Ravenscraig

by Sandi Krawchenko Altner

  He looked into his neatly organized case and hesitated just a moment before reaching for his little stack of calling cards. He allowed himself a moment to enjoy the pride he felt in handling them and anticipated how he would feel giving them to the settlers, seeing the look of respect in their eyes for the man from Ottawa. Surely these people were different from the ranchers near Calgary.

  The urgency of Mr. Sifton’s new immigration scheme came in answer to the astonishing fact that a million former Canadians had drifted south to the United States to find their fortunes. With a current population of only five million in the Dominion, this was a devastating loss. There was even discussion that the Americans were scheming to annex the whole of Western Canada. The Dominion was bleeding to death and Sifton was determined to stop it. His answer was to simplify the homesteading program and to advertise heavily to attract the right kind of immigrants from Europe and the United States. His aim was “to place a large producing population upon the Western prairies.”

  It was clear that the mass migration was underway. There were reports that people were on the move out of Europe by the tens of thousands, destined for the United States, Canada and South America. Sifton’s immigration campaign was poised for overwhelming success.

  “Dominion City!” The conductor called as he moved through the car. “Next stop, Dominion City!” Harrington woke with a start and saw that his papers had slid off of his lap and onto the floor when he dozed off. He rushed to scoop them up before they were trampled and was dismayed at the resulting disorder in his valise.

  “Mr. Harrington! Is Mr. Harrington here?” A tall man with broad shoulders was calling into the rail car in a heavy Ukrainian accent.

  “Yes, I am here,” Harrington called back while donning his bowler and struggling into his jacket.

  “I am Genyk.” The friendly man gripped Harrington’s hand and pumped it with enthusiasm.

  Within moments the men were off the train and standing beside two saddled horses. The whining pitch of sawflies rose around them, competing with the rhythmic blasts of the steam engine as the train pulled away down the track. The sun blazed down and Harrington felt the searing heat on the back of his neck. He slipped out of his coat as Genyk was lashing his new leather valise to a saddlebag.

  “You want coat in bag on horse?” Genyk asked.

  “You mean to say we will ride, then?” Harrington looked about to see what other options they might have and saw two Red River ox carts as well as a horse and wagon nearby.

  “Sure, we ride. Is better than to walk. Too far.”

  “I see. I rather thought there might be a buggy, or a buckboard,” answered Harrington. Seeing the questioning look on Genyk’s face, he raised his voice. “Perhaps there is a wagon we can hire.” He mimed holding reins when driving a carriage and bounced up and down a bit as he motioned to the nearby horse and wagon. Genyk turned to take a look but said nothing. He knew what was coming and enjoyed it. He started to whistle.

  Believing that Genyk did not understand him, Harrington did the only thing he could think to do. He tried to shout his way through the language barrier.

  “If it is money, Mr. Genyk, please, I have money to hire a wagon!”

  Genyk turned and laughed, not with malice, but because these English people always did the same thing and he simply could not stop himself from laughing.

  “Mr. Harrington, I am not deaf,” he thumped his heavy hand on Harrington’s shoulder a couple of times. “Shouting is no help. Also wagon is no help.”

  Harrington could only sputter, “I see. I mean, I don’t see. Why can we not hire a wagon?”

  “No road between farms. No bridge to cross river. Horses better.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  The two had plenty of time to become acquainted before finding the homesteaders’ farms. The first part of the journey was relatively easy. There was a road, of sorts, full of gooey mud in the low parts and spotted with stones in other areas. The trail ran the eighteen miles from Dominion City to Stuartburn, and Genyk proved to be a most amiable companion and a fountain of knowledge. He told the story of the first group of families leaving their homes in Galicia for Canada the previous summer, of people saying good-bye to parents and other family members they knew they would never see again.

  Harrington listened. At first he listened because he was tired and it was easy to let the words just slide off of his weary body, but soon he listened because the story was compelling and it shamed him. He realized that it was he who had resisted understanding the enormity of what the immigrants had been through and how much more difficulty lay ahead of them. He was wrong in the way he had been so quick to judge the people in Calgary. Most impressive was Genyk’s passion for Canada and his great desire to see his fellow settlers make a success of their new homeland. He was a natural leader and a major ally for the government.

