Olga (3 page)

Mother would have a baby every two years, so she was kept busy. She would give birth to eleven children: five sons and six daughters. I was near the middle: Mike, Mary, Ann, Jean, John, Matt, Olga, Steve, Phyllis, Kay, and Alex. Besides human babies, the farm produced quite a few other young. My brother Mike remembered that one spring when all the animals were grazing, he counted 51 new births on the farm: colts, calves, piglets, kittens, and
puppies.

Jean remembered that mother loved to sing, and although she never learned to speak English as well as father, she had little jingles for every occasion. Phyllis heard mother recite “Twinkle, twinkle, little star,” and asked mother where she had learned it. Mother replied she learned it from Mike when he went to school. She recited it
beautifully.

Tweenkle, tweenkle littiw star,
How woo wunder what yu are
Up above the noisey high
Like ai diamon in a
sky.

Mother was a pillar in our small farming community, and she was respected for her care and consideration. During the deadly flu epidemic of 1918 when many children and neighbours were sick and dying, mother left her own family and young children to make the rounds of the community to offer her help. Eventually, she contracted the flu herself and was sick for three weeks. I recall someone told me all of her children had to spit into a cup, and mother ingested this unusual microbe-rich concoction. We’ll never know if it was that strange brew or her tenacity and determination to survive that contributed to her healing but, thankfully, mother recovered from the deadly flu and continued to enjoy her large
family.

Farm women were self-reliant. Mother sewed all of our clothes, and she knitted sweaters, mitts and scarves. She raised geese for food as well as for the feathers that were used to make pillows and quilts. Together with her daughters she milked as many as 15 cows by hand. She sold butter and cream, which paid for necessities, and made her own soap for the
laundry.

As the family grew, each spring mother planted not one but two huge gardens. My sister said it was “as big as half of Saskatchewan”; everything we ate came from the farm. Today everyone wants to eat locally grown organic food. When I was growing up everything we ate was organic. Chemicals did not appear on the farm until after the Second World War. Father made sure we had a warm house and enough to eat, but there were few treats. I remember vividly one time he brought home a box of apples, and another time a big box of ripe, red tomatoes. We didn’t plant tomatoes in our garden at that time, so we learned how to eat and enjoy
tomatoes!

During harvest time, neighbour would help neighbour. In the morning, as many as eight men left their own farms to start working in our fields. At 10 a.m., we brought lunch for those hard-working people. By noon, we called them to come to the house where mother would have prepared a banquet of wholesome nourishing foods like borscht, homemade chicken noodle soup, creamed dill potatoes, pyrogies, cabbage rolls, roast beef, and
pork.

Eventually, over the years, farmers became more self-sufficient. They bought more machinery and more land and worked only for themselves. Father was good at seeing opportunities. With 11 children you had better be! He was one of the first farmers to go to the local native Indian reserve for help. He became friendly with some of the unemployed young men. These native men would come every summer to help father on the fields, since by then my older brothers and sisters had left
home.

Although I was only two years old at the time, I was often told the following story. One spring day, a federal census agent drove to our farm and interviewed father. Dad was preoccupied with the upcoming work to be done, and I think he was distracted as he rattled off the names of his children. He forgot my name! The repercussions of omitting me became evident only later in my life. Although I had a baptismal record, I was never able to get an official birth certificate, and I had problems proving who I was until I received a Certificate of Canadian Citizenship when I attended Normal School in Saskatoon for teacher training. Once again, I had to deal with an issue of my identity: in legal terms, I didn’t even exist until I gained the title of teacher. Thank goodness I had found a way to breathe life into my physical
self.

It is easy to understand my father’s preoccupation with the farm. There always was so much work to be done. From sunrise to sunset we all pitched in to do our share of work on the farm. Before going off to school, we milked 15 cows by hand, separated the cream from the milk, and washed breakfast dishes for 15 people—our immediate family and two hired
hands.

In 1926, father bought a Case tractor and a Waterloo threshing machine in partnership with Peter Stadnyk. They worked together for three years until father bought his own outfit. During harvest time, my older brothers and sisters would help father bring in the grain. Four horses pulled the binder and, after the wheat was cut, the sheaves were “stooked” or stacked upright to dry before going to the rack. From the rack, the sheaves of wheat were pitched onto a conveyor belt where they would go through the threshing machine. The grain would be loaded into the wagon to go to the granary, and the straw would be blown to the other side to be used for the
animals.

