Edmonton - A City Called Home > Interpretations of Edmonton > An Interpretation
An Interpretation
Stories of Michael Gowda
contribution by Jars Balan
Michael Gowda as a younger man
I first learned about Michael Gowda while reading a 1968 history of Ukrainian literature in Canada by the late Winnipeg poet, Mykyta Mandryka. In a biographical sketch included under the heading "The First More Distinctive Authors," Mandryka related how Michael Gowda immigrated to the New World to escape military service in the Austrian Army, after which he worked as an interpreter for the Bellamy Agricultural Company in Edmonton. Obviously a man of conviction who was unafraid to challenge authority, and better educated than the majority of his fellow countrymen in the pioneer immigration, I immediately had this image of Michael Gowda as Ukrainian draft dodger and a kindred spirit to the Vietnam-era Americans who followed more than a half century later. Though admittedly fanciful, this initial impression of him also proved to be strangely prescient when I began putting together the pieces of Michael Gowda's life in Canada, where he lived from 1897 until his death in 1953, mostly in the city of Edmonton.
My curiosity was further piqued when I subsequently read in an anthology edited by the Edmonton poet, Yar Slavutych, that Michael Gowda was the second Ukrainian Canadian pioneer to have a poem published in the New World. His 24-line verse, "To the Ruthenian People!" appeared in the American Ukrainian periodical, Svoboda (Liberty), on 31 August 1899 -- seven months after the same paper carried the homespun rhymes of a Lamont-area farmer named Ivan Zbura, heralding the birth of Ukrainian poetry in Canada. Much more impressive, however, was Slavutych's claim that another work by Michael Gowda was the very first piece of Ukrainian poetry to ever have been translated into the English language. Entitled "To Canada," it was published in 1905, a full six years before the first poems by the national bard of Ukraine, Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861), were similarly put into English verse. Also remarkable was the fact that this singular achievement came just eight years after Michael Gowda settled in Canada, yet the poet already expressed deep feelings of affection and loyalty toward his adopted country, as is evident from this excerpt from Mandryka:
But in Canada, in Liberty we work till death,
Our children shall be free to call thee theirs,
Their own dear land, where, gladly drawing breath,
Their parents found safe graves, and left strong heirs.
That Gowda's rough English rendering of his poem had been versified by E.W. Thomson - a name vaguely familiar to me from my university Canlit courses - and that it had been published in the Boston Transcript in October 1905 (!?) was no less intriguing, given how Ukrainian immigrants still had only a marginal presence in Canadian society at this time. Resolving to find out more about the poet "draft dodger" who sang Canada's praises to readers south of the border, I began scanning published sources for additional references to him while pursuing other research that I was doing on Ukrainians in Canada.
I soon started noticing Michael Gowda's name popping up in histories of the pioneer era Ukrainian Canadian community, and not just in books and articles about Ukrainian immigrant writing. From these I discovered that he was not only a prominent figure in the inauguration of Ukrainian organizational life in Edmonton, but was also well known to many of his kinsmen throughout Alberta and in Western Canada. In 1901 Gowda became the catalyst behind the formation of the first voluntary association founded by Ukrainians in Edmonton, and in 1907 he was responsible for mounting the first Ukrainian-language play to be staged in the city. Two years later, he spearheaded a national campaign to establish a "Galician" regiment as part of the Canadian military, admittedly a rather strange undertaking for a man who had fled his homeland to avoid his military obligations. This was one of several apparent contradictions that I was to encounter in connection with Michael's life, contradictions that suggested he was not afraid to march to his own drummer or to change his mind about an issue. Notwithstanding Michael's enthusiastic promotion of the regiment, or the support that it received from the Edmonton Journal and local politicians, the campaign eventually fizzled.
Ironically, Gowda had intended for the detachment to provide his fellow newcomers' with a way of demonstrating their loyalty to Canada and the British crown. However, just a few years later, Ukrainian immigrants found themselves in the uncomfortable position of being labeled as "enemy aliens," for which they were denied the right to enlist in the Canadian Army and incarcerated by the thousands in wartime internment camps.
