Those Places Thursday: Evadale School in Saskatchewan

I’ve long wanted to write an article about my husband’s elementary school days, especially because he had such a different experience than I did. For instance, he went to a one-room rural school on the Prairies, while I went to an urban school in northeastern Ontario. He received a public education, while I was taught by nuns and secular teachers.

Michael attended Evadale School, located about seven miles northwest of Arran, Saskatchewan. He was there for Grades 1 through 5, from September 1959 until June 1964. Later, when his sister was old enough, she too went to Evadale, but only for Grades 1 through 3, because the family moved into the nearby town of Kamsack. Michael took these photos on a trip to his home province in the summer of 1973.

I've gathered his reminiscences in point form.

• My Dad told me that we lived exactly the same distance from three schools, but he chose to send us to Evadale.

• The school was three miles east from our farm. For the first couple of grades, my Dad drove me until I was old enough to walk by myself or with friends.

• My Mom used to tell me the story about my very first day at school (Grade 1) and how I couldn’t wait to get there, but when I arrived, I started to cry and refused to go inside. It took a lot of coaxing and I finally went inside.

• The school was on two acres. There were swings and teeter-totters, a teacher’s residence, and off in the distance, a barn and an outhouse.

• It was one large building: 2/3 of it was one room for the classroom with a wood-burning stove, then the other 1/3 was divided into the entrance (we’d hang our coats and leave our boots here; firewood was also kept here) and a storage room for supplies.

• Just about every year we had a different teacher. There were about 28-32 kids in all per year. Sometimes there’d be only one student in a grade. Our teacher taught one grade at a time.

• I think I started walking to school in Grade 3. I remember meeting up with my friends Dmitro, Doris, and Lawrence on the way.

• I’d leave about 45 minutes before class started. Some days I’d take my time and explore the bushes on the side of the road. One day I was late and was scared to go inside, so I stayed outside and sat by myself. A student going to the outhouse saw me near the school door and he told the teacher. She came out and asked me why I didn’t go inside. After talking to me for a bit, she told me to not worry and just go to my seat and that no one would notice.

• In good weather, my sister and I would walk or take a two-seat horse buggy that we’d park at the school’s large barn. There was room for about a dozen horses.

• I don’t remember which horse it was, maybe Fly or Prince, but after it was trained, it knew the route to take, enter the school grounds and pull up to the barn. I’d unhitch him, take him inside to his stall and then give him some hay.

• In winter, we’d get into an old car that my Dad had removed the roof and dashboard, and added runners. Our horse would pull the car to school. When it was very cold, my sister and I wrapped ourselves in blankets and duck under where the dashboard used to be to keep warm.

• I remember we had sports days before the end of the school year. I usually would enter track-and-field events like broad jump, high jump and 100-yard dash. Sometimes, I’d get ribbons for broad jump.

• I did well at school and almost always got straight As. It was hard to leave all the friends I made there when we moved into town in July 1964.

Copyright © 2016, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Tombstone Tuesday: Fred Demosky

Fred was my husband’s paternal uncle; his obituary can be read here.

Michael photographed his uncle’s tombstone during our visit to Grand Forks in June 2015.

Born on 16 September 1909 in the Canadian prairie province of Saskatchewan, Fred died on 14 April 1988 at home in Oliver, British Columbia. He was laid to rest in Evergreen Cemetery in Grand Forks, British Columbia.

Fred’s gravemarker reads:

In Loving Memory

Fredrick W.

Demosky

1909 – 1988

Copyright © 2016, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Maritime Monday: 227 Doukhobors Arrive in Canada in 1912

SS Californian on the morning after Titanic sank

In the spring of 1912, four separate ships brought more exiled Russian Doukhobors to a new life in Canada.