Father was never sick, but he did suffer a few accidents during his farming career that required hospitalization. Once in the fall, while he was hauling a load of wheat to the Vonda elevator, he was walking beside his horses to keep warm and slipped under the wagon and suffered a broken leg. Another time, he was caught between the horses and the seed drill and suffered a few broken ribs. When he was cutting chaff for his stock with his sons, his clothing got caught in the rotating shaft, which threw him over and dislocated many joints in his hands and
feet.

After all of their children had married and moved out on their own, father and mother gave up farming and moved to Saskatoon for a well-deserved rest. They bought a little house on 22nd Street, close to the church, and moved into the city house in the fall of
1953.

One day I encouraged my mom and dad to take a professional photograph in a studio in Saskatoon. There they were, perched on a piano bench, my dad straddling the bench, sweating profusely in the dark suit he seldom wore. Mom looked lovely with her long, brown hair pinned into tight curls. As I look at their photo today, I realize how young she looked for her years, despite all the hard
work.

My parents, Wasyl and Anna
Shawaga.

Mother said the only time in her life she had seen our father cry was at the last Christmas they spent on the farm. Although they had eleven children and numerous grandchildren, not one family member had thought to go out to the farm to spend Christmas with them. It was the first time our parents celebrated the Christmas holiday
alone.

My parents were kind, helpful, and respectful people, both morally and financially. They demonstrated a steadfastness of purpose that inspires me to this day. They lived together for 55 years, celebrating their 50th anniversary in 1956. After a short illness, Wasyl died on Sunday August 6th, 1961 at the age of 74. Anna died on Sunday September 22, 1974 at the age of 85. She had planted her own garden in the spring of
1974.

Mother standing in front of her Saskatoon home a short time before her
death.

School!

The story of my experiences at the one-room rural school was one of initiative, determination, achievement, difficulties, disappointments and, above all, courage. In March 1924, when I turned five years old, I entered grade 1 in Riel Dana School, a typical rural one-room schoolhouse, two miles from our farm. In the summer we walked to school. In winter, we travelled by horses hitched to a caboose. The horses were kept in a barn near the school house, and it was our brother Steve, a lover of horses, who hitched and unhitched them, and who took us to and from
school.

For my first day of school, my older sister, Jean, had made me a burgundy velvet dress embroidered with beads. That dress was the envy of all. Although the idea never entered my head, I think I must have been the cutest kid in the
bunch!

Mrs. Savella Stechishin was my grade 1 teacher. I loved her, and I loved my new life. In later years, Mrs. Stechishin enjoyed meeting with me socially, and she always praised me to her friends. I admired this gracious lady, and I believed in her life philosophy. When anyone asked her advice, she humbly said, “My goal always is to be my best, to embrace a healthy lifestyle, and to accept new challenges. Be positive and happy. Be your best today. Do I think older is better? Yes I do!” Mrs. Stechishin passed away recently. She published the famous cookbook,
Traditional Ukrainian
Cookery.

My brothers and sisters and I would rush to finish our farm chores so that we could get to school and play before classes started. Our favorite game was softball,
if
we had a bat and
if
we could find a ball. In some schools, naughty students would take the globe and use it as a
ball.

Some teachers would suspend their globes near the ceiling as protection against being ‘borrowed’. In other one-room schools, mice enjoyed the glue used to make the globes and would nibble away at foreign lands and sections of
ocean.

Although I really wasn’t a serious athlete in school, I did like softball. Mary Scherban Lelach and I were the only two girls on the rural school championships baseball team. After school ended at 4 o’clock, we would often walk 6 miles to a neighbouring school, play the ball game, and walk back home sweaty and tired but
happy.

Another favorite game was called “Anti, Anti Over”. One group of kids would be on one side of the schoolhouse, and another group was positioned anxiously on the other side. Someone would throw the ball over the school roof, and you would try to catch it. Then the opposing side would rush over and try to take a prisoner. The group that had the most prisoners won. It was great fun, and it made you
tough.