Obviously a man with a visionary bent, in 1909 Michael helped to organize an Edmonton convention for Alberta Ukrainians in an effort to get his kinsmen more involved in provincial and federal politics. The following year he was listed as a founding member of the national executive of the Federation of Ukrainian Social Democrats (FUSD), which attempted to unite left-of-centre Ukrainians from across Canada in a cohesive organization and an effective ethnic lobby group. Although the FUSD attracted a who's who of the pioneer era Ukrainian intelligentsia, it began disintegrating soon after its first conference in Edmonton under the pressure of political, personal and regional differences.
In 1910 Michael Gowda's name also appeared as one of the directors and shareholders of a new Winnipeg newspaper, Ukrains'kyi holos (Ukrainian Voice), the unofficial organ of moderate radicals, progressive teachers and self-made entrepreneurs within the nationalist wing of the Ukrainian Canadian community. Three years later, he became one of four Ukrainian candidates who ran as a bloc of independents in the 1913 Alberta provincial election, but was rejected along with his fellow activists in the unequal contest. Within months of this defeat, Gowda once again found himself in the leading ranks of what proved to be a futile battle to prevent the provincial Liberal government from introducing measures that effectively killed bilingual instruction in public schools serving Ukrainian settlements. For several years this was the sum total of what I knew about Michael Gowda, besides his patriotic poem, "To Canada," which seemed to have marked the high point in his modest, albeit ground-breaking, literary career.
A more significant development occurred in 1992, when Ukrainians in Canada were celebrating the centennial of the arrival of the first wave of immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian crownlands of Galicia and Bukovyna. I was asked by U of A historian, Dr Frances Swyripa -- my predecessor as the coordinator of the Ukrainian Canadian Programme at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) -- if I would be interested in looking at some papers pertaining to the life of Michael Gowda, which had been preserved by his granddaughter, Melvina Gowda. Without any hesitation I agreed to go over the materials, and I wasn't disappointed: from even a cursory glance, it was clear that there was much of historical value in the letters, miscellaneous clippings, photos and manuscript fragments that comprised the collection. What first caught my eye were some of the familiar names that appeared in Michael's correspondence and press clippings, such as Thomas Bellamy, Frank Oliver, William Griesbach and Ken Blatchford. Even with my patchy knowledge of Edmonton's early history, I realized that these were important shakers and movers in the city's evolution from a frontier town to a vibrant provincial capital.
One item in particular that got my attention me was a clipping of a 1933 letter to the editor published in the Edmonton Bulletin. Titled "MONEY-MAD MALADMINISTRATIION" [sic], it was signed "M. Gowda, First Ukrainian Citizen in Edmonton..." This was a revelation to me, and it struck me as odd and a little presumptuous that Michael Gowda would make such a bold assertion. After all, the first groups of Ukrainians had begun passing through Edmonton as early as 1892, and Michael only disembarked at Strathcona Station in the spring of 1898. However, I was to later conclude that was he was perfectly justified in identifying himself as the earliest Ukrainian resident of Edmonton - another of the many "firsts" that made him such a compelling historical figure.
Organizing everything thematically as I sifted through the contents, I took advantage of the opportunity to photocopy all of the documents for my own records on Michael Gowda, which now embraced a half-dozen files.
Having completed my examination, I recommended that the original materials be deposited in the Provincial Archives of Alberta, since they would unquestionably be useful to anyone who was researching the history of the province as well as the city of Edmonton at the turn of the 19th century. Fortunately, Melvina Gowda agreed with my suggestion, and thus in 1993 the Michael Gowda collection was deposited in the Provincial Archives.
As fate would have it, in 1993 I also happened to visit Boston while accompanying my wife, Lesia, to a medical conference. Taking advantage of this opportunity, I headed to the public library to see if I could locate the issue of the Boston Transcript where Michael Gowda's celebrated ode "To Canada" had first appeared in print. There, I discovered that the poem had been included in a fascinating two-part article by E.W. Thomson about his 1905 visit to the "Galician colony" in the Star-Wostok area northeast of Edmonton. Looking up references that I had to other articles by Thomson dealing with the contentious bilingual school debate, I was pleased to find that Michael continued to be in contact with the journalist and author long after their initial encounter in Edmonton.
