In the summer of 1927 the Albert Corbett place, which had
been vacant for some years, finally found new owners. Two new names were soon
added to the list of residents of Summer Hill - SCHWETZ and BOECHKA. No doubt
questions began to circulate. Who were these people? Where had they come from?
What were they like?' What kind of neighbours would they be? Afanasy Schwetz
and Stephen Boechka had emigrated to Canada, seeking a better life than they
had known in their homeland - Ukraine.
UKRAINE. Prior to World War I, Ukraine did not exist as a
sovereign country. She had been carved up between her more powerful neighbours
- Tsarist Russia, and Austria-Hungary.
AFANASY SCHWETZ
Afanasy Schwetz, was born August 14th, 1883, in the tiny
village of Hordiwtsi, on the Dnister River, near the town of Khotin. Hordiwtsi
was located in the part of Ukraine that was claimed by Russia. He was the
eldest of five children, three boys and two girls.
Afanasy arrived in Canada at the port of Halifax in April,
1912, after a month-long voyage on a converted grain ship which he had boarded
in Rotterdam, Holland. He had no education, no trade, and could speak neither
English nor French. His total assets, besides his two willing hands, were two
Russian gold coins having an equivalent value of twenty-five Canadian dollars.
His first place of employment was at the Sydney steel plant
where he worked at charging furnaces or coke ovens. The smoky, sulphurous
fumes reminded him of his pastor's sermons on what Hell was like. The job paid
14 cents per hour, and the fumes produced nausea and a constant headache.
After saving a little money he moved to Saint John, N.B. where he found work
at The Atilantic Sugar Refinery, which was in its early stages of
construction.
His first years in Canada were difficult ones. Having very
little money, a stranger in a strange country whose language he could not
speak or understand (unable to understand instructions, when told to bring a
pick, he might bring a crowbar), he often found himself the target of verbal
abuse at the hands of his bosses. As was the usual lot of foreign labourers,
he was often put to work at the heaviest and the dirtiest tasks - the kind of
work disdained by Canadians.
However, it would be wrong to leave the impression that all
Canadian bosses were cruel and unfeeling taskmasters. Many of them valued
these foreign people for their desire to obtain and keep a job, and their
willingness to work hard. On one occasion a newly-arrived Ukrainian requested
advice from a more seasoned immigrant as to whom and how he should ask to be
hired on. Thinking to have some fun at the newcomer's expense, the older one
told him what he should say. The next morning the newcomer approached the
foreman, and holding his cap in his hands, he said: "Meestair Baas, you
senwabeech, gimme job"... feeling very pleased with himself at being able to
speak "po Angliski."
The foreman made enquiry as to who had taught him this form
of English ', and when he had learned the "instructor's"
identity, promptly sent him to the office to pick up his time, while the new
lad was soon happily wielding the shovel the other fellow had been using.
Afanasy left Ukraine with the dream of earning enough money
so that upon returning home, he could purchase a waterpowered grist mill. The
sort of mill he had in mind was not built on land but on a scow. Anchored to
the river bank beside a rapids,. the wooden machinery was driven by a
paddlewheel turned by the swiftly flowing water. He had worked in such a mill
for a time and felt that, owning one, he could earn a comfortable living.
However, the Bolshevik revolution destroyed his dream. Life had been hard
under the tsar, but he reckoned that communism was far worse. He wanted no
part of that system and vowed not to return.
Moving to wherever a job could be found, he worked near
Woodstock on the Valley Railroad during its construction; in the Maine woods
with the Great Northern Pulp & Paper Co.; during the clean-up following the
terrible Halifax explosion in 1917; the construction of the Saint John Dry
Dock and the breakwater in East Saint John. He worked as a cookee with a
railroad construction crew near Gagetown, N.B. When the N.B. Hydro Plant was
being built at Musquash, he worked at clearing the area for its headpond.
Eventually he found employment with the Saint John Window Cleaning Co. When
the company was put up for sale, he went into partnership with two fellow
employees and purchased the business.
There had been no school in the village where he had been
born and brought up. He came to Canada totally illiterate. He had to ask the
help of fellow boarders, who possessed some learning, to write his letters
home for him, and to read the replies. Finding this an irksome. and
unsatisfactory arrangement, he sought the help of these same men in learning
the Ukrainian alphabet. Before long he was able to read his own mail from home
and to reply "with his own hand. " The last word he received from home
was in the early 1930's, when Stalin's forced collectivization of private
farms resulted in the deaths of from seven to ten million people. Entire
villages were wiped out. Anyone who resisted the collectivization or received
correspondence from abroad, automatically came under suspicion, was arrested,
and either executed or sent to the Gulags in Siberia or the Russian far north,
where most of them perished from overwork and lack of proper nourishment.
STEPHEN BOECHKA
Stephen Boechka, was born on December 28th, 1879, in
Bukowina, village of Zastawna, roughly 18 miles north of the city of
Chernivtsi, which is located on the Prut River. That part of Ukraine was under
Austria-Hungary.
Stephen was married, with a family of four children when he
made his decision to go to Canada. He had been employed on a large estate
owned by a Polish magnate, but his wages were so meager that he realized he
could never hope to earn enough to ever have property of his own.
The year was 1914. War clouds were gathering when he set out
for Canada. This would be his second venture to this country. He had come out
in 1910 and remained in Canada for two years before returning home.