  After many hours, they arrived at the Roseau River and saw a solid frame house and barn. The farm looked well-established and prosperous with thirty or more cows grazing in a large fenced pasture beyond the barn. Harrington looked at the tidy enterprise with admiration, and Genyk quickly explained that this farm was not one that belonged to a Ukrainian homesteader.

  “This is cattle ranch of Mr. Ramsay. He built good farm over many years. Here is also post office in house. Mr. Ramsey is postmaster.”

  There was also a store nearby. Genyk told him they had arrived at Stuartburn, which the Ukrainians pronounced “Shtombur”. Harrington slid off his horse, certain that he would never again be able to walk in a normal fashion. He was tired, he was dirty, and he felt badly that his new valise had taken a beating while strapped to the saddlebag. Goodness knows what his jacket would look like.

  “From here we go toward Vita,” said Genyk, pointing past the farm and speaking as though he had just had a good night’s sleep. He turned to Harrington, who was white with exhaustion. “But first we rest. Yes?” He laughed and gave his government man a shove. “We stay tonight here.”

  The two spent the evening in the company of Mr. Ramsay and his family. Potatoes, green beans, and pork chops were served. It was plain and plentiful, and Mr. Harrington felt he had never had a more delicious meal.

  They rose early the next day and set out on their way. Despite his sore muscles, Harrington found the early part of the ride enormously pleasant. He breathed in the delicate, moist fragrance of the trees and underbrush and delighted in the way the poplar leaves danced in the morning light. But as the sun warmed the trail and brought the biting horseflies to life, his pleasure in communing with nature was quickly extinguished.

  Together Harrington and Genyk fought their way through the bush and mud and the ever-present mosquitoes from one farm to the next. As hard as he tried to spot the hatchet marks that had been notched on trees to mark the trail, he couldn’t see them unless they were first pointed out by Genyk. He realized that were he to travel on his own in this country he would be hopelessly lost in minutes. He had assumed there would be roads. How do you bring people out to bush country and expect them to build farms without even a road to bring in lumber or farm animals?

  The two traveled through acre after acre of bush where poplar, oak, and ash trees grew in thick abundance. They came upon a black bear and her cub, which was more startling to Harrington than to the bears, who looked on with curiosity before shuffling away.

  The bush opened onto fields dotted with rocks. This poor land was in sharp contrast to the expansive open fields that had been settled by the Mennonites closer to Winnipeg, where rich meadows stretched for mile after mile ready to accept the plough.

  They stopped to talk to farmers in the midst of their backbreaking clearing of the land and watched small children working alongside their parents, laboriously hauling one stone after another out of the dirt. He heard the settlers singing. Some of the songs were fast-paced and cheerful; others were plaintive, mournful tunes. One was about war and men leaving to become soldiers, Genyk explained, never again to see their lov
ers who waited for them or their mothers who stitched them a special scarf called a rushnichok to carry for remembrance.

  Harrington marveled at the lonely little houses, each a two-hour walk or more from the nearest neighbor. He had never seen anything like it. The pioneers had carved their homes out of the ground, raising small cottages with thatched roofs that were plastered with prairie gumbo that they had somehow painted white. Each family had helped the next to be sure they would all be ready for winter. Little gardens, neat and productive, were set out next to the houses. The settlers had built clay ovens in the yards near the houses. Genyk said this type of oven was called a pich, which sounded like “peach” to Harrington’s ear, and that they were built in addition to the ones in the houses used for heat and cooking in the winter. In summer, with the temperature often climbing well into the nineties, it was too hot to cook indoors.

  Most of the Ukrainians had come to Canada with little or no money. This created additional hardship as it meant there was no money to buy farm animals, tools or basic necessities like flour unless the men found work that would pay wages. For this reason, most of the men had to leave their families in winter to find work. Some found jobs in nearby towns, or were hired to cut cordwood for fuel. Harrington heard stories about the trials of the women, who were alone with their children through the winter months while their men were away.