These journeys might have been unremarkable except for the following events:

• The Ultonia lost one life when a male infant child (Ivan Rybalkin) died at sea. [5]

• The Canada had to quarantine two Doukhobor families (Esaulov and Kolesnikov) on its arrival. [6]

• The Californian “observed distress signals sent up by the nearby sinking Titanic but ignored them”. [7]

Sources:

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository, Californian.jpg

1. Steve Lapshinoff & Jonathan Kalmakoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists 1898-1928 (Crescent Valley: self-published, 2001), 138; citing National Archives of Canada, Microfilm Reel # T-4692. Note: There is some controversy whether or not there were passengers aboard the Californian during this April voyage. For anecdotal evidence that a six-member family travelled on that ship, see “Polly (Harelkin) Verigin: Recalling the Titanic”, Doukhobor Genealogy Website (http://www.doukhobor.org/Harelkin.html : accessed 10 April 2016).

2. Lapshinoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists 1898-1928, 139; citing National Archives of Canada, Microfilm Reel # C-4784.

3. Lapshinoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists 1898-1928, 140-143; citing National Archives of Canada, Microfilm Reel # T-4744.

4. Lapshinoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists 1898-1928, 144-146; citing National Archives of Canada, Microfilm Reel # T-4787.

5. Lapshinoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists 1898-1928, 143.

6. Lapshinoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists 1898-1928, 144-145.

7. Lapshinoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists 1898-1928, 138.

Copyright © 2016, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Sunday’s Obituary: Fred Demosky

Twenty-eight years ago this month, my husband’s uncle Fred Demosky passed away. He was a younger son of Russian immigrants Wasyl and Luchenia (Tomelin) Demosky. Fred was born on 16 September 1909 at his parents’ farm near Buchanan, Saskatchewan.

When he was twenty-nine years old, Fred married Mary Popoff in November 1938 in Arran, Saskatchewan. The couple, who had two daughters, lived in the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta, before settling in Oliver, British Columbia.

Fred died at home on 14 April 1988 in Oliver. A prayer service was held there two days later, and his interment took place on April 19 in Evergreen Cemetery in Grand Forks, British Columbia.

The handwriting at the bottom of the obituary (on April 19) belongs to Fred’s youngest brother William (Bill).

Source:

“Demosky”, obituary, undated clipping, from unidentified newspaper; Demoskoff Family Papers, privately held by Yvonne (Belair) Demoskoff, British Columbia, 2016. Yvonne received an assortment of family memorabilia (including Fred’s obituary) in January 2012 from her father-in-law William (Bill) Demoskoff.

Copyright © 2016, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Church Record Sunday: Scholastique St-Michel’s 1864 Burial Record

My paternal great-great-great-grandmother Scholastique St-Michel (ancestor no. 33) passed away on a spring day 152 years ago this month.

Scholastique married twice and was widowed twice. By her first husband (and my ancestor) Pierre Janvry dit Belair, whom she married in September 1818, Scholastique was the mother of eleven children. (For a list of their children, see 52 Ancestors 2015: #32 – Pierre Janvry dit Belair, Father of 25 Children.)

After Pierre’s death, Scholastique married widower Joseph Clément in September 1851, but did not have children by him. The marriage was short-lived, because Joseph died between January 1852 and September 1854.

Scholastique lived on in Ste-Cécile-de-Masham (now La Pêche), Quebec, near her married children Paul (my ancestor), Mathilde, and Elisabeth and their families. Her other married children (Esther, Toussaint, and Denis) lived further afield (one in Montreal and two in the province of Ontario), so it’s not likely that she had much contact with them.

Scholastique died on 8 April 1864. She was buried two days later in the Roman Catholic cemetery attached to Ste-Cécile church in Masham. She was a month shy of her 68th birthday and not 69 as reported in her burial record.

Scholastique St-Michel burial record (Ancestry.ca)

The burial record (above) reads in French:

Le dix avril mil huit cent soixante quatre, nous / soussigné prêtre missionnaire de cette paroisse, avons / inhumé le corps de Scolastique St Michel épouse de / défunt Joseph Clément, décédée le huit de ce mois à / l’age de soixante neuf ans. Les témoins étaient Ambroise / Lemerle et de François Monnette. [signé L. Fremont]

My translation:

The 10 April one thousand sixty four, we / undersigned missionary priest of this parish, have / interred the body of Scolastique St Michel wife of / the late Joseph Clément, died the eighth of this month at / the age of sixty nine years. The witnesses were Ambroise / Lemerle and of François Monnette. [signed L. Fremont]

Source:

1. Ste-Cécile (Ste-Cécile-de-Masham, Quebec), parish register, 1853-1875, p. 117 verso, entry no. S.4, Scolastique St-Michel (written as Scolastique St-Michel, indexed as Scholastique St Michel) burial, 10 April 1864; Ste-Cécile parish; digital images, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 2 March 2016).