Some follow-up research that I later did on Thomson himself helped me to understand his relationship with Michael, and the reason why he became his literary collaborator and political ally. A veteran of the American Civil War who had met Abraham Lincoln, Thomson counted among his many friends such distinguished figures as the Canadian politicians Wilfred Laurier, Joseph Howe and Henri Bourassa, and the poets Archibald Lampman, Henry Drummond and C.G. Roberts. That the Ontario-born journalist kept in touch with Michael Gowda for almost a decade after their meeting in Edmonton can be attributed in part to Thomson's gregarious and generous nature, but also indicated something about Michael Gowda's personality and the kind of impact that he had on people who met him.
By now, my bulging files on Michael Gowda were beginning to resemble a giant scrapbook containing pieces of an incomplete puzzle. On the basis of what I had compiled I next wrote a short account of Michael Gowda's life for a research project that I was conducting on behalf of the Kalyna Country Ecomuseum, since an important part of his story was intertwined with the history of rural east central Alberta. In the meantime, I continued to hunt for additional information about him, which once again came to me in an indirect way.
While going through microfilms of the newspaper, Svoboda (Liberty), looking for contributions by a trailblazing Ukrainian priest named Nestor Dmytrow, I happened to notice several articles submitted from Edmonton by Michael Gowda between 1898 and 1906. Naturally, I copied everything that I could find which was either authored by Gowda or made mention of his name, and these articles and submissions were then added to my personal archives. Once again, I only superficially surveyed the new materials, as it was not always easy to decipher the old orthography, the quaintly ornate language or the faded fonts of the densely printed pages of Svoboda. However, I did note that Michael's reports not only shed light on his various concerns and activities, but also provided tantalizing glimpses into the early history of Ukrainian life in Edmonton.
I was therefore pleased to hear about the "Edmonton: A City Called Home" project, when it was announced in 2003. What better opportunity than the centennial year to take stock of the Ukrainian contribution to Edmonton's rich multicultural heritage? And who better than Michael Gowda to tell the story of the Ukrainian pioneers in the city as it was emerging from its trading post origins to become the future capital of the soon-to-be province of Alberta.
As I started putting together the information that I had collected over the years with the details that I had gleaned from a variety of published sources, my skeletal outline of Michael Gowda's life began acquiring flesh and blood. The second of ten children born to a tailor and seamstress, Michael grew up in a village called Vetlyn, now in southeast Poland, near the medieval town of Jaroslaw. Blessed with devoted and loving parents who appreciated the value of an education, he was able to complete divisional school and studied to be cantor, qualifying him to work as schoolteacher before his immigration to Canada.
Landing at Halifax in June 1897, Michael quickly picked up a command of English as he worked different jobs while making his way to Edmonton, where he arrived on 18 May 1898. Thomas Bellamy immediately hired him as a salesman for his farm implements company, because he was keen to better serve the thousands of immigrants who were coming to Alberta from Eastern Europe and spoke no English. Often called on to advise the newcomers and assist homesteaders in town on business, Michael later found employment as a Dominion Land Titles interpreter, first in Edmonton and then briefly in Yorkton, Saskatchewan.
In the meantime, in 1903 Michael married Vera Babiuk, the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants who had settled near Willingdon. Moving into a house on 93 Street at 109A Avenue, Vera and Michael started a family right away that within eight years grew to include four children: first a daughter, Mildred, and then three sons, Faust, Edison and Leo. In 1905 Michael was also joined in Canada by a younger sister named Sophia, who married a railway man and settled in southern Alberta.
In 1912, as the growing threat of war loomed over Europe, Michael made a return visit to his native village to see his aged mother one last time. He used the opportunity to rescue another sister, Maria, from an arranged relationship with an older suitor, and she subsequently became the wife of Dmytro Ferbey, the long-time owner of the Ukrainian Bookstore on 97th Street.
After coming back to Alberta, Michael Gowda ran for office in the provincial elections, but was rejected by the voters in Victoria constituency. He then went into business in the village of Mundare, though his family remained in Edmonton. Even when Michael got a job as a traveling passenger agent with the Steamships Division of Canadian Pacific from 1924-1927 - which required that he base himself in Manitoba and Saskatchewan - Vera stayed behind in the family home in Edmonton, so that the children could attend city schools.
