made within the domestic context of Baba's house. Creativity in this domestic context bears a more direct relationship to nature, where for example, the chickens in Baba's yard were butchered, jellied and preserved in the root cellar of her house for winter eating, or where eggs from these backyard chickens were transformed into pysanky. As noted in the introductory

Robert Klymasz, Continuity and Change: The Ukrainian Folk Heritage in Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Centre For Folk Culture Studies and the Communications Division of the National Museum of Man, Canada, 1972) 11.

127 Mariya Lesiv, "From Ritual Object to Art Form: The Ukrainian Easter Egg/ pysanka In Its Canadian Context." in Folklorica: Journal of Slavic and East European Folklore Association, Vol. XII. Ed. Natalie Kononenko. (Edmonton: Peter and Doris Kule Center for Ukrainian and Canadian Folklore, 2007) 1. 159 story, Baba did have chickens in her Kamsack house and backyard garage. Chicks grew next to the warmth of her wooden stove on an aluminium type of shelving that stood about four feet high in her kitchen. Once the chickens were strong enough to be on their own, they were transferred to her outside garage and some were transported to my uncle's farm. Three of the nine pysanky which I have of Baba's are written on large brown eggs which may indicate that these pysanky were written on the eggs of her own chickens. In addition these nine eggs are not uniform in size or surface texture. The three pysanky decorated on brown eggs are much larger in size than the pysanky decorated on white eggs and the surface texture of these eggs is not smooth, but grainy in feeling to the touch. In this context the activity in Baba's Kamsack house follows the traditional pattern where the Ukrainian folk house/ yard/ field was understood as a creative center. The chosen items within Baba's traditional Ukrainian peasant culture and lifestyle delineated in this first list, reflect what Ukrainian-Canadian folklorist Robert Klymasz would categorize as "pioneer folk." Klymasz observed that during the pioneering period of the first immigration of Ukrainians to Canada, there occurred the wholesale transplantation of Ukrainian folk culture to the new country. This heritage was able to exist uninterrupted for a good long while on Canadian soil because of the geographic isolation of Ukrainian rural ethnic communities, both from other cultural groups, as well as from the mainstream of Canadian society.128

"'-V

Robert Klymasz, 7. 160

Figure 71. Baba Stefaniuk's Medium Size Trunk

made of wood and tooled tin with a floral embossed motif.

Circa 1900. Housed in the home of Marie Stefaniuk.

The Ukrainian pioneers maintained their traditional cultural ways unselfconsciously, transmitting their cultural experience primarily through oral means. Their cultural artifacts tended to be characterized by function, practicality and usefulness. Various implements, tools, and utensils that reflect an agrarian way of life are the cultural survivals that readily identify the Ukrainian pioneer folk group. Of these many purchased implements, tools and utensils in our introductory list, for example, the spice grinder, the benches, tables and chairs, the chest and trunks, the parts of a loom- the wooden spindle and threader, the poppy-seed grinder, the clock, the saw- were all industrially produced of wood with the notion that they were made to last.

Klymasz, 5, 6, 7. Figure 72. Gido Stefaniuk's Saw

Ukrainian Pioneer Folk Artifact housed in John Stefaniuk's Outdoor Garage.

Figure 73. Baba Stefaniuk's Large Wooden Trunk

Circa 1898. Pioneer Folk Artifact Inherited Item in Personal Collection 162

Figure 74. One of Baba Stefaniuk's Icons

Marie Stefaniuk retrieves one of Baba Stefaniuk's icons from a corner in her basement near the furnace. The icons were placed there and preserved by John Stefaniuk in 1968 after his mother's death. He re-painted the gold frames before putting the icons in storage.

Three generations after these pioneer artifacts were crafted, they are still intact. This attests to the values of permanence which were imbibed during the creation of these wooden objects and the values of family history and preservation. Several of the objects in Baba's House list can be characterized according to Klymasz's folk scheme as: maintaining a continuity with past tradition, originating in a pre-industrial rural peasant context which is not pre-occupied with standardization and is not mass produced.

B. Ukrainian Nationalist Art in the Context of Urban Modern Culture In Klymasz's second category the Ukrainian Nationalist, Klymasz states that it was the second wave of Ukrainians arriving in Canada after World War II who infused a new motivation to preserve Ukrainian culture. These new immigrants were for the most part, people who were educated, elitist, urban and nationalist. In a self conscious 163

preservation mode, they stressed the decorative function of traditional designs and motifs. As a result Ukrainian objects were characterized by being polished, highly stylized, formal and highly conservative. This Ukrainian Nationalist Art existed in the context of a growing modernization of the western world. Modernism and capitalism came into existence with the three-fold revolution of industrialization, citizenship within a nation state, and the proliferation of a secular, mathematics-bound science of practical application. In modernism's most fundamental self-image, its world was one without peasants. In fact depeasantization became a major index of modernization.130 Ukrainian objects in the informant list under the two subsections: -a. Traditional Ukrainian Ritual Objects and Contemporary Visual Art and Craft have all been manufactured outside the home. These are objects like the standardized wooden eggs and the embroidery-motif printed tablecloths. In the context of my parental home these objects have either been purchased outside the home by my family or they have been given as gifts to my parents by other family members and friends. These contemporary items are all stored in my parents' living room china cabinet or cedar chest.

Figure 75. Mother's Petit-Point Picture of Christ Circa. 1970

A Piece of Hand Embroidered Cross Stitch Created by Eli Kilmister (Nee: Kindratsky), Kamsack, Saskatchewan

Shanin, 5. 164

Figure 76. Mother's Printed Ukrainian Motif Tablecloth

The cloth is stored inside a contemporary manufactured chest and the cloth has never been used since it was given to mother as a gift in the 1970s. My mother felt it was "too good to be used." The cloth was made in West Germany and imported by West Arka of Toronto. The tablecloth is an example of Ukrainian Nationalist Art, an object standardized and manufactured outside the home. It is also an art object by symbolism.

Figure 77. Mother's Cedar Chest with Printed Ukrainian Motif Tablecloth 165

According to the Ukrainian folkloric scheme designed by Klymasz in his publication Continuity and Change: The Ukrainian Folk Heritage in Canada, these items, for the most part, fall into the category of Ukrainian Nationalist Art. Ukrainian Nationalist Art can be described as self-conscious, intended as a symbol of Ukrainianness in the multi-cultural context of the Canadian cultural mosaic. Nationalist art is still sometimes based on peasant symbols and artifacts, but it modifies and selects from them. It is influenced by modern cosmopolitan trends. Ukrainian nationalist objects are standardized with an intention to be trendy in a contemporary urban elite environment. The difference between the two object lists also resides in the nature of their intent by their creators. In the first instance the intent of the creative process, ie: the decorating of an egg or the embroidering of a towel, is for the purpose of creative ritual transformation and celebration within the domestic environment. In the second instance these same objects are sold in a market economy for the purpose of retaining aesthetic value and marking ethnic identity. Ritual purpose had some continuity in my parents' house through: 1. the pioneer folk art preservation of Baba's cultural objects, 2. through cultivating their own relationship with nature by growing flowers, vegetables and fruit in their garden, 3. through cooking in the home traditional Ukrainian cuisine for daily consumption as well as for the ritual celebrations like Christmas and Easter even if these rituals were celebrated outside their own home, 4. through the playing of Ukrainian music in the home. 5. through Ukrainian language retention. With Klymasz's scheme of categorizing Ukrainian objects into Pioneer Folk, Nationalist and Ethnic Pop Art it is possible to recognize Ukrainian Nationalist objects, not only in my parent's house but in Baba's house as well. Baba's Ukrainian record collection, her Ukrainian newspapers, her egg and embroidery patterns from these newspapers were all elements from the then contemporary Ukrainian Nationalist Art designation. It is also possible to affirm that my mother's traditional bread-baking and cooking are part and parcel of the pioneer folk objects but with contemporary innovations

Klymasz, 8. 166 like freezing her cooking and baking. Here again the gap between traditional folk and modern begins to narrow, and the pure peasant folk ideal I ascribed to life in Baba's house begins to come a few steps closer to its modern counter-part.

C. Ukrainian Ethnic Pop Art in the Context of Urban Modern Culture Klymasz's third category of Ukrainian art objects is Ethnic Pop Art. This is the newest phase which is characterized by experimentation, innovation and a sense of humour. Objects are produced with non-traditional materials by depersonalized methods of mass production. At this point traditional culture enters in a big way, the commercial market place. Objects of Ukrainian folk heritage are transformed into marketable goods. Popular, rather than elitist, these new endeavors exhibit an urge to respond to the contemporary Canadian milieux. With the primary loss of the mother tongue, Ukrainian objects here are almost exclusively devoted to a non-verbal sensory appeal: the sound of Ukrainian folk music, the taste of traditional foods, and the visual attraction of folk arts and crafts.

Figure 78. Mother's Ukrainian Embroidery Motif Glassware Ethnic Pop Art Pieces Circa. 1970

Housed in mother's china cabinet.

Klymasz, 10. 167

H-List The Numbers of Ukrainian Art Objects in My Baba's and in My

Parents' Houses that can be classified by their geography,

by their derivation and by their symbolism according to the Tri-partite

scheme of Ukrainian Canadian Folklorist Andriy Nahachewsky.

