Prisoners in the Promised Land

by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

  I wonder what our new house will look like? I hope Mr. Foster isn’t lying and that we aren’t really going to a jail. I hope there is room for chickens and maybe a little garden.

  Later in the afternoon, still on the train

  When I look out the window now, I don’t see so many rocks. The ground is flatter and there are still many trees and lakes. Mixed in with the fir trees are birch trees. They remind me of the birch forests in Horoshova. Oh, Dear Diary, how I miss my home.

  Thursday, April 22, 1915

  Mama needs help unpacking and then I must look around. I will write later.

  Here is what happened early this morning.

  I woke up with a jolt when the train came to a stop. I looked out the window and my heart sank. There were soldiers with guard dogs, guns and stern faces glaring in at us. Behind the soldiers were buildings behind a high barbed-wire fence, with tall guard posts on each corner. A shiver went through me. Mr. Foster had said that there would be no fences.

  I thought we were going to get off the train there, but instead, the soldiers stepped in (with their dogs!!) and the train moved again very slowly and then stopped. Not far from the second train stop was another set of buildings, but at least these were not surrounded by barbed wire. The soldiers ordered us out of the train and then they inspected us. When it was Mama’s turn, they made her take off her wedding ring and give it to them. They also took her money. It was only a few dollars. Why did they take it? Baba’s wedding ring was too tight on her finger and it wouldn’t come off. They cut her ring off. Don’t they know that Baba has never taken it off her finger since the day she was married? Baba did not cry when they did this. I think she wanted to, but she didn’t want them to see how much it bothered her.

  They didn’t take my hair ribbon, but I would have gladly given it up if they had left Baba’s wedding ring alone. I could tell by the way that Mykola gripped onto my hand that he was afraid of the dogs. We must have looked quite a sight, because one of the soldiers (who looked no older than Stefan) smiled kindly and even ruffled Mykola’s hair.

  As we followed them to the second set of buildings, Slava let out a sob as we passed a well-kept cemetery with what looked like a small church behind it. I wish she hadn’t done that because it got us all sobbing and I didn’t want the soldiers to see how frightened we were.

  As we got closer, I could see that some long wooden buildings were half built and others were finished. There were men dragging logs and sawing wood and banging nails into the sides of the unfinished houses. Suddenly the work stopped. I could see each man search our faces, looking for a loved one. I spied Tato just as he saw us. He threw down his hammer and ran towards us. He gave Mama a big smacking kiss on the lips and then he held her tight. I could tell by the way his body was trembling that he was sobbing, so I looked away. Men don’t like to be watched when they’re crying.

  One of the other men was staring at us. I didn’t recognize him at first, but it was Stefan! His face looks older now, and his shoulders and arms are much bigger than when he was in Montreal. Cutting down trees is harder work than selling newspapers.

  Stefan set down his saw and came over to me and shook my hand. Why is he so formal with me? He looked angry or sad, I don’t know which. Then he walked over to where his mother was and hugged her tight.

  Stefan’s hands are so rough now. Where is his father?

  Later

  I am thankful that the soldiers did not go through our luggage, because they would have found the silver spoon that has been in our family forever. I don’t think Baba could bear it if it was stolen.

  Friday, April 23, 1915

  Dear Diary, I just realized that it has been a year and three days since I stepped onto the ship to Canada. I never dreamed then that so much could happen in a single year.

  Our new house is not blue like our dear cottage in Horoshova, nor is it three storeys tall like our house in Montreal. This house is long and made of wood. It has just been freshly built by Tato and the other men and I love the house itself, if not the fact that we are prisoners. There is enough room in it for four families. More later.

  Almost forgot — they are called bunkhouses.

  Saturday, April 24, 1915

  Dear Diary, everything is a muddle here so I cannot write much, but I just wanted to say that Spirit Lake Internment Camp is two separate camps. The one we are in is for the married prisoners and their families. Down by Spirit Lake (the actual lake, I mean) is the bigger camp. It is for the guards (who are soldiers) and their families and also all of the unmarried prisoners. I will tell you

  Sorry, Diary. Mykola couldn’t go to the outhouse on his own because he said he saw a ghost. Was it the spirit from Spirit Lake?

  It was getting dark, so I went out with him. This outhouse looks like a small bunkhouse but inside, instead of bunks, are ten individual water closets along one side and then ten along the other side. I like water closets better than outhouses. They are cleaner than the outhouses behind our home in Montreal. No matter how often we scrubbed them they would still be stinky. These water closets smell of pine needles and soap. There is another building beside the outhouses and it is a wash house. It has a pump with cold water and also big tubs for washing clothing and a stove to heat water.

  Sunday, April 25, 1915, at dusk

  I am sitting on a sawed-off tree stump at Spirit Lake Internment Camp. It has been so busy since we arrived that I have not had a chance to write about everything I have seen and heard. If I pretend there is no guardhouse in our camp and no barbed wire around the single prisoners’ camp, Spirit Lake is beautiful. There is snow dotting the ground, a beautiful lake and the sun setting on it. The water sparkles like diamonds and there are snow-covered fir trees all around.