Not surprisingly, these many separations put a strain on Michael's and Vera's marriage, which was further undermined when Michael began having difficulties finding a job and his financial situation deteriorated. Although he had been prominent figure in the Ukrainian community in Alberta for almost two decades thanks to his linguistic skills, his entrepreneurial spirit, and his many influential friends, Michael gradually found himself marginalized as the years went by and as his fellow Ukrainians became more fully integrated into Canadian society.
Eventually Michael and Vera drifted apart, and although they never divorced, in the late 1920s he left the family home for a small, rented apartment nearby. Then, as the Depression took hold and work opportunities became scarcer still, money problems resulted in Michael losing some of the landholdings that he had acquired because he was unable to keep up on his property taxes. In the early 1930s he retreated to a small house in Grassland, near Boyle, though he frequently visited the city, and at the end of the decade he moved for a short time to the West Coast to be with Mildred and her family. Nevertheless, Edmonton always remained Michael's real home, and he soon returned to the city. Throughout most of the 1940s he divided his time between the Highlands area residence of his son, Faust, a dentist, and a summer home on a friend's acreage just west of the city. Always fond of music, books, and spirited political debates, Michael spent his final years enjoying the success of his children and the company of his grandchildren, with whom he especially liked to take occasional fishing trips. He died aged seventy-nine in 1953, and was buried at Edmonton Cemetery.
In the half century following his death, Michael Gowda's unique place in Edmonton's history was largely forgotten by almost everyone except his immediate descendants. Thanks to foresight of the family members who preserved his papers, and the occasion of the 2004 centennial celebrations, it is possible to now rediscover the fascinating life and times of the "First Ukrainian Citizen in Edmonton."
Jars Balan
Co-Director
Ukrainian Canadian Programme
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies
1st Edmonton Ukrainan
That is how Michael Gowda (Mykhailo Govda) described himself in a 1933 letter to the Edmonton Bulletin, thirty-eight years after he first arrived in Alberta.
Born in the village of Vetlyn, Jaroslaw County, in a part of Austro-Hungarian Galicia that is now in southeastern Poland, Michael Gowda emigrated to Canada in June 1897 as an unmarried twenty-three year old so as to avoid having to fulfill his compulsory military service in the Habsburg army. A secondary school graduate and a village schoolteacher with a gift for learning languages, he quickly learned English after landing in Halifax, which gave him a big advantage over his fellow immigrants, the majority of whom were illiterate peasants. Disembarking at Strathcona station on 18 May 1898, Gowda was soon hired by the Bellamy Agricultural Implement Company to work as a sales interpreter for the swelling tide of Ukrainians who had begun farming in east central Alberta earlier in the decade. Although by this time thousands of Ukrainian pioneers had already passed through the city en route to the free lands in the outlying countryside, none of the homesteaders had yet made Edmonton their permanent home, though they visited the city to purchase supplies and to look for casual or seasonal work.
That is why Michael Gowda was able to claim the honour of being "Edmonton's First Ukrainian Citizen," since he was the first Ukrainian immigrant to take up residence in Alberta's future capital. But even without this signal accomplishment, Gowda led a remarkable and eventful life that deserves to be better known.
Michael Gowda with his wife, Vera, and their children.
In 1907 Michael Gowda directed the first Ukrainian-language play to be staged in Edmonton, the popular classic, Natalka Poltavka. In 1909, he spearheaded a campaign to form a Ukrainian regiment in the Canadian Army, seeing it as a way for his fellow countrymen to demonstrate their loyalty to their new land and the British Crown. Although this patriotically inspired initiative was supported by cavalry Captain William A. Griesbach and the Edmonton Journal, it failed to win the approval of Canadian military officials in Ottawa.
Often employed as an interpreter by politicians when they were campaigning among Ukrainians, in the 1913 provincial elections Michael Gowda unsuccessfully ran as an independent candidate in the heavily Ukrainian Victoria constituency northeast of Edmonton. Upset by his defeat, he wrote a stinging rebuke of those who voted against him, which he then had printed and put up in post offices throughout the district. Gowda subsequently established a successful farm implements dealership in Mundare, and still later worked as a dominion lands administrator and a representative of the Canada Pacific Steamships Company. A life-long Ukrainian community activist, Michael Gowda died in Edmonton in 1953 at the age of 79.