The Rak School softball team in 1931 with me in the first
row.

We played hopscotch and marbles as well as skipping rope. At lunch time, we would conjure up pageants and pretend we were at a wedding. Someone played the bride, a groom and, of course, we would need a priest and bridesmaids. We had so little in the way of game equipment and props, or stories from the cinema to model, that we made the most of our imaginations. Remember, this was the era before electricity and
television.

I enjoyed school, liked my teachers, and was curious about the stories we read in library books. I learned to read, print, write and, eventually, to type. Little did I know at the time that it would become a valuable
asset.

I excelled in every subject—mathematics, history, science, geography, and social studies. I remember one unfortunate incident in a grade 5 math class. Although I was good in math, for whatever reason I was unable to solve a particular problem that the teacher had written on the blackboard. I stood there self-consciously, unable to answer the problem, and feeling quite embarrassed in front of all those staring eyes. As punishment, the teacher put me under his
desk.

There I was, crammed under the teacher’s desk along with another unfortunate student for the rest of the math class. After school, the teacher lined up the four of us who had had difficulty in math that day and lashed us with a willow branch. When our parents saw all the welts and bruises on our shoulders they were furious, and the teacher was immediately dismissed from our
school.

After I completed grades 8, 9, and 10 by correspondence courses, my parents sent me to complete grades 11 and 12 at Saskatoon’s Bedford Road Collegiate. I lived with the Sister Servants of Mary Immaculate, an order of Catholic nuns. My parents did not have enough money to pay for my accommodations, so they bartered with the nuns: my father’s potatoes and cabbages paid for my room and
board.

I must not neglect to add this memory. When living on the farm as a youngster, every summer for two weeks I walked each day with the other children five miles to our parish church. A fledgling community of Sister Servants of Mary Immaculate (SSMI) nuns taught us catechism and religious instructions. They formed in me a faith that I may often take for granted, but will always respect. Their guidelines were founded in the importance of following the precepts of a Christian life. Every individual’s talent was developed and valued with respect. I have always believed in and admired their tireless work. I am grateful to have had the SSMI in my
life.

Although I loved the sisters, and I once dressed up in a nun’s habit just to see how it felt, the thought of entering the religious orders never crossed my mind. I believe I was the only boarder who was not studying to become a nun. But I did love to study, and eventually in 1935 I attended Secretarial Success Business College. I worked for four years before going to Saskatoon Normal School to become a teacher. I graduated in 1941 and began my teaching career. I later attended the University of British Columbia to complete my undergraduate education. At Normal School I added my middle name, Marlene. Later, when I had to sign my initials, it didn’t seem right to simply write
OK
.

I studied secretarial subjects, such as typing, shorthand, and penmanship, skills that became useful in later years. During the assembly at Normal School in Saskatoon, Principal C.P. Sealy asked for a volunteer to work in his office. Although I knew I could do it, I was too scared and timid to volunteer, but my friends pushed me to stand up. There I was, shaking like a leaf, my knees knocking together as I stood in front of Mr. Sealy. “Miss Shawaga, spell the word ‘ecstasy’.” With great concentration, I recited each letter and then plopped down in my
seat.

“I want to see you in my office first thing tomorrow
morning.”

I got the job. I was ecstatic! I thoroughly enjoyed working for my principal that entire year, all because I was able to type and to spell the word
“ecstasy”.

Your homework
assignment:

Remember those family members who have gone before you. They continue to live on in your heart and
mind.

Give thanks to your elders and ancestors, those who are known and those who are
unknown.

Remain close to the people you love and who love you. Have a positive attitude so that you will feel loved and
needed.

It is not too late to start good habits that can flow down to your future generations. Realize that you can enhance your whole life through your positive
actions.

May the love and protection of your ancestors keep you happy, healthy, and
safe.

A grandmother was telling her young granddaughter what her own childhood was like: “We used to skate outside on a pond. I had a swing made from a tire; it hung from a tree in our front yard. We rode our pony. We picked wild raspberries in the woods.” The little girl was wide-eyed, taking this all in. At last she said, “I sure wish I’d gotten to know you
sooner!”