Baba's House

Number of Objects Classification of Objects 3 Unclear 8 Geography (Anna Kuranicheva) 42 Derivation 10 Symbolism

Total 63 Objects Associated with Ukrainianness In Baba's House

Parents' House

Number of Obj ects Classification of Obj ects 3 Unclear 1 Geography (Anna Kuranicheva) 33 Derivation 38 Symbolism

Total 75 Objects Associated with Ukrainianness in Parents' House

Figure 79. Object Classification by Nahachewsky and Kuranicheva

The Numbers of Ukrainian Art Objects in Baba's and in Parents'House Lists Classified by Their Geography, by Their Derivation and by Their Symbolism

In Baba's house list the vast majority of objects are derived from 19th century pioneer folk culture. In my parents' house list the greatest number of objects are symbolic objects. C. Andriy Nahachewsky, Anna Kuramcheva, on Ukrainian Art Objects Because decorative art objects in the contemporary context now play a major role in helping to define Ukrainianness, and are also helping Ukrainian Canadians to identify with their Ukrainian cultural heritage, these objects deserve closer attention. Ukrainian Canadian folklorist Andriy Nahachewsky has helped to define Ukrainianness by devising a tri-partite scheme for evaluating the quality of Ukrainian art objects. Art objects can be defined as Ukrainian by their geography, their derivation and /or their symbolism. For Nahachewsky the geography category items have to actually be in Ukraine. Kuranicheva in her master's thesis modifies this notion stating that art objects regarded as Ukrainian by the geographical factor are also art objects brought from Ukraine. Such objects may have been made in Ukraine or produced elsewhere and purchased in Ukraine.1331 have used Anna Kuranicheva's definition of the geographical category. With this modification objects in the Baba's house list that would qualify for the geographical category would be items like Baba's berdo that came with her family from Ukraine. The bulk of the objects in the Baba's house list would be Ukrainian objects by derivation, objects like decorated eggs, embroidery and bread and the makitra and makohin because they derive from the traditional Ukrainian peasant folk culture of the late 19th early 20th century. Ukrainian objects by symbolism in the list would be the icons because they symbolize a Ukrainian Christian spirituality. It is now possible to observe that many of the objects in the contemporary informant and parents' house lists are Ukrainian by their focus on symbolism. There are in these house lists fewer objects that are Ukrainian by derivation and more objects that are Ukrainian by symbolism. The wooden eggs and wooden egg fridge magnet in the parental list for example, symbolize traditional Ukrainian Easter egg making. The red and black embroidery motif patterns on manufactured glass and decal ceramic kitchen-ware become symbols of traditional embroidered items.

Kuranicheva, 24. 169

Figure 80. Baba Stefaniuk's sorochka/ Shirt

Ukrainian Art Object by Geography

In her Ukrainian folklore masters thesis Kuranicheva expands on some of these notions of ethnicity with respect to Ukrainian objects. In a section on people and personal experience she observes that objects regarded as Ukrainian may be so because they trigger personal associations with family or their life experiences. For example, in my informants' list on objects of Ukrainian identity in the modern home Lena Gulutzan values and displays a wooden butter churn. She associates it with her Ukrainian heritage by virtue of its relationship to her father. The butter churn was made by Lena's father, and Lena herself fondly remembers using the churn to make butter when she was a child. 170

Figure 81. Butter Churn This churn is owned by Lena Gulutzan and displayed in the living room of her modern home. This Ukrainian Pioneer Artifact is important to Lena because her father made the butter churn.

All of the wooden objects associated with Ukrainianness on the Baba's house list plus informant items like Lena's butter churn, fall into Kuranicheva's category which she defines as "inherited objects associated with peasant everyday life but considered Ukrainian via personal relationship." From these categories and examples of discussing Ukrainian art objects it is fair to conclude that Ukrainianness has a broad range of meanings and characteristics and there is no one correct answer to the question what does it mean to be Ukrainian. It means many different things to a wide variety of Ukrainian people through many different sources. How do these findings begin to affect the original contrast of the introductory stories where Baba's house felt Ukrainian and my parent's house did not? In Baba's house emotional affect was cultivated first through my personal relationship to and emotional bonding with Baba herself, and via this bonding to her house and the objects and people within it. Affect was cultivated through ritual, and the creation of ritual objects. These creative processes were the creative glue through which connections were 171 maintained with tradition, with family, both those alive and those deceased, as well as connections with nature i.e: chickens, flowers, eggs, fruit and vegetables, both inside the house and out, with the garden where mysterious rituals were carried out in addition to beauty and nurture i.e: flowers and food. Affect was cultivated through a living Ukrainian tradition. Baba's house was an inhabited space where an emotional environment was unselfconsciously cultivated as previously articulated by Gaston Bachelard.134 These notions and actions stand in contrast to those of my parents' home which may be characterized in some aspects as an uninhabited space with little meaningful ritual. All of these affective connections in Baba's house were possible as a function of place and time as previously elucidated by Edward Casey. Baba was most always at her place and she had time. Baba was Ukrainian, not because she wasn't English but because she just "was." Baba was Ukrainian because this is the life and tradition which she unconsciously inherited from her ancestors. And in the life and time I had with her I was able to just "be." This was in contrast to my parental home, where for the most part, nobody was home, and when they were, nobody had time. "No time! No time! No time!" This, like the word "modern," was another all consuming mantra of my parental home. To be Ukrainian in my parental home meant I had to do something about it. In this context being Ukrainian meant not being English. It meant going to Ukrainian school, doing Ukrainian dance, going to church, teaching Sunday school. And in my estimation at the time, all the going and doing did not in any way feel connected to school, friends, or the social environment of modern small town life. Ukrainianness was just its own separate world unconnected to anything "real" in the outside modern world. On the other hand, while my parents' home did not "feel" Ukrainian, because the cultivation of affect was managed in a different way, in actual fact, it also did maintain many elements of Ukrainianness. There were few rituals in the modern home, objects were not ritual objects and the space was not an inhabited one in the same way. Life happened outside the home more than inside. However, through the object list

Bachelard, 5. 172 information presented here, I have come to appreciate that my parent's home was also a Ukrainian one, in fact more Ukrainian than I had originally felt it to be.

Retention of ethnic identity from one generation to another does not necessarily mean retention of all symbols contained in a culture. In fact the ubiquity of culture does not mean that all the symbols contained in it are equally meaningful or are accepted by all members or sectors of a community. Cultural symbols are always employed selectively. This is especially so in regard to the various ethnic generations who live in a culturally different society. A member of the third generation may subjectively identify with his ethnic group without having knowledge of the ethnic language, without practicing ethnic traditions or

1 ^S participating in ethnic organizations.

With my research on the types of houses that Ukrainians inhabited since their arrival here in Canada, which are also objects of ethnicity, I can now understand and appreciate that my parents' house, from its very beginning was a derivative of the traditional Ukrainian house. The original parental wood frame house with its ethnically adapted floor plan, and a Ukrainian carpenter who constructed it, and even through its remodeling where again a Ukrainian man laid the foundation and my father did most of the building himself, the house defies my original abstract notion as "typically modern." The fact that my father creatively adapted his house to his contemporary environment by doing much of the work himself without professional hired help reflects his connection to traditional Ukrainian ways of building. He was creating his own dream house. Because his house was reconstructed and adapted by himself, his house in this context is more traditional than modern. Ukrainian men were responsible for the ethnically adapted floor plans and the construction of these 1920s wood-frame houses. So my father, by his creative investment extends the Ukrainian cultural dimension which is, for the most part, not visible. The traditional building practice together with a contemporary architectural design for the

135 Isajiw in Manoly Lupul,120. 173 house exterior reveals the culturally hybrid nature of his "modern" home as well as his adaptation to the Canadian environment in which he found himself. With Ukrainian language retention and cuisine as well as the purchase and reception of decorative objects of ethnic identity in the house interior, my parental home maintained its Ukrainian cultural heritage, only in a different way in the modern world. The Ukrainian objects with change over time moved from being ritual objects to being more symbolic objects of Ukrainian ethnic identity, particularly in the 1960s and 70s. With the work of Isajiw, Nelle, Dreidger, Klymasz, Nahachewsky, and Kuranicheva in this chapter I come to understand something about the multiplicity of ways in which Ukrainian ethnicity can be understood and defined. This new information begins to narrow the dualistic gap between the ideal traditional Ukrainian folk world of my Baba and the abstract notion of the "typically modern" world with respect to my parent's home; where one world felt Ukrainian and the other did not, where one world felt real and the other did not. In addition to the scholarship on Ukrainian houses with Lehr, Lesoway, Iwanus and Bilash, and the philosophical notions of Bachelard and Casey, the work of Kononenko, Klymasz, Nahachewsky and Kuranicheva on Ukrainian art objects is instrumental for helping me to begin to narrow the gap between these two worlds and to have a more balanced understanding of my Ukrainian ethnicity. 174

Baba's Objects Parents' Objects * * -Objects emotionally invested, ritually -Objects not ritually created, not hand-made hand-made and home-made -Objects created and purchased outside the home -Ukrainian Ethnic Pop Art (pysanka wall plaques) -Pioneer Folk Art (pysanky) -Ukrainian Nationalist Art (embroidered Mary and Jesus ) -Ukrainian Nationalist Art (Ukr ainian records) -Father's Preservation of Baba's Pioneer Folk Artifacts -Art Objects by Geography -Art Objects by Geography (Baba's berdo) (Father's poias inherited from Gido) -Art Objects by Derivation -Art Objects by Derivation {makitra and mokohin, ) (Mother's Ukrainian cuisine) -Art Objects by Symbolism (icons, wooden pysanky, red and black embroidery motif glass and decal ceramic kitchen-ware

Figure 82. Klymasz, Nahachewsky, Kuranicheva On Ukrainian Art Objects

On the preceding continuum we begin to see the interplay between the art objects, inhabiting both worlds at once. What we also begin to see here is a movement from cultural displacement to cultural re-placement in different form. The methodology and scholarship in this chapter has facilitated a broadening in the understanding of Ukrainian ethnicity through the identification of Ukrainian art objects as visual symbols of Ukrainian identity within the modern context. 175