To Canada (poem)
O free and fresh home Canada, can we
Born far o'erseas, call thee our country dear?
I know not whence nor how that right may be
Attained through sharing blessings year by year.
We were not reared within thy broad domains,
Our father's graves and corpses lie afar.
They did not fall for freedom on thy plains,
Nor we pour out our blood beneath thy star.
Yet we have liberty from sea to sea,
Frankly and true you gave us manhood's share.
We who, like wandering birds, flew hopefully
To gather grain upon thy acres fair.
From ancient worlds by Wrong opprest we swarmed
Many as ants, to scatter on thy land.
Each to the place you gave, aided, unharmed,
And here we fear not kings nor nobles grand.
And are you not, O Canada, our own?
Nay, we are still but holders of thy soil.
We have not bought by sacrifice and groan
The right to boast the country where we toil.
But, Canada, in Liberty we work till death,
Our children shall be free to call thee theirs,
Their own dear land, where, gladly drawing breath,
Their parents found safe graves, and left strong heirs.
To Homes, and native freedom, and the heart
To live, and strive, and die if need there be,
In standing manfully by Honor's part
To save the country that has made us free.
They shall be as brothers to all the rest,
Unshamed to own the blood from whence they sprang,
True to their Fathers' Church, and His behest
For whom the bells of yester Christmas rang.
As first published in the Boston Evening Transcript, 17 October 1905. Subsequently reprinted in slightly revised forms in the Edmonton Journal (n.d.); in Balch, Emily G., Our Slavic Fellow Citizens (New York, 1910); and in the Vegreville Observer, 29 January 1913.
To the Ruthenian People! (poem)
They are writing from the homeland: We are being tormented so cruelly,
That we don't have the strength to breathe.
Everywhere you turn it has now become so corrupt,
That even food isn't enjoyable anymore.
The sequestrators ride into our villages,
And yank our sheepskin coats from the houses,
While the gendarmes keep watch every minute
To learn if any meetings are being planned.
And those much-ballyhooed elections will come
In town the muskets are gleaming
Traitors like "livestock" are baying from the barns,
They are tearing up the election papers.
Oh woe! Woe! Tears are streaming,
No one will dry them from your face,
It's as if you were concealed from human eyes,
It's as if one's cries will not move anyone.
Absolutely not! Because slender young fighters,
Are already blooming like flowers,
And they're for looking for ore to make knives -
So people, don't give up hope!
You will, unlucky ones, yet rule over
The entire land of Ukraine
And will move from poor homes into palaces,
Just don't succumb to laziness!
M. Gowda
Edmonton, Canada
Published in Svoboda, 31 August 1899, p. 2.
Gowda's rebuke that was posted in post offices after his loss in the provincial election.
Translation of his colorfully-worded tirade against the voters of Victoria Constituency, who chose not to support him in the 1913 provincial election.
THANKS
To all of my true Friends and patriots
Of our common cause.
EDMONTON. ALTA.........1-5-...........1913
To everyone who sincerely tried to elect with me in a honest way a better future and greater respect for our people and our children, as well as shared prosperity here in a foreign land, I extend my genuine and sincere thanks and I address them one more time with these words:
Brothers don't be dispirited, with hope we go forward, and truth will be resurrected!
Educate yourselves and don't nod off doing work for the national cause. Fairly and wisely prepare yourself with the keepers of our holy cause.
You know that what hurts me should also hurt you, so work with the hope for a better future and let's go forward.
Thanks to all the real swine.
For all the swines with long piggish snouts = sell-outs = traitors, abject wretches and scoundrels, reptiles, honeyed serpents, scorpions, moneygrubbers, Judases, and those who allegedly speak the word of God, but who sold themselves like that Judas Iscariot - I wish them many, many, many long years, may they not fall ill but languish in poverty and never die, and may they wallow about this world like stinking fetters and look upon their vile work every step of the way, so that the black spectre of betrayal always stands before their eyes, and may their conscience be so heavy and gnaw at them the way it gnawed at Judas, who nevertheless stood higher than they did because he understood his treachery, understood that he conducted himself dishonourably and he finished his miserable life at the end of piece of rope on a withered aspen-tree.