  I wonder if the Great Spirit is looking down on me as I look out at Spirit Lake?

  Monday, April 26, 1915

  in bed at night

  It was warm today but right now it is chilly. I am wrapped in a blanket sitting on the edge of my new bed and using my lap as a desk. This bed is wooden and the mattress is made of tree branches covered with cloth. It may not sound comfortable, but it is fine. It is nice to have a bed to myself. In some ways it is like the sleeping quarters from the ship, but it smells like sweet wood instead of you-know-what. Like in the ship, it is bunk beds. I sleep on the top and Mykola sleeps on the bottom. Baba has a bed of her own across from Mykola. Slava sleeps on the bunk above her. Mama and Tato each have a bunk bed too.

  Each prisoner has been given five blankets, which is a good thing because Tato says it gets very cold here at night.

  Slava’s father does not live in this part of the camp because it is for married prisoners. Even though he has a daughter, he must live in the main camp enclosed with barbed wire, with the single men. Slava misses her father. At least she knows that he is close.

  We have more space here than at our flat in Montreal. It is nicer too because there is more than one window. But in Montreal we were not prisoners. At least here we only have the soldiers to deal with, and no one calls us names.

  Tato says Stefan’s father is in “solitary confinement” but I don’t know what that means.

  Wednesday, April 28, 1915, dawn

  Dear Diary, it was raining in big icy plops when I first woke up, but now it is just plain rain. I am too wide awake to keep my eyes closed. This bed made of branches is a little bit scratchy, but I wrapped myself up in my blankets so I am cozy. I wish I had my down comforter from the old country.

  Baba and Mykola and Slava are still asleep. I can hear Mama and Tato talking in low whispers. I can’t make out what they’re saying, but they are not arguing.

  We share our bunkhouse with three other families, so Stefan lives here with his mother, and Mary lives here with her older sisters and parents. I had never really paid attention to Mary’s older sisters before. Olga is a year older than her and worked in a factory. Lesia is even older and she worked for an English family. Lesia is married and expecting
a baby, but her husband has been sent to a different internment camp. I hope he will be sent here instead so they can be together when their child is born.

  Natalka’s sister Lyalya is younger than Slava but tall for her age. Those two will be good friends.

  There are no individual rooms, so Mama has put up sheets to separate the families. We share a side with Mary’s family, and then in the centre of our bunkhouse are two heating stoves and two rows of dining tables plus a big iron bathtub and a cold-water pump and basin. There are two big pails for heating bath water on top of the stove. Stefan lives on the other side and so does Natalka.

  Thursday, April 29, 1915

  Things that I like about our new house:

  — we are with Tato

  — it is clean and fresh

  — I have seen no mice or cockroaches

  — there are no steps to trouble Baba’s knee

  Things that I don’t like:

  — we are prisoners

  — the guard dogs

  — this is far away from everything

  — the soldiers, except for the one who smiles

  Friday, April 30, 1915

  something important

  Before he left this morning, Tato explained more about Stefan’s father. Mr. Pemlych tried to run away and he was caught. “Solitary confinement” is a kind of punishment. I need to ask Stefan about this but I can’t right now because all the men have gone off to cut down trees and build more bunkhouses. They do this from 7:30 to 5:30 each day and they are supposed to get paid twenty-five cents a day. That is much less than what I was making at the factory. Tato says that the prisoners don’t actually get the money. It is kept for them and they can buy things at the camp store with the money.

  I am still trying to figure out why we are all prisoners. If people are mad at us because they see us as Austrians, why doesn’t the government just tell them the truth? I don’t understand how it solves anything to put us in an internment camp.

  Later (just after lunch)

  In the married prisoners’ village I have counted more than a dozen soldiers. I don’t like the soldiers with dogs and it makes me scared to see their bayonets. I am thankful to be in the married prisoners’ camp though, because we don’t have a barbed-wire fence like the unmarried prisoners’ camp. Their camp has four guard posts manned by soldiers with bayonets. Are we that dangerous?

  May 1915

  Saturday, May 1, 1915 (cold!)

  I just saw an awful thing. Do you remember Private Howard Smythe, that bad man with the dirty brown hat who became a soldier? He is here! He walked through our camp this morning. When he saw me, he gave me an evil smile.

  Most of the soldiers march off with the men beyond the camp to work, but a few of them stay with us. Today, one of them who stayed was the smiling young soldier and I now know that his name is Private Palmer. His first name is Robert. He brought us new prisoners some clothing. The women and girls got stockings and the boys got woollen socks. He also brought caps and undershirts for each of the children and some bolts of cloth. As each item was given to us, Private Palmer marked it in a book. Each family was also issued a broom and a towel. This makes Mama happy, as she likes to keep things clean.

  I almost forgot —

  Private Palmer has a camera. He got all of the children in the camp to stand together and he took our photograph. I saw him taking photographs of the buildings and other things too. I wonder if he will show us these photographs sometime?