CHAPTER FIVE

THE DECORATED EGG IN THE UKRAINIAN PLASTER HOUSE,

IN THE WOOD FRAME HOUSE AND IN THE MODERN HOME

In Chapter Four we examined the object lists of two houses, the house of my grandmother, and that of my parents. We observed how these two object lists opened up new perspectives in comparing the houses. These lists demonstrated that there are both subtle and glaring differences between the two houses. The object lists also revealed that these differences can be better understood by thinking about them in relation to a number of themes. There is much continuity as well as much that has changed between the two homes. And yet a simple listing of the presence or absence of specific objects may obscure other important differences. For example, both pioneer log-plaster houses and my Baba's house had home-made benches. In the pioneer house the benches were inside the house, often placed around the table in the icon corner, where as in Baba's house the benches, still intended to be sat on, were placed outside of the house. A more comfortable living room chesterfield and armchair assumed the former function of the bench. In yet, one other example, my Baba's house and my parents' house both had icons, but Baba's icons were very large and filled up the east walls of both the living room and the bedroom. Their overwhelming presence reflected a Christian cosmology. In my parents' house the icons were very small and unobtrusive, (cards inside a prayer book). The first wall pieces appeared simply as one more decoration on any wall amongst other pictures and knick-knacks. These objects may seem to be the same on the lists, but they are different in essential ways. In this chapter I introduce a third methodology, that is: a focusing in on one type of object in order to glean more information. This information reveals further perspectives in the comparison between the two houses and it contributes to a satisfactory resolution of the dilemma of difference posed in the introductory stories. This chapter will focus on decorated eggs. The egg has existed as a symbol of regeneration on Slavic 176 lands since the dawn of civilization and in contemporary society the decorated egg is regarded by some in Canada as the quintessential object that has come to represent "Ukrainianness." Decorated eggs were present in all the houses but they had different cultural and psychological meanings in each different space. What was notable from the object lists of the foregoing chapter was that all lists, those of my informants and those of my family, had very many of the same traditional Ukrainian objects. The intent of this chapter is to demonstrate how a careful observation of the form, the location and the use of the decorated egg in the Ukrainian log and plaster house, in my Baba's frame house and in my parents' modern home reveal differences in what otherwise might be perceived as the "same" object when just placed on a list.

I THE DECORATED EGG IN THE UKRAINIAN PLASTER HOUSE

I have compiled a list of forty-six egg rituals from traditional Ukrainian folk culture which would have taken place within or within close proximity to the traditional Ukrainian folk house. The researched rituals have been classified under nine categories: 1. Egg Decorating Rituals, 2. Decorated Egg Rituals in the Christian Tradition, 3. Decorated Eggs and the Fertility of Earth, Humans and Animals, 4. Decorated Eggs and Death, 5. Decorated Eggs and Protection, 6. Eggs and Fabric, 7. Eggs and Healing, 8. Eggs as Part of the Culinary Code in Ukrainian Rites of Passage Rituals, 9. Eggs as Part of the Culinary Code in Ukrainian Calendar Cycle Rituals. I will describe only a very few of these rituals in order to glean an understanding of how the decorated egg was used in traditional Ukrainian peasant culture. These rituals shed light on the cultural placement of my informants and they magnify difference in terms of where, when and how the decorated egg was regarded in traditional culture. It is important to note that this compilation consists of rituals from many different areas of Ukraine. All these rituals would not have been performed by one woman. The list is diverse and not meant to be exhaustive. Easter Monday was known as Dousing Monday. On this day young men sprinkled or poured water on the maidens of their fancy, and for this they were rewarded one of the 177 maidens' decorated eggs. On Bright Tuesday, according to my informant Gloria Filipchuk, the girls would return the dousing ritual to the boys, only they doubled the volume of water. Like the women, the men could not run away, they had to accept it. Gloria remembered that when they were younger, part of this traditional dousing ritual included the giving of Easter eggs as well as singing songs while the water was being poured. Gloria related a dousing event that she instigated. She along with a group of women drove to Hampton, Saskatchewan to do the pouring ritual amongst friends and farm neighbors. After doing the ritual in several houses, they were driving back home, when the vehicle Gloria was driving got a flat tire. The women waited in the car along the side of the road until a man stopped to help them out. He was one of their neighbors. He changed the tire and was gracious enough to put the old one in the trunk. As he turned around to leave, the women, who still had un-used bottles of water with them, came from behind the man and thoroughly doused him. He said to them, that had he known that they would do this to him after all his help, he never would have stopped to give them a hand. He would have let them sit by the side of the road until the next day. Gloria noted that if this ritual were to be performed today, she and her friends would probably be charged with harassment. Several Ukrainian rituals involved the burial of eggs in the earth. The earth itself, like the water, was regarded by traditional Ukrainian folk culture as a source of life- giving. "In some parts of Ukraine, as late as the 1920s, krashanky (hard boiled, solidly colored eggs very often red) were buried on Easter and unearthed on St George's Day, at which point they were taken to the field, for it was believed that they would improve the crops. Eggs were specifically buried in areas of the field considered to be less fertile, so that they might be imbued with the eggs' life-giving powers."136 Egg burial was a ritual with which my Baba was somewhat familiar, as described in the introductory story. Olena Boriak noted that women were advised both to decorate and to eat eggs in order to promote their own fertility. In some instances the fertility of the woman was connected

Sumtsov, q. in Marta Korduba,"The Bread of Life: Symbols of Abundance in Ukraine." Diss. New York School of Education, Program in Arts and Humanities Art Department, 1995. 117. 178

with the fertility of the land. For example: before a woman went out to sow seeds of flax and hemp in her field, she would eat a meal of eggs in the form of an omelet or scrambled eggs. When she went into her field, and before she began planting, she would bury an egg and some seeds in the four corners of the field. Both the eating and the burying were invocations for fertility. The crops of hemp and flax were particularly important to women because they made cloth from these plants in order to clothe their families. One final protective ritual associated with the burying of decorated eggs that is particularly relevant regarding Ukrainian log house construction rituals: In the construction of a new peasant home the four corners of the house were marked with decorated eggs which were buried in the ground as an invocation for protection from evil. After this ritual was performed house construction was ready to begin. 138

II DECORATED EGGS IN BABA'S WOOD FRAME HOUSE

A. Primary Sources: I have nine eggs from my Baba's house. I remember these eggs when they were in her house, and additional information is contributed by Marie Stefaniuk, Mike Ewachiw and Anne Fedorak.

137 Olena Boriak, Rites of Passage Lecture Series, University of Alberta, 2002-2003.

138 Kmit, Anne, Luciow, Loretta, Luciow Johanna, Perchyshyn, Luba. Ukrainian Easter Eggs and How We Make Them, (Minneapolis: Ukrainian Gift Shop, 1979) 46. 179

Figure 83. Baba's Pysanky Circa. 1960s Photograph from Personal Collection.

I have located nine pysanky which are clearly identifiable as those written by my Baba, five have the rozha/ zirka/ rosette, as the predominant graphic motif. These eggs are written in the traditional wax resist or batik layered technique. The background color of these five pysanky is purple. Large pink and yellow dots peer through the purple. All five bear great similarity to one another with the central rosette image that has lines radiating from its outside edges. Only on one egg do the radiating protrusions metamorphose into another symbol- that being the rake. Three of Baba's pysanky have the oak leaf as their central image and one has a ladder as the predominant motif. Two of the oak leaf eggs and the one ladder egg have the purple background. Only one of Baba's pysanky has a different colored background: one of the oak motif eggs is simply written in white with a spring green background. The dyes on the oak motif eggs are much lighter, appearing faded, in contrast with the richer color of the rosette eggs. This may well indicate that the oak-leaf pysanky were dyed with coloring from wet crepe paper, rather than the commercial pysanky dyes. 180

B. Preservation: These pysanky sat on the living room shelf in my Baba's house until her death in 1968. My father then transported them to his house in a cardboard Lucerne egg container which he labeled in pencil "Grandma Stefaniuk's". This container, along with several other containers of decorated eggs, stayed in our basement in a cool spot on the ledge of a small basement window. After my father's death in July 1999, my mother transported this container and the rest of the egg collection to an outdoor shed in her yard. The eggs remained in the shed until August 2004, when, for more secure preservation purposes, I transported the entire collection back to their spot in the basement of my mother's Kamsack home.

Figure 84. Pysanky Collection

Stored by a window in the Stefaniuk basement. Figure 85. Basement-Storage Pysanka Collection

Marie Stefaniuk seated on her basement step, displays a carton of decorated eggs retrieved from her basement storage area.

For the most part Baba's pysanky are in good condition. A couple eggs however, do have hair line cracks. On one of the more damaged eggs, I put a glaze of crazy glue over the cracks to keep the egg from falling apart. The yoke in each of the eggs is hardened, rendering the egg light and fragile. When the eggs are moved, it is possible to hear the dried up yolk rattling around inside.