And as for the betrayers of the national cause like those who essentially behaved like swine in the Victoria district and are not ashamed of their baseness, but even pray to a righteous God, may He prolong their abominable lives. This is unbridled baseness.
Accept this deserved thanks and learn how to make better progress.
M. Gowda
News from Canada
Fellow Canadians! I have a few thoughts that I want to share with you, so as to raise issues that are touching on our lives, especially in Canada, where fate has scattered us across the boundless steppes and wild forests of this new world and our new homeland. Because we are not able to sit down together and discuss things among ourselves, our Svoboda*1 will have to serve this purpose for us, which our people are so fond of, and which will make space for a few words of truth.
Knowing my countrymen and being affectionately disposed toward them, because I have had the opportunity to meet a considerable number of people, that they have the same understanding that I have, that they want the same kind of happiness that I desire for myself, therefore in the name of the majority of people I will allow myself to subject this article to the scrutiny of my brothers.
My main point of departure will be served by a short proverb that embodies a great lesson within it, "Harmony builds, while a lack of harmony destroys."
One can very often encounter among our people differences and misunderstandings that first get started with a disagreement, the surreptitious servant of ignorance. That cursed discord rent more than a little a harm in the old country, while here it cleaved its painful woes with that new, wide-ranging freedom and it so stifles a person, that it is hard to even think about it. Meanwhile, misfortune comes in many forms. In the homeland it was incomparably different. There, our cursed enemies went after our hard-earned wealth, such as it was, while here it is even worse, because calculating sorts of deceivers play on our consciences and disturb our peace of mind, tearing us apart with divisive kinds of faith. As for us, dear brothers, we shouldn't go any further down the road to discord, especially for the sake of religion! We shouldn't be allowed to sow the first seeds of division, the fruit of which leads to all manner of evil. We shouldn't pay attention to the heroes of discord and enmity, who for Judas-like pay want to buy us and keep us for their personal milch cow, because we have already been fleeced enough by the aristocratic champions in the old country, so much so that the heart still trembles at the recollection.
Therefore let us remember so that we don't make a mistake again and aren't the last in line. Though we don't have our own great leaders, let us not grab after the drivel of foreigners, but remember that agitation of all kinds isn't conducted for naught, but...
Here, in Canada, we are not very numerous, so we shouldn't make our way individually, but proceed on the road of harmony and love and fraternal ties and not divide ourselves into little groups, because on that road we will not sustain our lives. And if foolish disagreement takes over among us, then enemies will get in among us and destroy that fragile prosperity, which will yet be ours. And then where will we be? On what will we lean on! We'll perish like that fog that doesn't leave a trace behind itself. Let us not look to mighty kingdoms that will combat discord with arms and with the torrents of blood of innocent people, because we do not have the strength to do so.
We are all one family here, a household garden, within which we should cultivate the finest flowers and plant hybrids with tasty fruit, so that our children don't one day rain destruction upon us, like is now happening in the old country.
Looking at us I see, that discord has flared up among us over issues of faith and priests. This is how it is: one person sings the praises of the Doukhobours, another checks out the Baptists, still another draws closer to the French Jesuits, and someone else wants to bend our spines before the batiushka-tsar, and so on... but from this no one can escape God's final judgment. And from all of this cunning agitation there comes fraternal warfare and a slight to God. Perhaps you haven't heard that a long, long time ago countries fought over religion, one country desiring to impose upon another the manner in which to praise God? And do you know what sprang up because of this? Rivers of human blood, devastation, poverty and ignorance. And something similar is now starting to take place here in Canada.