  Sunday, May 2, 1915

  after supper, in my bunkhouse

  That little building behind the cemetery is a church. There is a Ukrainian priest in our camp, but he is not here right now. I think he travels to different camps to say Mass. A French priest from the village of Amos (which is a few miles from here) came and said Mass for us this morning. Tato wouldn’t go. Not many of the men went. I think they are tired because Sunday is the only day that they don’t work. They played cards instead. Mama didn’t say anything to Tato about this. I thought she would be angry with him, but she is just so relieved that he is fine and that we’re all together that she sees no need to argue about things they will never agree on.

  I went to Mass with Baba and Mama and Mykola and Slava, and after Mass we put pebbles on the graves in the cemetery. I said a prayer for my dear grandfather and brother up in heaven.

  Monday, May 3, 1915

  Stefan and I finally got a chance to talk last night after supper. We went on a long walk together in the woods beyond the camp, and just from the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a white form flit by. Maybe it was the ghost that Mykola had seen. I asked Stefan if he had seen it, but he said no. Maybe it was my imagination.

  There are birch trees mixed with the fir trees and now that some of the snow is starting to melt, the ground is covered with hundreds of round golden birch leaves from last fall. I never thought about it before, but birch leaves look something like gold coins. Maybe this is what Halyna meant about Canada being paved with gold?

  Stefan told me about his father. He had been worked very hard and he is not as strong as he used to be, and one day while they were out in the woods cutting down trees with only a few guards to watch over them, two of the men set down their tools and walked away. Mr. Pemlych wanted to go and he wanted Stefan to go with him, but Stefan said no, so Mr. Pemlych ran after the other two men. One of the guards ran after him and it didn’t take the guard long to catch him. The other two men have not been caught.

  They have put Mr. Pemlych in a small dark room all by himself and he is being given nothing but water and a little bit of bread. This is what “solitary confinement” means.

  What I don’t understand is, where did he think he could run to? There is nothing but wilderness for hundreds of miles. Stefan said that some people have escaped and not been caught.

  I think Stefan is more angry with himself than anyone else. He thinks that if he had run with his father, the two of them would have had a better chance. I am glad that Stefan did not try to escape.

  Later

  Stefan also told me something else. I wondered how he could have been arrested as a man in Montreal when he is only fourteen years old. He told me that he refused to show the police his papers. He wanted to get arrested because he wanted to be with his father. Stefan can be very annoying, but every once in a while his kindness shows.

  Wednesday, May 5, 1915

  Dear Diary, I have now been in Canada for one full year.

  I don’t know if we are better off for coming to Canada or whether we should have stayed in Horoshova. If we had stayed, I would be with the people that I have known since I was born and I would be living in my cozy blue house and I would have graduated from my old school. Maybe I would even be betrothed by now. But we had so much debt that our lives would never have been good. Also, there is now war. Tato would have been a soldier for the Austrians. I worry about my friends in the old country and I pray for their safety every day.

  Oy, Dear Diary, I just read that last paragraph I wrote and I am so wrong. If we had stayed in Horoshova, I could be dead now. The place I left does not exist anymore except in my dreams. The war in Europe is being fought right in my old front yard. I will hold the old Horoshova in my dreams and I will pray that the people we left behind have somehow found a way to live.

  It is sad to be a prisoner at Spirit Lake Internment Camp, but I am thankful to be alive. And I know this may sound strange, but it is such a relief to be here instead of in Montreal. I can go outside here and breathe fresh air. In Montreal, I was supposed to be free but I did not feel safe.

  I keep on reminding myself about all the good things in Canada. There are no lords, and in the future maybe we will own land and maybe we will be free to live like other Canadians. And if we didn’t come to Canada, I wouldn’t have met Maureen or Irena or Slava or Mary or Natalka.

  I would never have met Stefan.

  Sometimes I think of Stefan as my best friend. I would never tell him, though, because he wou
ld tease me.

  This may sound strange, but if we hadn’t come to Canada, I never would have seen Spirit Lake. It is sad that this is a jail and also sad that it may be haunted, because it is one of the most beautiful places in the whole world.

  If there wasn’t the war, I think we could have a good life in Canada.

  Thursday, May 6, 1915

  The soldiers give us some old newspapers to use for toilet paper and also to stuff our boots with if our feet are cold or the boots are too big. One of the newspapers they gave us today was dated April 30th and Stefan and I read it together. The Germans attacked the Allies with gas a few days earlier and the British were so upset about it that they attacked Germany even harder. I have noticed that when there are bad stories in the paper about Germans or Austrians, the soldiers here are meaner to us.

  Stefan says that his oldest brother enlisted in the army and is fighting for Canada. Stefan’s brother changed his name from Ivan Pemlych to John Pember so they don’t know he’s Ukrainian. Stefan says lots of Ukrainians have done this.

  His other brother, Petro, also tried to enlist, but he hadn’t thought to change his name and so he is interned in Kapuskasing.

  I hope John Pember is not sent to fight near Horoshova.

  Friday, May 7, 1915

  Even though it is May, there was a skin of ice on the wash basin when I woke up this morning.

  Mama has sewn me a warm wraparound skirt, and a coarse blouse and shawl from the cloth that nice Private Robert Palmer gave us, but she wants me to take the time to make some better clothing for myself. I am very good at sewing and I shall enjoy doing this.