C. Social and Historical Context: The nine pysanky were written during the 1960s before Baba's death in 1968. These pysanky are identifiable as my Baba's because all the lines written on her eggs are not straight, but wavy. Baba was in her late seventies when she wrote these pysanky and the wavy lines reveal her unsteady hand. All are executed in an identifiable style- an oversize central image and very large colored dots on a large egg. The generous size of each motif with dots, may well indicate the struggle Baba had with poor eyesight in the 182

latter years of her life. Each of Bzba's pysanky has a waxed finishing, and in the present moment, at least forty years after her initial writing of these pysanky, I can still feel the residue of wax on my fingers while holding one of her eggs. Baba achieved a shiny finished surface for hex pysanky, not with a commercial varnish, as is often done today, but with beeswax. These Easter Eggs were decorated at the kitchen table of my Baba Stefaniuk's house in Kamsack, Saskatchewan. During the 1960s Baba likely decorated most of her pysanky in solitude. I assume that she did most of her decorating in the morning because early morning light bathed her kitchen through an east window next to her wood stove. She would have melted the wax on her wood stove in order to free the kistky that were lodged in the solidified wax at the bottom of her pink enamel container. Since Baba had difficulty with her eyesight in her later years, decorating eggs in the evening would have been more problematic. It is possible that Baba received some of her inspiration and ideas for her egg decoration from the Ukrainian newspapers she read. She and my grandfather had subscriptions to these papers when they first moved into their Kamsack house in 1947. It is also possible that they subscribed to these same papers while still living on their farm. Snippets from the April 1950 and 1951 editions of both the Ukrainian News and The Canadian Farmer papers display Ukrainian Easter Egg patterns. These newspapers were stored in my parents' basement and then transported to Verigin in 1999 and are now in my personal collection. The nine decorated eggs of Baba's discussed here are very likely only a small fraction of the pysanky which she made throughout her lifetime. Most of her pysanky would have been given away as Easter memorial gifts, others eaten, buried, broken, and otherwise disposed of.

D. Baba and Pysanky Rituals Baba created her own pysanky. And from memory I have been able to name five egg rituals that she was cognizant of and practiced in the last years of her life. The first ritual was during the writing on the eggs. Secondly, Baba annually put pysanky in her Easter Basket and /or her bread-kneading enamel tub to be blessed in church at the Easter 183

service. Thirdly, she participated in the family ritual eating of the eggs after the service. She gave some away in memory of Gido Stefaniuk and her other deceased family members. She also buried some in her garden. There may have been additional rituals. She gave some to children and adults in church. She also stored her pysanky making utensils by the chimney. It seems to me that this was an unusual storage space. Since, as we have already noted, buried eggs in Ukrainian folkloric rituals were understood as invocations for the earth's fertility, it would appear that Baba's "planting of her pysanky" in glass sealer jars under her crab-apple trees was her particular invocation for their fertility. Some of my grandmother's crab-apple trees were near her carragana hedges and I remember her relating to me that because of this proximity, some of her trees were not good producers and were on the skimpy looking side. So Baba planting the pysanky would have made complete sense in her cultural world. She was simply trying to get her crab-apple trees to grow more successfully and be more fruitful. And we remember here that in Ukrainian folklore ritual, some farmers hung pysanky on their orchard trees as invocations for a plentiful harvest of fruit.139 Perhaps this was Baba's creative adaptation of this ritual. Instead of hanging them she buried them. Baba's burying of the eggs in glass jars is already a hybridization of a traditional Ukrainian folklore ritual. Traditionally the eggs alone, without a glass jar, would have been buried in the soil to enable the life force of the egg to penetrate the earth and imbibe the earth with its fertilizing agency. In Baba's case, the glass jar is already a contemporary object that might be imagined to prevent the fertility of the egg from being transferred to the soil. A contemporary object is juxtaposed with a remnant of traditional folklore. The notion of burying decorated eggs for the purpose of invoking fertility remained. The decorated egg as having talismanic power was still understood by Baba from her tradition. In Baba's ritual activity, what appeared initially to be a traditional Ukrainian folklore ritual is already a hybridization, an adaptation from an earlier understanding of the ritual burying of eggs with a contemporary object, namely the glass jar. The glass jar here, also facilitates an aesthetic purpose. With the jar only partially

139 Kmit, Anne, Luciow, Loretta, Luciow Johanna, Perchyshyn, Luba, 17. 184 buried in the soil the decorated eggs could be readily seen and admired as one walked along her wooden sidewalk up to the front door of her house. The notion of burying eggs to effect transformation within the earth's soil is still believed and practiced by contemporary Ukrainian women, perhaps with a little different slant. Every spring my mother crushes and saves the shells of Easter eggs and regular boiled eggs. When it is time to plant her garden she puts these saved shells in her dug rows before she seeds the rows. She tells me that the egg shells prevent worms from eating and killing the newly germinating seeds. The primary design on Baba's pysanky is the solar / star/ rosette/ motif. Five of Baba's nine remaining pysanky bear this ideogram. The rosette/ star motif is also significant with respect to Baba's pysanky making not only because of the meaning of the motif as a solar symbol, and its ritual use as a talisman of protection and good fortune, but also, because this particular motif was prominent in the Bukovyna region of Ukraine. My Baba emigrated from Bukovyna when she was nine years old and it makes perfect sense that she would write pysanky motifs that were native to her home community in Ukraine. Not only her choice of motif, but also her choice of colors, that is, the purple background with yellow and green dots is a color scheme native to Bukovynian pysanka making. 140

Mary Tkachuk, Marie Kischuk, Alice Nicholaichuk, Pysanka: Icon of The Universe, 34. 185

III DECORATED EGGS IN MOTHER'S MODERN HOME

A Description:

Figure 86. Mother's Wooden Pysanky.

Photograph from Personal Collection.

I have located three pysanky on a plate. All four items, the three eggs and the matching plate upon which they rest, have been crafted from wood and have been turned on a wood lathe. Each of the three miniature wooden eggs is 13/4 inches long with the diameter of the plate being 31/2 inches. Each egg is divided by black lines into 5 highly geometric, stylized, standardized sections with a busy visual effect. The colors employed on the egg are red, white, green and yellow, as well as the beige color of the turned wood. The plate is divided by black linear configurations into three circular sections. The colors used on the plate are the same as that on the eggs. The center of the plate bears a rosette motif. Motifs on the eggs include: sun, stars, crosses and half circles. The type of paints, dyes or markers used to color the egg set is unknown, with the exception of a wood 186 varnish that coats all of the pieces. There are no markings or stickers on either plate or eggs to indicate where or by whom these items were manufactured. It is possible that these eggs were turned either in Ukraine or Canada.

B. Preservation: After the purchase of these wooden eggs, they were and still are stored in my mother's china cabinet in the living room of her home.

C. Social and Historical Context: The only recollection my mother has regarding these pysanky is that they were purchased in a craft booth at the Dauphin Ukrainian Festival some time between 1986 and 1992. These manufactured wood lathe-turned eggs were purchased for the purpose of having 'ready-made' pysanky for annual Easter basket preparations in the Stefaniuk home. Following the inclusion of these wooden eggs in the Easter basket, they were transported to the basket blessing service. Mother's wooden pysanky were machine-made on a lathe, outside the domestic context in a context unknown to her. The eggs were created for the purpose of sale in a retail outlet. Mother's wooden eggs, like Baba's hand-made predecessors were used for the same ritual purpose of the Easter Basket Blessing Service at the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of All Saints in Kamsack, Saskatchewan. Mother also had two pysanky-wall plaques hung in the living room of her home. The Ukrainian wall plaques were items that my parents received in the 1970s as gifts. They fulfilled a decorative purpose in their home. The goose egg has been cut in half and mounted onto a black velvet matt. In the case of the square plaque the entire hand- decorated chicken egg is placed inside the matt with only half the egg protruding above the matt in a kind of shadow-box effect. 187

Figure 87. Ukrainian Pysanka Wall Plaque, Circa. 1970s Ukrainian Craft Item Owned by Marie Stefaniuk Kamsack, Saskatchewan

Mother had also been given one decorative egg that was made of white wax with its motif inscribed by red glass beads that were pressed into the wax. These were all kept for viewing in her china cabinet.

D. Other Informants on Pysanky: In my ethnographic interviews twenty six out of twenty nine informants noted the importance of the pysanka as a ritual object in the traditional Ukrainian house and/ or displayed pysanky in their contemporary homes. One informant, my uncle Mike Ewachiw, kept the pysanky of his deceased wife in his living room china cabinet. In the photo he displays one of her home- decorated eggs, together with an Easter paska which he purchased at the Safeway store in Regina, Saskatchewan. I

Figure 88. Mike Ewachiw Holding Pysanka made by his deceased wife. The Paska, Mike purchased at a Safeway Store in Regina, Sask.

Figure 89. Pysanky by Anne Fedorak

Fieldwork Informant Anne Fedorak in the dining room of her Kamsack, Saskatchewan home, takes a bowl of her pysanky out of the china cabinet in order to display them. 189

Informant Anne Fedorak in an untaped interview, stated that she remembers her mother decorating eggs with very simple plant and rake motifs which were dyed only in one color. Anne stated that she and the other children in her family were not part of their mother's ritual, mostly because her mother had no time to include the children. Consequently, Anne grew up with no desire to paint eggs. Anne didn't become interested in pysanka decorating until after she was married, when she saw photographs of decorated eggs in her husband Steve's Popular Mechanics magazine. The eggs in the magazine had very fine geometric patterns and these patterns greatly interested her. So, in the 1960s, she began writing eggs and eventually mastered over 100 geometric patterns. Anne first sold her pysanky at an Orthodox women's bake sale in Rhein, Saskatchewan in the early 1960s. She wrote a dozen eggs for her first sale and charged $1.25 per egg. One woman approached her and asked if she could purchase the entire dozen. The woman told my aunt that she could make money decorating eggs and she gave my aunt the name of a man in Winnipeg who would buy her pysanky. Anne contacted the man and thereupon, established a little business selling decorated eggs to him, as well as to others who wanted to buy pysanky for Easter. Anne said that she never charged more than $6.00 an egg and thought that the prices today are "ridiculous." She said she did not charge much because she wanted everyone to be able to have a pysanka for Easter and a high price would exclude some people who might want an egg and not be able to afford it. Prices today for a decorated chicken's egg at an Edmonton Ukrainian retail outlet range from $10 to $60 depending on the intricacy of the design, and a decorated goose egg can be purchased for anywhere between $100 to $120, again depending on the particular design. Anne Fedorak, like the other fieldwork informants, stores her pysanky in her living room china cabinet. What we note in both Mike's and Anne's case is the compassion, spiritual and ethical value placed on the relationship between people and between the object/ egg and the person making or buying the egg. The creation or the sale of an egg was not simply a business transaction. Anne also stated that she never felt right about selling her eggs to craftspeople that would cut, break or saw the egg, using its shattered pieces for making jewelry or clocks. So Anne did not sell her pysanky in this context. She felt that this shattering/ sawing process was somehow a violation of something that was meant to be 190 sacred. This conviction may be rooted in the traditional Ukrainian notion that because decorated eggs were regarded as sacred, they were never to be desecrated or destroyed. Traditionally pysanky were not blown, they remained whole because it was believed that to break a decorated egg was to tamper with its life force.142 This is only one notion which has been put forward by some Ukrainian scholars. It is also true that in other Ukrainian traditions the pysanky was not regarded as a permanent object. It was destroyed in various ways, being eaten, buried, or even smashed. Anne also stated that she never felt right about decorating her eggs throughout the year. She had tried this only once, and it just did not work for her. So she decided that she would only decorate her eggs during the Lenten period before Easter.