Meanwhile the teachings of Christ, which are supposed to unite us with chains of love into a single, large family, those teachings on the lips of the hideous agents who have been tossed among our people, are becoming a bone of contention. And so I ask of these good folks: who gave you the right to assert among peaceful people, that only prayer conveyed before God precisely in your manner, is pleasing to our Creator? Why, do you fiendish souls, who are in the pay or not in the pay of stupid agents, why are you confusing our people, and going about them like a disease, claiming that your faith alone is good? Do you have the right to do this, and did you take into account the terrible consequences of your diabolical work? What business do you have with our conscience, which is to submit precisely to the agents of your religious views, and to worship God according to your prescription? Are you utterly convinced that you are doing a good deed?
And is it good, if in this manner you are sowing the seeds of family discord, and are unnecessarily eliminating people's unperturbed consciences, and causing them to momentarily forget about other matters immediately affecting their daily lives? And is it evangelical love to pit brother against brother solely for personal benefit, for your personal convenience, for your personal advantage. But you too will come to an end, because that, which you sow today will fall on your heads in the form of a curse of an aroused people. The teachings of Christ do not need such hideous agents, because they speak of their own sacredness to human hearts. We, here, in Canada, in a free country, we don't need any uninvited caretakers of any old religion, even if they are Orthodox priests, like [Fr.] Hrushka, who the people in the United States threw out, while we, as free people, united in one family, should choose as a spiritual leader someone who would be helpful to us in all of our matters, but not propagate Christ for the money of the Russian synod.
Best of luck to you brethren of good will,
May God grant you strength!
Take up harmony in your free life
Because that is what the Higher authority demands.
Clasp your hands together,
And love each other like brothers,
Let us pay no heed to those who sow discord,
And let us not follow after them.
Stand, brethren, together in one line,
Always try to look ahead,
And be sure to pay heed
As to what kind of traces you leave after yourself!
M.G.
As published in Svoboda, 16 March 1899, pp. 1-2.
From Dopysy Column: 20 April, 1901
Reading the correspondence in Svoboda from all kinds of places, the thought unconsciously comes to mind to say a few things also about the Ruthenians in Alberta. To begin with, I simply have to say, that our problems basically stem from: faith and priests. You, dear reader, may think that I write from some sort of godless perspective or out of enmity toward specific individuals. No, dear friend, I write this because for a long time my conscience, or more properly my love for my people, compels me to mention some of the things that are happening here, often out of lack of awareness and blindness, so that even if one never saw or heard a thing, enough's enough, because wherever you go, it's always the same and that is unacceptable.
Our Ruthenians are essentially very honest people, there is nothing more to say, they are basically hard-working, thrifty, peaceful and progressive - but in what? Not in matters of education or truth.
You say to a Ruthenian: dear brother, is it not God's wish for you that your children get an education in the great philosophers and under the supervision of pedagogical institutions, but for your children to first learn to converse in their native Ruthenian language, to read it and write it, and alongside their own language a foreign one as well, without which it will be bad for us here among civilized people... No. Our Ruthenian keeps quiet about everything, like a brick wall, and doesn't think about anything else other than what to do concerning a priest, whether or not to accept this fat one, or someone else; he thinks about which church the authorities will assign a priest to, ours or theirs; the poor man thinks about these things to the point of distraction, and all of his thinking doesn't amount to anything.
The lawyers count and take their money to the bank, while our Ruthenian grieves and does not sleep, but only thinks about how to finagle, gypsy-like, another priest and when it comes to the church case in the supreme court how to wiggle out of it, or if it comes to it, how to take an oath. *1 One brother sharpens a razor against the other and each asks God for vengeance. Sometimes it is hard not to laugh. Why, even if our Ruthenian asked some Ivan for revenge against his brother, he probably wouldn't listen, and not just the Lord God. This is a joke and an outrage! But that is the direction that matters here are leading.
And so, countrymen, let this all be of concern to you, that there is not a nation that is living here with us, which is lazier towards education and progress than the Ruthenians are. My advice is as follows: first of all, come to an agreement as to what you have in common. Understand that you are brothers, that you are children of one Mother-Rus', brought up in one country, you pray to one God, and you work on the same free land. For that reason you should be like brothers in a family, fraternize with each other, have respect for yourselves and laud what you have achieved but don't engage in slander so that you aren't taking money to lawyers for their wine and cigars. Extend an invitation to a wise man, who would be your counsel for both young and old. Do not build ten churches and not a single school, just put up a nice hall that could serve both as a school and as a church. Resolve to provide living costs for a teacher, so that he can think about education and not about the day when he will have to leave for another job, because he's unable to pay to have a boot fixed on the one that he has.
