Woven Branches

In the late 1890s word of emigration to Canada and the United States reached the village of Tulowa through the Svoboda [Liberty] newspaper.¹ Petro Zwarycz became very interested in the possibilities of a better life in a new country. He made many enquiries and gathered a great deal of information from steamship operators and other institutions and, over time, convinced his parents and several other families that emigration to Canada would be a great opportunity.

On 3 March 1900 the Zwarycz clan, Fedor and Anna Kostaszczuk, and the families of Wasyl Czerniawsky, Nykolay Kozmyniuk, Mikhail Onyszczuk, and Ilya Symotiuk left the village of Tulowa in a mass exodus. This was a traumatic event for the village as those left behind were certain that they would never see their friends and relations again.

Anna walks backward out of her house, stopping at its stoop, and genuflects deeply, three times, in propitiation to the gods of the hearth. Then, on hands and knees, she kisses the stoop and rises, brushing the dust off her apron. Fedor is already on his way to the church with his neighbours; there will be one last Mass and the funeral hymn, Vichnaya pamyat' (Eternal Memory).

It is a kind of death. Anna and Fedor Kostashchuk are leaving Tulova forever. They are dropping off the face of the Earth.²

The group left Tulowa and headed south, fording the river Prut to get to Vydyniv to catch the train to L'viv. After much stress and confusion the group was finally able to board the train and start their journey.

The group arrived in L'viv that night and left the next morning for Oswiecem on the border of Austria and Germany. From there the group continued on to Wroclaw in Prussia (now in Poland). After a brief stopover there, the train continued on through Berlin to Hamburg. Here the group was finally able to rest as they were put up in a hotel for three days, part of the cost of their ticket.

Finally, on 4 April 1900,³ the group was able to board the ship Acadia, in a scene of mass confusion as described by Petro Zwarycz.

On the third day we were all taken from the hotel to the ship, and there a confusion beyond description erupted again. Men were lugging large packs and bundles; women were carrying small children in their arms and older ones on their backs. The service personnel of the ship was dividing the passengers into groups and assigning them to their cabins, but some of them were protesting the separation from those whom they knew. There was hustling and bustling everywhere, with sailors scurrying back and forth on the deck, chasing the passengers to the lower deck, so that the latter would not interfere with their work.⁴

The journey was very difficult for all of the emigrants. Being poor, they were sent to the bowels of the ship for their quarters, and felt the worst of the ship's rolling motion on rough seas. Seasickness was rampant among the group. After 14 days the ship finally arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia.⁵

In Halifax the group boarded a train to head west. They moved rapidly through Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and into Ontario. By the third day they had entered Manitoba. They arrived in Selkirk, Manitoba, the last stop before Winnipeg, on the fourth day of their long journey.

After a three day stopover in Selkirk the group resumed their journey westward. After another three days of slow travel they finally reached Strathcona (now part of Edmonton). (Peter Svarich writes that they arrive in Strathcona on April 14, but this is not correct, since they arrived in Halifax on April 18).

In Strathcona the families began to outfit themselves with farm implements, horses, harnesses and wagons.

Soon they set out eastward from Edmonton to Edna, passing through Fort Saskatchewan. The trip was very difficult as recent rains had turned much of the road into a soft, sticky muck. They spent a great deal of time pulling wagons out of the muck and calming horses that were panicked by sinking into the mud. They also suffered greatly from swarms of mosquitoes.

Two other villagers from Tulowa, Jacob Porayko and Nykola Gregoraschuk, had settled near Edna the year before. The group was able to visit them at the Porayko homestead. It was here that the group learned what pioneer life in Western Canada was like. Life was difficult, but the land that they worked belonged to them, not to some pan (lord) who took all the fruits of their labours for himself. Several of the families decided to stay in Edna. Only six families in the group continued east to find homesteads.

After much searching and deliberation Iwan Zwarcz, Petro Zwarycz and Fedor Kostaszczuk selected homesteads in Section 18. They returned for the rest of their families and then started the difficult task of building a new life in Canada.