When World War I broke out, Stephen, like thousands of
fellow western Ukrainians, was classified as an enemy alien. Those people were
deprived of the right to communicate with their homeland - they could send no
help to their families: Additionally, they were obliged to report on a regular
basis to the local police. About five thousand men, women and children were
sent to concentration camps in Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta. Banff National
Park was the site of one such camp. Much of the initial work of clearing and
building roads and other facilities there, was accomplished using the labour
provided by those internees.
During most of the war years, Stephen was employed at woods
work at Kapuskasing and Sudbury, Ontario. He also worked on a farm near Truro,
Nova Scotia. After the war he found work at the Atlantic Sugar Refinery in
Saint John.
FROZINA BOECHKA
Frozina was Stephen's daughter. She was ten years old when
her father left his home to return to Canada. His plan was to eventually bring
his family over as well. However, the war changed everything. Not only was he
unable to bring his family to Canada, he was not permitted to send them any
financial assistance, which made life very difficult for them indeed. In 1916
a cholera epidemic broke out which took many lives. Frozina's mother, and two
youngest brothers, died on the same day. At the age of twelve years, she was
left alone with one brother, Wasyl, who was eight. Only a few days later they
too became ill with cholera and were taken to a military hospital where they
remained until they, recovered several months later. Orphaned, what were they
to do? To whom could they turn?
Until the war ended and their father was again able to send
help, the children were forced to find ways of supporting themselves. Frozina
used to relate how at first she went to keep house and tend two children for a
woman who had to work away from home. Later, she stayed and worked at various
homes, helping women whose husbands were away to war. Still later she worked
as a domestic for Jewish families and her last place of employment before
emigrating to Canada was in the home of a well-to-do Ukrainian lawyer and his
family.
Wasyl survived by working as a cowherd, and by begging food
from army field kitchens - when opportunity presented.
When the war ended the map of Europe underwent a drastic
change. The Austro- Hungarian Empire was broken up. Ukraine was now divided
among Poland, Czechoslovakia, Russia, and Romania - which occupied Bukowina -
Frozina's home province.
Frozina lived in Zastawna until 1923 when, with her father's
help, she came to Saint John, New Brunswick. It was there that she and Afanasy
Schwetz met and eventually were married.
Ukrainians, for the most part, seem to have an in-born love
of the land. Afanasy certainly had this desire to have a place of his own.
After acquiring the farm in Summer Hill, he continued to work at his window
cleaning job in Saint John until he had paid off the mortgage on the farm.
Meanwhile, Stephen Boechka (now his father-in-law) left his job with the Sugar
Refinery and occupied the farm with a hired man for the first year until they
were joined by Frozina and her first son, Tennesea in the summer of 1928. On
December llth, of the same year, Frozina's second child, a daughter, Katrina,
was born at home.
Afanasy discovered that he had much to learn regarding
farming methods. What had been accepted practice in Ukraine did not always
work in Summer Hill. The soil was different, as was the climate, but with time
he was able to adapt. He liked working with animals, valued and took care of
his wood lot, and particularly enjoyed gardening. His carefully tended
vegetable garden was always a pleasure to see.
For Frozina, the first years on the farm were hard and
lonely. There was the isolation of country life, especially in winter, and
there were the difficulties of learning the English language. But with time
she felt herself accepted into the community. She attended the United and the
Anglican Churches. (It was the custom for people of both faiths to fellowship
in each other's churches). She took her children to Sunday School and Church.
"Taking" meant walking over a mile each way, for the family had no car.
There was no electricity in the community until 1948 so she
had none of the conveniences which ease the task of keeping house and caring
for a family. Along with all of the usual responsibilities there was that one
which most farm wives faced and detested, the washing of milking utensils and
especially the cream separator.
Like everyone else in the community, Afanasy and Frozina had
to struggle through the years of the Great Depression which struck before they
had had a chance to become firmly established on the farm.
A second son, William Willard, was born to them on June 2,
1938.
When it was announced officially that the area would be
expropriated to make way for an army training ground, the news was greeted
with dismay. The thought of being forced to move away from the community which
had become their home was far from easy to accept. After much searching, the
family relocated to Corn Hill, N.B.
Today, if one drives through the area that was Summer Hill,
one will see little to indicate that it had been home to so many families.
Houses and barns are gone - basements bulldozed level with the ground. Here
and there stands a lonely apple tree - dead - a victim of aerial spraying
marking the approximate site of someone's buildings. The fields are deeply
rutted by tank tracks, and the forests have been cleared away. Only the
cemeteries remain, fenced, and posted out of bounds to military personnel. But
many graves lack attention, and some of the older headstones lean this way and
that. Perhaps someone will take measures to put things right.
Stephen Boechka 1879 - 1944.
Afanasy Schwetz 1883 - 1971.
Frozina Schwetz 1904 - 1982.
Tennesea Schwetz 1925 -
Katrina Schwetz 1928 - 1993.
William Schwetz 1938 -
Tennesea - Served as a wireless air gunner in the RCAF in
WWII. From 1957 until his retirement in 1985 he was an instructor at New
Brunswick Community College, Moncton, in the Electonics Department. Married
Irene Dunfield. They have no children. They retired in Petitcodiac.
Katrina (Katie, later Kay) - Married Ray Lafleche. They
lived in Toronto. They had one daughter - Kim.
William - Remained on the farm in Corn Hill. Married Marilyn
Kyle. They have two children, Katrina and Stephen. William and Marilyn
continue to reside in Corn Hill.