Figure 90. Wall Plaque Made from a Goose Egg Pysanka

Plaque has been sawn in half and mounted on black velvet. This pysanka plaque was purchased at the Ukrainian Festival in Dauphin and now hangs on the living room wall of Marie Stefaniuk's home.

Vadym Shcherbakivskyi, q. in Marta Korduba, 113. 191

IV CONCLUSION:

This chapter illustrates how it is possible to have variation within one particular object category, not just among different objects, for example: Mother's decorated egg collection has more diverse forms: old, new, wooden, wax and glass. Her collection is also used more diversely with some eggs being stored and hidden, some displayed in a china cabinet, some hung on the wall, some wooden ones for convenience in the Easter basket, some with a ritual purpose for the for Easter church service, some for garden rows in spring planting. While mother's collection is less ritually oriented with more purchased eggs, there were still a few rituals retained. Mother's egg collection is valued more for aesthetics, although Baba did display some of her pysanky as well.

What is observable in the comparison between the Christian elements of Ukrainian pysanky in traditional folk culture, Baba's pysanky in the wood frame house and mother's pysanky in the modern home is that in both generations, pysanky are regarded as essential to the Easter basket blessing service which concludes the Ukrainian Easter liturgy at a Ukrainian church. While mother's wooden pysanky were commercially purchased, Baba's fresh eggpysanky were domestically handcrafted as were the eggs in traditional folk culture. Mother's decorated eggs were privy to two rituals, namely the Easter basket blessing service, and possibly the burying of egg shells during spring garden planting. Mother herself did not regard this burying of shells as a ritual, but rather, as a fact of her spring gardening process. It is probably more correct to say here that mother's practice may be a vestige of traditional ritual which is no more regarded as such. Baba's eggs on the other hand, were annual participants in five rituals. It would appear that the primary purpose of the decorated egg in traditional folk culture was to mediate transformation at a multitude of levels in the real world, in the earthly, animal and human realms. While the painted eggs in Baba's house were designed for several known ritual purposes, the primary ones appear to be preparing for the Easter Service in church, and regarding the eggs as memorial gifts, mediating between the world of the living and the world of the deceased ancestors. 192

With only two basic rituals, the Easter basket blessing service and the burying of shells, the painted eggs in mother's house were designed primarily for display, both in the Easter Basket as well as in the china cabinet year round. In mother's house thepysanky were cherished for their aesthetic beauty and their Ukrainianness in her home. While in traditional folk culture, in Baba's case and in the case of my two informants Mike Ewachiw and Anne Fedorak, the relational element between the pysanka maker and the recipient of the pysanka is personally direct and very significant most of the time. Anne however, did sell her eggs too and then they went to unknown persons too. This is similar to the case with mother's wooden eggs. Baba chose her pysanka recipients purposefully and hand delivered her pysanky to them. In mother's case, where the wooden eggs were made and by whom they were made is unknown and irrelevant. There is no personal interaction between my mother and the egg-maker. There is no interaction between the wooden egg and a recipient. There is no recipient. The purpose of the wooden egg is aesthetic within the Easter basket. The personal relational element of pysanka creation and meaningful ritual exchange is often obliterated. In today's contemporary culture it is more of a business transaction that facilitates the purchase of an aesthetic object for a decorative purpose or the purpose of marking Ukrainian ethnic identity. The majority of the traditionally hand-painted eggs in my mother's house, ones which she did not personally craft, but again purchased at Ukrainian church teas and bazaars, were stored in cartons in the basement and considered inappropriate for the Easter service unless they were newly purchased every year. According to my mother, if an old pysanka was placed in the basket for Easter and if, for some unfortunate reason it happened to crack, a very foul odor would cause embarrassment and tarnish the beauty and the sacredness of the special basket blessing service. With mother's more contemporary wooden eggs this situation was completely avoided. The cartons of eggs stored in the basement are both those purchased by my mother at the church teas and bazaars as well as those received as memorial gifts by our family during the Easter season. This decorated egg collection began in the early 1960s and continues to the present day. These crafted eggs are too important to be thrown away yet too old to be 193 repeatedly used at the ritual Easter basket blessing service. It is possible to note here the movement from sacred creative ritual processes within the private domestic context, together with emotionally invested and cherished pysanky and the importance of personal relationship in Baba's case, (as well as in the examples of both my fieldwork informants); to the standardized manufacturing of the wooden egg, and decorated egg wall plaques and their sale in a contemporary retail outlet. In addition, in the contemporary context, there is the aesthetic valuing of the Ukrainian decorated egg in a domestic context with a china cabinet. This type of display may be noted in Mother's case and in the examples of both fieldwork informants. The china cabinet display of my three contemporary informants noted here, attests to the value of the pysanka as aesthetic object. By contrast, Baba did not have a china cabinet display case with her pysanky inside. Baba's eggs were also displayed, and herein lies the hybrid nature of the traditional folk art object in Baba's house. Pysanky were both ritual objects and aesthetic objects with a greater emphasis on their domestic creation and meaningful exchange rituals, than on their aesthetics. In mother's case some of the pysanky are still ritual objects but they are used ritually only in a public church context. In the domestic context the primary purpose of the decorated egg in mother's house is an aesthetic one. Its secondary value in mother's domestic context is for preservation purposes. It is important to note that the preservation of things Ukrainian was initiated by my father who was a second generation Ukrainian and again closer to his Ukrainian cultural roots. The cultural shift in how the pysanka is treated may well reflect the difference between first, second, and third generation Ukrainians. Baba being from Ukraine, a first generation immigrant, was closer to her traditional Ukrainian folk roots. Mother, already Canadian born, like both of her parents, is distanced by two generations from traditional Ukrainian culture, and hence her greater predisposition for most things modern. In addition it may be noted that, when we examined the Ukrainian dwelling architecture we noted that Baba's Kamsack house in an urban context also had vestiges of traditional Ukrainian pioneer culture in its construction. With the more modern construction of my parents' home we notice with the Ukrainian objects like the pysanky inside their home the boundaries of the modern designation begin to be permeable. 194

Scratch the surface of the "modern home" as in mother's case, and traditional Ukrainian pioneer folk and ritual objects tucked in nooks and crannies of its basement render the modern home also hybrid, particularly in a preservation context and a Ukrainian Nationalist and Pop Art context. Not only is the decorated egg as we may find it today, a hybridization of Ukrainian peasant folk tradition in a domestic economy and contemporary modern aesthetics in a public market economy, as in both my Baba's and my mother's case, it is also a hybridization of Creation mythology and Christian spirituality. The remnants of creation mythology with respect to the egg exist in the form of Ukrainian legendry. With the coming of Christianity the decorated egg was incorporated into the faith traditions of Eastern Christian spirituality. Christian meanings and symbols written on the eggs were added to the already rich pre-Christian meanings and symbolic vocabulary. All of my fieldwork informants were unanimous in their association of the decorated egg with the Christian celebration of Easter. Decorated eggs, symbolizing Christ's entombment and resurrection are decorated for the Easter Basket which is blessed by a priest in church on Easter morning. These traditionally hand-crafted eggs in a contemporary context, are most often not made at home by the majority of Ukrainian women, (like my Baba), but are purchased by contemporary women, (like my mother), at Ukrainian church teas, bazaars, museums or Ukrainian import shops. Also wooden decorated eggs for the basket, for ornamental purposes as well as for Easter gift items, may be purchased in Ukrainian stores. In the contemporary context the ritual purpose of the egg exists in a Christian setting, and is very often, second to its monetary value or its value as an aesthetic craft product that marks Ukrainian ethnic identity. This identity marker, often exists in the form of Ukrainian decorated eggs displayed in a living room china cabinet. In the contemporary context, the egg as related to creation mythology, as related to female embodiment and human fertility, the egg as woman's creative emotional expression through ritual, the egg as facilitator of the mother-daughter relationship, the egg as mediator in human rites of passage, have all been, for the most part displaced in favor of the egg as craft item purchased and ritualized outside of the home. One exception to this trend was in the context of my fieldwork informant Betty Rohr. She ritually decorated eggs in the Easter Season in the context of her family life 195 together with her non-Ukrainian husband and children. The eggs are displayed in bowls throughout her living room throughout the year. Here in this case a cultural hybridity is more obvious where the cultural retention of egg decorating for both ritual, aesthetic and educational purposes is combined in a contemporary third and fourth generation context. The decorated egg in this instance is not purely an aesthetic object for purposes of ethnic identity. It retains its domestic creation and its orientation with the spiritual purpose of marking the resurrection of Christ at Easter. The first contact with the egg in this context is not a monetary transaction for Ukrainian identity demarcation or aesthetic purposes alone. Bread baked in this household was likewise a ritual baking for the celebration of Easter within the family and home.