Copyright © 2016, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Sunday’s Obituary: George Vanasse

George’s obituary is the second one that appears on my blog today. Earlier, I posted the obit of my paternal grandmother Julie (Vanasse) Belair.

George and Julie were the younger children of Olivier Vanasse and his wife (and first cousin) Elisabeth Vanasse. George, the eldest son, was born on 13 October 1891. He and his siblings – Mary, William, Cecilia, Joseph, Corinne, David and Agnes – grew up on their parents’ farm on Ile des Allumettes, Pontiac County, Quebec.

In June 1920, George married (Marie) Louise Potvin in her hometown of Bourget, Russell County, Ontario. They and their seven children (three sons and four daughters) lived most of their lives in Canada’s capital city, Ottawa.

George died on 22 March 1976 – forty years ago this Tuesday. His funeral was held two days later in St. Sebastian (Roman Catholic) church, with interment in Notre-Dame cemetery in Ottawa. [1]

I don’t believe I ever met my great-uncle George, but I had the opportunity to visit his eldest child Jeanne (Jean) at her home in the 1980s, while on vacation in Ottawa.

Source:

1. “Ontario, Canada, The Ottawa Journal (Birth, Marriage and Death Notices), 1885-1980”, digital images, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 2 July 2013), Georges Vanasse [sic] death notice; citing The Ottawa Journal, 23 March 1976, p. 36, col. 7; City of Ottawa Archive, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; database created from microfilm copies of the newspaper.

Copyright © 2016, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Sunday’s Obituary: Julie Belair

My dear grandmother Julie died on Sunday 19 March 1967. [1]

My sister and I were only 6½ and 8½ years old, respectively. We were told of Mémère’s death the next morning, while getting ready for school. Marianne and I were in the small living room of our apartment and could see Dad a few feet away in the kitchen. He looked so sad standing by the counter.

Mémère Julie suffered from asthma and sometimes needed an oxygen tent at home. I don’t remember the days leading up to her death, and don’t know if she had been poorly before going to the hospital one last time.

I have only a vague memory of being at the funeral home. I think it was evening, and I was there with my parents. I watched people come and go in the sombre and dimly lit room.

I don’t remember the funeral, which took place at our parish church, half a block away from our home, three days later. It was at 9 a.m., according to the obituary, so Mom must have arranged for my sister and I to miss school that morning. It was a cold, snowy day and we needed to wear our winter coats, hats and mitts. I remember being at the cemetery, though, because I can still see myself and others standing in a small building for the committal service. (It was winter time in Timmins, so the interment was postponed until better weather.)

Forty-nine years have passed since that day, but I still miss my grandmother Julie and keep her close to me in my heart.

Source:

1. “Belair”, obituary, The Daily Press (Timmins, Ontario), 21 March 1967, p. 9, col. 5.

Copyright © 2016, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Funeral Card Friday: Annie Philippe

Ann (also known as Annie) was a younger daughter of Joseph and Martha (Bloski) Prince, a Polish couple. She was born in 1916 in Barry’s Bay, Renfrew County, Ontario. When she was twenty years old, Ann married Joseph Philippe, a nephew of my grandfather Fred Belair. Joe and Ann had six children – one son and five daughters.

I don’t recall if I ever met Ann, but I visited her daughter Joan at her home in Timmins on one or two occasions to talk about our Belair relatives. After my family and I moved to British Columbia, I corresponded with Joan’s sister and brother.

Ann died on 13 March 1976; her husband Joe passed away two years later.

Copyright © 2016, Yvonne Demoskoff.