  By evening, they had arrived at the farm of Peter Strumbicky. A large smudge had been lit near the house to provide relief from the mosquitoes. Peter, at sixty, was among the oldest of the immigrants at Stuartburn. His wife, Irena Goyman, was forty-two. They introduced their five children ranging from their oldest son, Nikola who was twenty-one, to little Rose, who had just turned two. The travelers were warmly welcomed and sat down with the family to a meal of beet soup that Irena called borscht. She served it with bread. There was no butter, they were told, because as yet, there was no cow.

  “What do you do for milk for the children?” he asked. There was an exchange in Ukrainian between Genyk and their hosts. Mrs. Strumbicky shrugged at the question.

  “No milk. Sometime, not often, she go to neighbor, Mr. Pidhirny, to bring pail of milk for children,” Genyk interpreted.

  “Does she take the children with her?” Harrington asked, looking at the smiling clean faces nearby. There was another exchange in Ukrainian. He watched Irena shake her head and pat the table as she spoke.

  Genyk turned to him with the translation.

  “She say if men are away working, and she is alone, she tie small children, Rose and Mattay, to table legs in house if she need to go to neighbor.”

  “Ties them up?” Harrington said in disbelief.

  “To keep children safe. No go outside to get lost,” Genyk smiled at the little ones.

  “Why don’t the older children look after the small ones?”

  “Children working in fields. Four-years-old can carry rocks with older children.”

  Harrington felt a knot in his throat as he looked at the toddler who smiled and turned away shyly to her mother. Peter interrupted and said something to Mr. Genyk, then motioned he should tell the government man.

  “Next month, they will have a cow. Next winter will be easier for the Missus. Also they will have big celebration. Nikola will be married to Aksana Shmigelsky who is coming with her family from the old country.”

  “Then they already know each other?” asked Mr. Harrington.

  “Tak. Yes,” said Genyk. “The Strumbicky family from Zalischyky in Galicia and just a few miles from them is Blischanka, where is coming the Shmigelsky family. They are friends for many years. Generations they are knowing each other.”

  When he asked how it was they had decided to come to Canada, Irena was given to tears. The story took the better part of an hour to tell and was punctuated by the hair-raising cries of coyotes howling in the night.

  In the end, Harrington was transformed into a sympathetic champion of the new Canadians. What he learned was that their motivations for leaving their homeland were rooted in their history of serfdom over hundreds of years. Reforms had finally released them from obligations to noblemen but had left them with only small plots of land on which to survive. It became the custom in the old country that when a son was old enough to marry, his father would section off a piece of the little land he had to give to the son to start his new life. Through the subsequent generations, the area the Ukrainian peasants came from became seriously overpopulated, with too few resources left to support extended families. There was also a severe shortage of trees for fuel and for construction.

  Genyk explained that with the news of free land in Canada, coupled with their terrible hardship in the old country, the Strumbicky family, like others, believed their only hope was to leave. They prayed to God for their safety and sold everything they owned to come. As for the hard land they took up as their homesteads, to the Ukrainians, the abundance of trees in the area was itself a source of riches, providing wood for fuel, and rabbits and partridges to trap for food.

  “To have this one hundred sixty acres, where before in old country they had one, maybe two?” Genyk raised two fingers in the air, then sighed, held is hands wide, and shook his head. “It is everything to own this land. With land you don’t starve.”

  Irena was rocking Rose and quietly started singing a song. Genyk whispered to Harrington she was singing about a bandura, a Ukrainian stringed instrument. It had a lilting, haunting melody. The others joined in and soon they were all laughing and talking about the upcoming wedding celebration of Nikola and Aksana and speaking of the little baby Canadians that would be born into their family.

  Harrington was deeply moved by their pride and determination to tame this unbroken wilderness and establish their families here. Korinchikeh, Peter called it. “Little roots,” Genyk interpreted, “for the generations that will come after us.”