Send your children to school punctually and take care of their morals at home, and then in a short while you will see, that other people will visit you and not call you "dirty sheepskins" (filthy kozhukhs).*2 I once again ask you brothers, don't leave matters to grow cold, just get going on national work as quickly as possible, so that it is not too late.
*1 The reference here is to the court case over the ownership and denominational affiliation of the Holy Transfiguration Church near Edna-Star. *2 In the original, "dirty sheepskins" is transliterated from English. Kozhukh is the Ukrainian word for a fur or sheepskin coat.
M. Gowda.
From Dopysy Column: 18 July, 1901
The Lviv assembly of cathedral clergy sent a lot of breviaries and other prayer books at the request of French missionaries, namely the Jesuit, Lacombe, books which the French missionaries then hid from the world and do not show around.*1 A few little books showed up among the Ruthenian girls, and those not for long, because they were then taken from them the following week.*2 The books can be found in a stable (where the Jesuits keep their horses), and they haven't seen God's world for two months already and endure the insult and abasement of such lower forms of creation as the Jesuits.*3
We ask the Lviv assembly of cathedral clergy, if this is the intention of their mission in Canada? Is this the defense of their Ruthenian ritual? Or of their people and their enlightenment? Is this all of the help that you are thinking of providing to Canadian Ruthenians, who have for so long worked so hard for you on behalf of all kinds of lords, and who for different promises from you made you into prelates and other sorts of eminences?
Is this all of the payment for those hot tears that the people shed for their faith, and which you promised to defend and continue to promise to defend? Is this how you keep your word and promises, which you made to the poor emigrants from the church doors before their departure for Canada? It is true that you were speaking with your lips, but this is what was in your hearts: go, cursed peasant, and break your head, if you don't want to work for us!
Do you not know, gentlemen arch prelates, that thousands of people in Canada call you gypsies and liars, people who cannot keep their promises, and do a better job blessing you here than you did blessing them, when they were departing for Canada?
The French Jesuits keep your books, those books that you sent for the Ruthenian people to maintain their faith, do you know where? - in a stable! Almost like the one where Jesus Christ was born, only not in Bethlehem but in Edmonton. Come, passionate defenders of the Ruthenian nation, and prostrate yourself in that stable, gather up your books and propagate the teachings of Jesus better than you have been propagating them until now.
*1 Father Albert Lacombe (1827-1916) was an Oblate missionary priest who successfully ministered to the Cree and Blackfoot in Western Canada. Among the missions that he established in Alberta were St. Albert (1861) and St-Paul-de-Cris ,at Brosseau (1865). There were some French Jesuit missionaries who were active in Alberta at this time, but as Gowda would have been unfamiliar with the Oblate Order from Ukraine, he probably simply identified all Roman Catholic orders as "Jesuits." It should be noted that in the spring of 1900 Bishop Legal had despatched Father Lacombe to Europe to secure missionaries for the Ukrainian Catholics in Canada. On his trip, Lacombe met with the Pope, the Austro-Hungarian Emperor, and Bishop Andrei Sheptytsky of Stanyslaviv, who was soon to be consecrated Archbishop of Lviv and Metropolitan of Halych. Because of his work among the native peoples, Lacombe was sympathetic to the special needs of Ukrainian immigrants and sought to accommodate them in their desire to preserve their Eastern Rite. Unfortunately, his pragmatic approach was rejected by Archbishop Langevin, who hoped that Ukrainian immigrants or their children would eventually adopt the Latin Rite.
*2 The "Ruthenian girls" that Gowda was referring to were the daughters of homesteaders who found work in Edmonton as domestics to earn money to help their families. At this time, they were probably being assisted by sisters with the Faithful Companions of Jesus at St. Joachim's Roman Catholic church, prior to the arrival of the first Sister Servants of Mary Immaculate from Ukraine in the fall of 1902. *3 The Jesuits were regarded with contempt by nationally conscious Galicians, as they were viewed as zealous agents of Polonization and Latinization.
M. Gowda