Figure 91. Betty Rohr with Pysanky

The decorated egg today is an item that may or may not be used in the Easter rituals of the Eastern Christian church context, rituals which are presided over by a male religious hierarchy. The decorated egg as aesthetic craft object within the contemporary market economy and the egg as marker of Ukrainian ethnic identity is now made available to the rest of the world. The pysanka/ decorated egg is no longer in the hands of women creating rituals in isolated pockets of Ukrainian culture. Pysanka is today, inclusively popular throughout the world: men, women, children and machines now make them. Although my mother's wooden eggs for the Easter Basket move toward the 196 middle of the continuum of a standardized, mass produced object for market consumption within the public market economy, the scope of her egg collections within her home marks the greatest diversity and hybridization of the egg. In her home she has in addition to the wooden eggs for aesthetic purposes, collections of eggs for preservation purposes, namely my Baba's collection of hand-painted raw eggs, a collection of hand-painted raw eggs that were given as memorial gifts from other family and church family members when the importance of the relational element of ancestral connection was more prominent, eggs that were made into wall plaques (oval on black velvet), and eggs that were made into pictures and framed. While the importance of ritual, with the exception of two, has drastically diminished, the importance of diversity within the collections and the use of the decorated egg as aesthetic object has expanded. Maria Lesiv in her Folklorica article "From Ritual Object to Art Form: The Ukrainian Easter Egg Pysanka in its Canadian Context," echoes Robert Klymasz's scheme with ritual object being "pioneer folk" and art form, that is the decorated egg as aesthetic object, being "Ukrainian nationalist art." Lesiv expands on the notion of nationalist. We see nationalist art in mother's wooden eggs, in the black velvet oval plaque with a cut goose egg, in another wall plaque where a whole decorated egg is mounted inside a square frame, in ritual eggs like Baba's collection, that were preserved, in the basement and out of site. With the china cabinet display we observe the notion of decorated egg primarily as art object. In my Aunt's case we see the progression of egg as ritual practice by her mother to egg as aesthetic object, with techniques learned from a magazine. This process of learning marks the difference from folk to art object. Folk ritual and the creation of ritual objects were learned in an informal domestic setting where they were passed down in the family, emphasizing generational connections. In a nationalist context pysanka making is professionalized, learned in books and workshops with more technical and refined ways of decorating. In Anne Fedorak's case an electric stylus was used in order for her to obtain finer lines for her geometric motifs. Again in Anne's case the egg as hybrid object is reflected by her retention of the traditional notion that the egg containing life force was not to be cut or otherwise tampered with. Hybridity in mother's case was evident by the use of the contemporary aesthetic object, that is, the manufactured standardized wooden eggs being used for traditional church ritual 197 purposes. Not only purchased wooden eggs, but purchased chocolate eggs meant for eating also grace her Easter Basket. Lesiv alludes to the ways which the decorated egg within both the Nationalist and Pop Art frame works have been used in a much broader social context with, for example, a game like pysanka bingo where proceeds go to a good cause and winners of their games receive decorated eggs as their prize.142 There are pysanka art exhibitions in galleries, churches and at Ukrainian cultural festivals. And of course there is the world's second largest decorated egg in the form of a sculpture at Vegreville, Alberta, as well as an entire pysanka museum constructed in the shape of a colorfully decorated pysanka. The museum is located at Kolomyia in Ukraine, and it displays decorated egg collections from the different regions of Ukraine as well as art objects and paintings that have the decorated egg as their theme. In the nationalist context the pysanka has reached the world stage as a marker of Ukrainian ethnicity. Within the nationalist context the decorated egg as aesthetic object with its contemporary refined materials, has achieved a great diversity and versatility of forms that have made the world a more beautiful place to be. What we notice with Mother's, Baba's and Aime'spysanky is that they are different in character, location and value and all are valid expressions of ethnicity. These eggs mean different things to my grandmother, my mother and my cousin Anne. To my Baba they were a way to maintain loving relationships with her dead family members, and to bring joy to living family and friends, to my mother they are a way to have a convenient and visually acceptable Easter basket, and to Anne they are a way for her to personally express her creativity, religious faith and Ukrainian ethnic identity. At a methodological level the focus on the egg has provided a link to bridge the gaps between the more subjective impressions of myself and my informants and the more objective empirical data of Ukrainian scholarship on the traditions of house and the decorated egg. At the same time that the egg as ritual object affords an example of

142 Lesiv, Mariya. "From Ritual Object to Art Form: The Ukrainian Easter Egg/ pysanka In Its Canadian Context." Folklorica: Journal of Slavic and East European Folklore Association, Vol. XII. Ed. Natalie Kononenko. (Edmonton: Peter and Doris Kule Center for Ukrainian and Canadian Folklore, 2007) 1-32. 198 tremendous cultural displacement within the traditional folk context, the egg as aesthetic object affords a wonderful example of cultural beauty and diversity in terms of the multiplicity and artistry of its forms. It is possible to say in a manner of speaking, that cultural displacement has been re-placed with cultural diversity. Baba's house and her decorated eggs form one point of the traditional folklore continuum that needs to be placed in dynamic relationship to the other point which is the diversification of modern urban culture. These, in many cases opposing cultural expressions, need to be held in creative tension. 199

CHAPTER SIX

ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSIONS

I METHODOLOGY

Our four research methodologies include: 1. autobiography in chapter one, 2. empirical data on the Ukrainian dwelling architecture in chapter two, 3. field work informant interviews on their perceptions of Ukrainian houses past and present, as well as on their perceptions of Ukrainian objects past and present in chapters three and four. (A primary focus in chapters three and four is the object lists regarding my grandmother's house and my parents' home.) 4. and lastly a narrowing of focus on one object, the decorated egg in chapter five. With these four methodologies a fuller understanding of the traditional folk and the modern context have been gained and tools for negotiating between these worlds has been arrived at. The subjective world of my story line is echoed by the subjective memories of my informants. The similarity and subjectivity of these views reveal ritual loss and cultural displacement. Important philosophical reasons for this loss and displacement have been set forth by the scholarly works of Gaston Bachelard and Edward Casey. My personal sense of cultural loss and displacement have been tempered and expanded by their work as well as by research findings on Ukrainian Canadian architectural dwellings and the decorated egg. The research method of collecting empirical data has enabled a balancing of my perception of cultural loss and displacement with cultural gain and diversity. This equilibrium has been reached through an examination of the changes over time in location, structural form and meaning both with respect to the decorated egg and Ukrainian dwelling architecture. Cultural losses and gains are reflected in cultural diversity and multiplicity of form within Ukrainian culture, cultural hybridity and Ukrainian symbolism. These various methods combined act as a fulcrum bringing into balance the dualism felt in the biographical material. The sum total of these four methodologies transcends any single one. The exercise of writing this thesis has broadened my perspective of the subjective memories expressed in the introductory stories. 200

The strength of the autobiographical material is that it is a presentation of Ukrainian folklore 'in the raw" - highly personal, subjective and diffuse in orientation. The thesis progresses from the diffuse to the more and more focused in order to arrive at greater and greater clarity. This subjective material and the more objective material are juxtaposed to arrive at some resolution to problems articulated within the stories themselves. The autobiographical material raises the issues of difference between traditional and modern forms of Ukrainian ethnicity and suggests ritual loss, cultural displacement and implacement as well as cultural retention. The weakness of the autobiographical method in this particular context is that it presents a narrow focus on what appears to be a pair of irreconcilable opposites. "Folk" and "modern" are narrowly understood in the framework of an opposing duality. The strength of the historical material on Ukrainian dwelling architecture is that it expands the range of discussion on Ukrainian house forms that were normative for many more Ukrainian Canadians. This literature opens the door to discussing a broader range of Ukrainian experience. The weakness of the published research on Ukrainian dwelling architecture is that it focuses narrowly on the physical dimension of house construction types. The fieldwork informant methodology as well as the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village research enable an animation of Ukrainian lived experience within these different construction types. They add the personal and cultural dimension to these various structural forms. The autobiographical material introduces two houses: traditional Ukrainian and modern. The published research on Ukrainian Canadian dwelling architecture presents four houses: burdei, log and plaster, wood frame and modern. The informant material presents five houses: burdei, old Ukrainian plaster house, Ukrainian wood farm house, new English lumber house, and modern home. Each of these methodologies characterizes the houses in a different manner. They break and expand the initial dualism between the Ukrainian house and modern home in the introductory stories. Informants have their own ways of describing their house categories. Their categories are related to cultural designations, ie: Ukrainian or English; geographical designations, ie: farm house or modern home in town; time designations, ie: old and new, the old Ukrainian plaster house or the new English house. 201

The significant point to be highlighted here is that in discussing houses the informants have different categories and priorities than the scholars in the previous chapter who dealt primarily with the different types of house construction. While scholars dealt with construction types ( dug-out earth, log and plaster, wood-frame) informants dealt more with exterior visual surface treatment of the structure (plaster or wood, for example) and focused on their life experiences within these structures. In the fourth methodology, narrowing the focus to one particular kind of traditional object within the house, the changes in cultural meaning are emphasized in a different way. One is more readily able to perceive the transition from ritual and ritual eggs in traditional culture to symbolic aesthetic eggs in the modern context. The decorated egg, like the house, can be seen as an ethnic hybrid that contains the past but has been transformed over time by its creators to accommodate the present cultural context. The strength of this methodology is that it allows a nuanced joining of the subjective personal views with the more objective researcher views, contributing the most rounded view of the differences and similarities between the two family houses. The biggest challenge is that it is a very detailed way of viewing. This nuanced, detailed approach risks lacking a broader context in which this research on the egg might be placed. II A NEW DIVERSITY & MUTIPLICITY OF UKRAINIAN CULTURAL FORMS