  Over the next long day, farmer after farmer spoke with Harrington. He learned that each faced the same struggles with the same resolve to succeed, and he came to understand the vast and overwhelming task before them.

  Remarkably, in just one year, each family now had some kind of dwelling and each had put in a vegetable garden. Some had dug wells. The land was being cleared, one stone at a time, one tree at a time.

  Winter had been especially hard for the settlers. At times the temperature dipped to thirty-five or forty degrees below zero, adding to the isolation of the homesteaders and the fear of dying from exposure.

  What he had learned over the last few days weighed heavily on Roger Harrington’s conscience as he made his way to the train platform in Dominion City.

  “Chikai, chikai! Wait, Mr. Harrington! Chikai! I have something for to give to you, Mr. Government Man.” Cyril Genyk, shouted in a mix of Ukrainian and English against the noisy arrival of the train as he strode toward him on the platform.

  “Please to take it. It is special bread from Mrs. Strumbicky.” He thrust a small parcel forward.

  “How very kind.” Harrington was quite taken aback. A family with barely enough to feed their children was giving him bread.

  “It is paska, special for you from Ukrainian tradition,” Genyk explained. “Usually it is just for Easter but she say to tell you she make it special to send prayers and good luck for you for journey to Ottawa.”

  “Dock-yoo, Mr. Genyk,” Harrington tried his best to say thank you in Ukrainian. “Please say doo-zha-dock-yoo, thank you very much, to Mrs. Strumbicky and her husband for me.” He stumbled through the unusual words and felt embarrassment rising under his shirt collar. He vowed to himself that by his next visit to the Ukrainian colony at Stuartburn, he would be able to express his gratitude correctly.

  “Dyacayu, Mr. Harrington. Until next time. I am glad you come. Safe traveling for you, Mr. Harrington.” Genyk shook the visitor’s hand. As he turned to leave, Harrington stopped him.

  “Wait!” he called. “Mr. Genyk, I also have a present.” He unfolded his carefully protected coat that had
cost him one month’s salary.

  “This jacket, could you please give it to Nikola Strumbicky so he will have it for his wedding to Aksana?” Genyk nodded and gently accepted the gift. He smiled and waved as Harrington boarded the train.

  Evening was approaching and Harrington had about a two-hour ride to Winnipeg. He ached with fatigue and let out a long sigh. It would be late when he got to his hotel and he had much to prepare to be ready for his meetings in Winnipeg. He pulled out his notes. First to catch his attention was the list he made of the villages the Ukrainian settlers had left behind in the old country, Melnytsia, Zviniacha, Synkiv, Bereziv and many other names. All were new to him; all unpronounceable.

  He shook his head. One hundred twenty people had set out for the golden new country a year ago and now all were fighting to take root in an inhospitable land with an impossible climate. Was this to be the foundation of the Canadian grain industry? These hardworking determined souls, picking rocks and boulders out of the soil, day in and day out, in the hope that one day a crop would be harvested. It seemed utterly impracticable.

  Harrington could only shake his head. This is what Canada was advertising in Europe as the breadbasket of North America.

  It seemed Ottawa knew nothing about what they were dealing with here.

  Chapter Eleven

  Arriving in Winnipeg

  July 29, 1897

  The smell of the orchard, with its blossoming fruit trees, filled Hannah with delight. It would be a good harvest. It was always good when the stork made her nest on the roof of the barn. The old ones were right. It is a sign for good luck, the stork in her nest. Cherries, apples and plums danced from the trees and flew into the house, piling so high they dropped off the table. Clack, clack, clack. Hannah ran after the apples and plums but could not catch the flying fruit. Clack, clack, clack.

  “Vinnipago, Vinnipago!” Someone shouted, startling Hannah and waking her. The acrid stench from travel-weary immigrants burned away the sweet fragrance of her dream orchard. Her neck hurt. Her back ached. But suddenly her aches and pains seemed utterly unimportant. They were just ten miles out of Winnipeg according to the marker that had been spotted next to the track. Soon she would be reunited with her husband; nothing else in the world mattered.