I, like many of you, watched the disheartening news about the ever growing deplorable state of the people of Ukraine, as the leader of Russia puts increasing pressure on Ukraine to rejoin with Russia after the Soviet Union breakup 1988-1991.
It brought back memories of how the Ukarinian people had been treated during the last 100 years. Since 1917, Russia has seen eleven leaders or presidents. It moved from a state of peasants and poverty to a communist state where the military became its primary importance.
Russia absorbed the Ukraine to feed Russia because Ukraine was known as the breadbasket . . .
of Europe for its very productive farmland. As Ukraine fed Russia, Ukraine was driven into poverty.
When Nikita Khrushchev (Russia) visited our former Agriculture Minister with the green hat (Eugene Whelan) in Canada, they took a stroll through a grocery store in Eugene’s home town. Nikita was so amazed at the abundance of food on the store shelves that he was sure this was a set up because in Russia, most of the store shelves were empty by noon on an average day.
On their trip back to Ottawa, Eugene told Nikita that all Canadian stores were stocked like that every day. To prove it, Eugene told his Russian friend, “Just pick any store you want and we will go in and check it.” Nikita couldn’t believe that a cold country like Canada could have such an abundance of food. Russia had an abundance of food but lacked logistics to get the food to the public.
World War II was a classic case of a previous dictator getting too big for his britches and it took six terrible years, an untold amount of money and many thousands of the world’s finest young men’s lives to defeat the axis powers and save our planet.
In Canada many of the young volunteers who fought for Canada’s freedom came from our farms. Farms were expected to keep only enough young men or girls at home to keep the farm producing food for Canadians and extra to send over to the war effort in Europe. Every farmer can name several neighbours or relatives who did not return home, alive or dead, after the war.
In case you are still wondering what the (DP) in the headline stands for, it means a displaced person. After six years of war, much of Europe was demolished. Some of the lucky soldiers who were captured were not shot but sent to concentration camps until they were released after the war. Some of these young POWs had nothing to go home to because their farms or towns were completely destroyed.
Three of these POWs who came from Ukraine were now DPs and applied to emigrate to Canada. Since many young farm boys died in action, Canada accepted many DPs if they promised to work on a Canadian farm for two years after arrival. Three local farms volunteered to accept one man each and my parents farm was one of the local farms. Dimetro was the name of the fine young Ukrainian lad who helped at our farm for two years. I was only one and two years old when Dimetro lived and worked at our farm. I never knew Dimetro’s other name but it means big and strong and he was. Dimetro lived at our house and ate all his meals at our kitchen table with me on his knee. Dimetro never mentioned his family or wrote home but we always thought that they must have died in the war. Dimetro only taught me one bad habit. He had spent three years in a German concentration camp and the prisoners got very, very little to eat. Their rations consisted of food that was too rotten to feed to the German soldiers. Dimetro told us that the only way the prisoners could eat the rotten food without getting sick was to whiten it with salt. He became accustomed to eating his food very salty. Because I ate sitting on Dimetro’s knee and sharing his meal, I grew accustomed to using lots of salt too.
Dimetro enjoyed listening to the hockey games on the radio with my grandpa, (no TV in our house in 1948). All the three Ukrainian boys always got together at any community events but were very appreciative of their new farm families. After spending two years at their Canadian home farms the three boys all left together the same day after spending time saying a sad goodbye to their host farm families. Grandpa thought that they headed west because there were a lot of Ukrainian families in Saskatchewan.
Through my many years, I have had the opportunity to meet many great people with Ukrainian heritage who were grain farmers, beef farmers, bee keepers, dairy farmers, restaurant owners and ministers. Many of them had more than one job in a world where people claim that they cannot find work. My oldest and best Ukrainian friend told me that his grandparents and his two parents (not related) came to Saskatchewan when his dad was only four and his mom was born on the little ship before it landed in Canada. John was raised on a farm in Saskatchewan where a school was kind of close, but there was no church. Every couple weeks, a horseback preacher would ride into town with a Bible in his sack and a guitar on his shoulder. No one cared which religion they were affiliated with, everybody assembled at the school on a Sunday to listen and pray.
Last week I read a letter that was written by a Ukrainian farmer on March 1, 2022. He lives in the middle of Ukraine, milks 2,000 cows, grows a couple thousand acres of crops, (sunflowers, barley, wheat, canola, etc.) His family has already left Ukraine for safety but he remains to look after his milk cows and his farm. He said that it is this time of year that he spreads fertilizer on his fields getting ready to plant his crops. But will he, his family, or even his cows or farm be here tomorrow? He prays that we will all contact our political members to try to end this senseless war.
My old Ukrainian friend said that his dad told him, “You measure the value of a horse from the shoulders down and a man from the shoulders up.” Right now, Ukraine has a lot on its shoulders.