It is the fourth methodology, a narrowing of focus on one object, the decorated egg/ pysanka, that has most fully articulated the value of cultural diversity and multiplicity of aesthetic forms with respect to aesthetic objects of Ukrainian cultural identity. This study exemplifies in what ways displacement has been balanced with diversification. I track this movement in the following table. The table illustrates in what ways the movement from the dualistic of perspective Baba's house (associated only with traditional folk culture) and my parents' house (associated only with modern urban culture) have been broadened. It is the art object classifications of Lesiv, Klymasz, Kuranicheva and Nahachewsky that have propelled the movement from periphery to center where they act as a fulcrum to hold the creative tension between the initial opposing categories. In addition, these classifications have allowed for a dynamic criss­ crossing of categories not just within the houses but within the cultures as well. For example: it is important to state that the egg has moved from the domestic context to the public context of an international world stage; to state that in Baba's house there are not only traditional folk elements but nationalist elements as well, as in my parents' house there are not only Nationalist and Pop objects, but traditional ones also. 203

Traditional Folk Culture Modern Urban Culture Baba's House & Objects Parents' House & Objects * * Baba's House Parent's House Culturally Adapted Wood Frame House Culturally Adapted Wood Frame, Phases 1, 2 & 3

-Objects emotionally invested, ritually -Objects not ritually created, not hand-made but created, hand-made, home-made & home primarily manufactured, purchased outside the displayed (pysanka) home and received as gifts from family and friends. -Objects in modern urban culture now displayed both, inside and outside the home, as well as internationally (Kolomyia Pysanka Museum, Ukraine) -Primarily Pioneer Folk Art {pysanka) -Primarily Ukrainian Nationalist Art (Klymasz) (Klymasz) (K\.ymasz)(Wooden pysanka) -Ukrainian Nationalist Art (Ukrainian records) -Pioneer Folk Art Collection and Preservation (Klymasz) (K\ymasz)(Traditionalpysanka collection) -Art Objects by Geography (Kuranicheva) -Art Objects by Geography in Pioneer Folk Art (Gido's Ukrainian prayer books from Kiev, Collection (Gido's Ukrainian prayer books from Gido's poias, Baba's berdo) Kiev, Gido's poias, Baba's berdo) -Art Objects by Derivation (Nahachewsky) (pysanka wall-plaques) -Art Objects by Symbolism (Nahachewsky) (icons, Vergreville pysanka sculpture, red and black embroidery motif glass and ceramic ware -Diversity of Ritual -Displacement of Ritual (5 rituals) (2 rituals) -Simplicity of Artistic Form -Diversity of Artistic Form (eggs, cloth, bread) (Wooden decorated egg crafts, eggs and egg magnets, wall plaques, fine art drawings, paintings, multi­ media art forms, modern sculpture and modern architecture)

Figure 92. Pysanka and Ethnicity Continuum 204

While there were fewer objects in Baba's house and they were simpler in form, there were more rituals. While there are more objects in my parents' house with complexity of form, there are fewer rituals. Within the modern context there is a greater multiplicity of objects and a greater variety in their forms and meanings.

My Initial Perception in Parent's House My Present Perception in Parent's House * * -Displacement -Diversity (displacement of rituals, and (diversity and multiplicity of forms regarding Ukrainian hand-made, home-made manufactured and standardized, as well as hand ritual objects) crafted visual aesthetic objects of Ukrainian ethnic identity)

Figure 93. Change in My Perspective Regarding Parents' House and Objects

The egg is a common object and the exchange of eggs at Easter is a common cultural practice in Canada. The meaning of the pysanka itself, as its designs with their multiplicity of meanings indicate, is a culturally unique phenomenon. It is also true however, within the modern context, traditional meanings become less important as the forms of the egg expand. The multiplicity and diversity oipysanka forms can be observed in the preceding table (Fig. 80) as well as in the following photos. The pysanka is no longer an egg with some symbols written on its surface intended to be meaningfully read. It is a painting, a drawing, a multi-media fabric art piece, a fridge magnet, a game, a sculpture, a building/ museum and a festival, all intended to be symbols in themselves that celebrate Ukrainian ethnicity. 205

Figure 94. Pysanka Museum Festival in front of the Pysanka Museum in Kolomyia, Ukraine.

Figure 95. Pysanky Detail, Fabric Multi-Media Art Piece Housed in the Kolomyia Pysanka Museum. Figure 96. Pysanka Sculpture Vergreville, Alberta Photograph from Personal Collection

Figure 97. Pysanka Multi-Media Drawing, 1975 India Ink, Graphite Stick, Coffee and Enamel Paint on Paper. Item in Personal Collection. 207

III SYMBOLISM

The Greek etymology of the word symbol provides insight into its meaning. Sym + ballein means to project towards sameness,143 or "to put together." Symbols have a great power and capacity to unify on every level of consciousness. A symbol is always greater than the sum of its parts. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines symbol: symbol refers to something that stands for or represents an abstract idea through conventional, culturally determined meaning. For example Ukrainian embroidery is a symbol of Ukrainian peasant culture. The red and black Ukrainian embroidery motifs on contemporary ceramics and glassware are symbols of the Ukrainian embroidery rituals within traditional Ukrainian culture. The traditional motifs appear in a multiplicity of new forms created with new materials. Robert Klymasz noted that with Ukrainian language loss in contemporary Ukrainian Canadian culture, Ukrainian identity has been preserved by Ukrainian cuisine and visible symbols.145 All of the Ukrainian object lists testify to this reality. With the displacement of traditional rituals a movement from ritual to symbol is notable in the two houses. The ritual of embroidering Ukrainian towels and shirts within traditional peasant culture has been replaced in modern culture by mass produced objects like mother's ceramic and glass kitchen-ware with the traditional red and black embroidery motif. In folk tradition the white egg or the white fabric were equivalent to an empty page or an empty canvas. Upon these blank surfaces symbols were inscribed in wax and thread. The objects were like vehicles for a written language. It is correct traditionally to say that apysanka was written. The word pysanka comes from the root

143 James Hollis, Tracking the Gods: The place of Myth in Modern Life. (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1995) 8. 144 Jars Balan, "The Search for Symbols: Some Observations," in Visible Symbols: Cultural Expression Among Canada's Ukrainians, ed. Manoly R. Lupul ( Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies University of Alberta, 1984) 163.

145 Robert Klymasz, 11. 208 wordpysaty which means "to write." In this context meaning was projected onto the egg or fabric in symbolic form with a particular meaning behind it that was intended to be read. The symbol was the ideogram on the shirt or the egg. Today however, it is the entire egg with the potential of any decorative Ukrainian-looking design painted on it which has become the symbol. The contemporary manufactured items have come to visually symbolize the traditional ritual practices, but the earlier meanings behind these older folk practices have in large measure been lost. One creative process has, in a manner of speaking been replaced by another, with traditional folk cultural meanings lost in between the cracks. "Typically for most "painters" of today' spysanky, the symbols on the egg have lost all spiritual meaning at exactly the same time that the egg itself has attained symbolic stature in the context of Canadian culture."146 Visual symbols within contemporary Ukrainian-Canadian culture have a great multiplicity and diversity of forms as witnessed in my parental home and in other settings1 7. But meanings of these contemporary expressions are not related to earlier meanings. While contemporary multiplicity and diversity are most often rooted in traditional Ukrainian peasant culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, their meanings have changed over time.

146 Jars Balan, in Lupul, 165.

Maria Lesiv, 15,22. IV HYBRIDITY

Webster offers a dictionary definition of the word "hybrid" as the offspring of two animals or plants of different species; a word compounded from different languages; cross-bred. What we have demonstrated in this thesis is that both my Baba's house and my parents' home are hybrid spaces.148 Ukrainianness in these cases is a mixture of traditional Ukrainian folk culture with modern cultural materials and ideology.

Traditional Folk Culture Modern Urban Culture * * Baba's House Parents' House

Figure 98. My Initial Perceptions of Ukrainian Ethnicity

Traditional Folk Culture Modern Urban Culture *_ _* A Baba's House Parents' House

Figure 99. My Later Perceptions Ukrainian Ethnicity

It is possible to note hybridity in both houses, that is, elements of traditional folk culture existing along side more modern culture in both Baba's house and my parents' house. Initially in the introductory stories I did not perceive modernism in Baba's house and I did not perceive traditional folk culture in my parents' house. The notion of hybridity has helped me to see both traditional and modern expressions in both contexts,

148 Martynowych, 151. It was the scholarship of John Lehr who first introduced me to the notion of cultural hybridity through his definition of the log-lumber combination house being the "transitional style ethnic hybrid." The new "transitional style" structures were what Lehr defined as architectural ethnic hybrids dated like the early wood frame house from 1914 to 1925. They were 'a combination of Ukrainian vernacular architecture with Canadian or North American styles.' 210 and this realization has helped to narrow the perceived cultural gap between the two houses. We notice in the above charts the movement from the outer edges of the dichotomy towards the middle. Traditional Folk and Modern continue to be the major points of reference, but not as they were before. Now they come together at the center to act as a fulcrum that holds the creative tension between them and brings them into greater balance. While it is difficult or impossible to make a clear boundary at the edge of tradition or at the edge of modernity, we still need points of reference. To illustrate this difficulty with making boundaries we need only look again at the earliest Ukrainian houses, the burdei or the log and plaster which we consider traditionally Ukrainian. It is true that while they are traditional Ukrainian forms they were Canadianized to a certain extent in their earliest Canadian manifestations. For example: Ukrainian Pioneers used for their logs Canadian softwood trees like pine, spruce and aspen poplar, instead of Ukrainian hardwood trees like oak or beech, because that was what was most readily available in Canada. Thatching for roofs in Canada was primarily slough grass instead of rye straw, again because it was the most readily available.149 So right from the inception of the Canadian building of these traditional Ukrainian dwellings, they too were hybrid constructions. At the other end of the time line, even the most contemporary condominium in an urban high rise can be considered very Ukrainian because of its interior contents and how well they reflect the Ukrainian consciousness of its inhabitants.150 In the first instance however, we would probably say that the traditional folk house in Canada is more Ukrainian than Canadian, while the condo, even with its objects of Ukrainian ethnicity inside, would be considered more modern Canadian than Ukrainian. Thus there are varying degrees of ethnicity in many different situations. Hybridity exists with respect to both houses and treatments of the pysanka in each house. Where one tradition begins and where the other tradition ends is variable. Ethnicity or "Ukrainianness" can manifest in connection with either of these two distinctly different world views. Through this discovery I now have a tool to bridge the

149 Lehr, "Ukrainian Houses," 11,12. 150 Kuranicheva, 125. 211 gap of difference in my two introductory stories by appreciating that both houses incarnated Ukrainianness in a different way and both are valid expressions of Ukrainian culture. Both the losses and the gains that have been made are real and important, and both help to describe the Ukrainian experience in Canada.

Ethnic identity is a socio-psychological process through which individuals subjectively include themselves in a community of alleged ancestors or predecessors who share a distinct culture. What makes the process specifically ethnic is: 1. relationship to an ancestral past and 2. relationship to a distinct culture The first gives a time dimension to the self-definition. It provides the idea and feeling of roots which helps psychologically to overcome the temporariness of existence. It provides a legacy for self-definition- the feeling of inheriting something valuable and of a mission to transmit it to future generations. Psychologically, the feeling contributes to one's sense of personal importance and helps one to rise above the everyday threat of individual insignificance. The relation to a distinct culture is to an experience of a community which has become objectified and institutionalized into a way of life which is (or was) typical to the members of the community, but is distinct from any non- ancestral community and is therefore unique. Psychologically, the result is simultaneously a feeling of belonging and of social uniqueness.151

151 Isajiw in Lupul, 119. 212

V CULTURAL DISPLACEMENT AND EMOTIONAL PROJECTION

Returning again now to the original dilemma of difference posed in the autobiographical material of Chapter One: When I look back on my childhood I see a dichotomy between my Baba's house and my parental home. I attribute some of this difference to a generational gap between a first generation immigrant (Baba) and second and third generation Canadian born citizens (Father and Mother). I also attribute much of this difference to a change in the meaning of house: from house as home in the Bachelardian sense of home being an intimate inhabited space that provides a shelter for the contemplative, emotional and creative dimensions of human existence, and where people are implaced, to house as real estate property that may become an uninhabited space where family members spend the bulk of their time working outside of the home, and people are displaced, as noted by my informants. My perception of the Baba's house/parents' house dichotomy can also be attributed to a major shift in meaning with respect to concepts of time and place as noted by Edward Casey. Casey states that traditional cultures were place centered while contemporary modern culture is time centered. This accounts for the difference in my perceptions of the two houses. Baba was most often at her "place" and she "had time," where as at my parents' house, nobody was home, (at least much of the time that I was) "they were not at their place" and when they were home, "they did not have time." I also attribute this Baba's house/parents' house dichotomy to the loss of meaningful ritual which existed in Baba's house, that united cultural tradition and family celebration. This did not exist in the same way or as meaningfully in my parents' home. As a child I was less able to make meaningful connections in my parental home. I projected feelings of loneliness and loss onto my parental home while my feelings of well being and implacement I projected onto Baba's house. Thus there were in fact some very significant reasons for these childhood perceptions of difference between the two dwellings and for the Baba's house/parents' house dichotomy. 213

In this thesis I make an effort to bring these two perceptions into a greater balance. I initially understood that the only reason for the difference was because my Baba was a member of traditional Ukrainian folk culture and my parents were members of modern culture. While this perception is somewhat correct, it is simply not the entire truth regarding the issue of difference. When I examined the categories of house construction in Chapter Two, I discovered that my Baba's house and my parents' home were not that different after all, even though to me, they seemed drastically different at the time. Both houses were in fact wood frame houses set in an urban context, located in the same Slavic area of town, and built by the same Ukrainian man. The houses had almost identical floor plans and contained many of the same objects, like a wood burning stove in the kitchen and an oil burning stove in the living room. When I asked my informants about their memories and experiences of remembered and lived-in Ukrainian houses, their views in some ways closely paralleled my own. Perhaps their feelings were not as strong as mine, but they were there in a similar regard: feeling implaced in the traditional Ukrainian dwellings and displaced in their modern ones. Chapter Three illustrates how informants also projected their emotions onto concrete objects in general and onto houses in particular. In Chapter Five where I examined one particular object, thepysanka, I observed a shift in meaning from pysanka as ritual object, to pysanka as marker of Ukrainian ethnic identity. This may be understood as a different sort of emotion, but also an emotion associated to something physical or articulated through something tangible. And with this new emotion and its new meanings as identity marker a great multiplicity and diversity of forms opened up new dimensions of cultural experience which helped to bridge the original dualism. Through the writing of this thesis I discovered, perhaps in a new way, that people have a general tendency to project their emotions onto objects and the house is particularly prone to this kind of emotional projection. What this thesis adds to scholarship is the important emotional dimension. It is not only that house types change over time or that pysanka manufacture moves outside the home. It is that, when people look back at the past, they project powerful emotions onto objects in general and onto houses in particular: houses in particular, because they have both an inner and an outer reality just as human beings do. 214

In the final analysis, the autobiographical material is right. The architecture historians are also correct, as are the informants' perceptions and the analysis of objects. The truth of difference is more nuanced than I had originally perceived and this understanding has engendered a new freedom. This liberation has rested in the discovery that truth is not a set of fixed certitudes but a mystery we enter into, one step at a time. It is a process of going deeper and deeper into an unfathomable reality. Through these various methodologies and intellectual investigations the initial dichotomy between my Baba's house and my parents' house, between Ukrainian folk culture and modern Ukrainian-Canadian culture has been better understood, balanced and contained.

Figure 100. Red and Black Ukrainian Embroidery Motif Vase owned by Marie Stefaniuk. Gift given from iconographer Ivan Denysenko.

For our house is our corner of the world. As has often been said, it is our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word. If we look at it intimately, the humblest of dwellings has beauty...the house is one of the greatest powers of integration for the thoughts, memories and dreams of mankind.154

Jean Vanier, Becoming Human, (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1998) 117.

154 Bachelard, 4. 6. 215

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CONDUCTED BY MAUREEN STEFANIUK

Andrusiak, Katie. Recorded Interview. Yorkton, Sk. April 21, 2004.

Anhel, Natalia. Recorded Interview. Kamsack, Sk. April 23, 2004.

Anhel, Fr. Petro. Recorded Interview. Kamsack, Sk. April 23, 2004.

Anonymous Man. Recorded Interview. Edmonton, Ab. April 5, 2004.

Anonymous Woman. Recorded Interview. Edmonton, Ab. November 7, 2003.

Curniski, Savelia. Unrecorded Interview. Saskatoon, Sk. April 28, 2004.

Cyncar, Nadia. Unrecorded Interview. Edmonton, Ab. June 9, June 24, 2004.

Diduck, Rosella. Recorded Interview. Kamsack, Sk. April 18, 2004.

Dutka, Alex. Unrecorded Interview. Yorkton, Sk. April 22, 2004.

Dutka, Teenie. Unrecorded Interview. Yorkton, Sk. April 22, 2004.

Ewachiw, Mike. Recorded Interview. Regina, Sk. April 13, 2004.

Unrecorded Interview. Regina, Sk. May 5, 2005. Fedorak, Anne. Recorded Interview. Kamsack, Sk. April 13, 2004.

Telephone Interview. Kamsack, Sk. December 29, 2005

Unrecorded Interview. Kamsack, Sk. January 2, 2006.

Filipchuk, Gloria. Recorded Interview. Yorkton, Sk. April 21, 2004.

Gulutzan, Lena. Recorded Interview. Edmonton, Sk. June 7, 2004.

Gulutzan, Mary. Recorded Interview. Canora, Sk. April 20, 2004.

Henderson Virginia. Recorded Interview. Melville, Sk. April 14, 2004.

Kobrynsky, Lillian. Recorded Interview. Canora, Sk. April 25, 2004.

Koreluik, William. Recorded Interview. Kamsack, Sk. April 17, 2004.

Krasnikoff, Edna. Recorded Interview. Yorkton, Sk. April 21, 2004.

Kryworuchka, Helen. Unrecorded Interview. Roblin, Man. April 19, 2004.

Lesiv, Maria. Recorded Interview. Edmonton, Ab. June 23, 2004.

Marianych, Ludvik. Unrecorded Interview. Edmonton, Ab. June 27, 2004.

Pihach, Fr. Dennis. Recorded Interview. Edmonton, Ab. June 10, 2004.

Rohr, Betty. Recorded Interview. Saskatoon, Sk. April 27, 2004. Rylskiy, Mykola. Recorded Interview. Edmonton, Ab. June 8, 2004.

Shostak, Natalia. Unrecorded Interview. Saskatoon, Sk. April 28, 2004.

Slywka, Florence. Recorded Interview. Yorkton, Sk. April 21, 2004.

Stefaniuk, Marie. Recorded Interview. Kamsack, Sk. April 14, 2004.

Unrecorded Interview. Kamsack, Sk. Februrary 5, 2007.

Telephone Interview. Kamsack, Sk. August, 14, 2008.