Coming of Age

On his farm near Chipman, Alberta, the wizened little man first celebrated his 87th birthday. After that, Wasyl Elyniak packed his bag and headed east for a celebration in which all Canada would take part.

The first Ukrainian to settle in Canada, Farmer Elyniak had been picked to take part in the Citizenship Week celebrations at Ottawa. Along with 23 other representative Canadians, including Armenian-born Photographer Yousuf Karsh, he would be handed a certificate of citizenship from Chief Justice Rinfret. For the first time the certificates would carry the words "Canadian Citizen" (TIME, May 27) instead of "British Subject"--official evidence of a nation's coming of age. For Citizen Elyniak it would be a fitting last chapter of his life, which is also the story of the settlement and growth of the prairie lands.

Wheat, Barley & Keep. In 1891 Wasyl Elyniak left the Ukrainian village of Nebyliv, slipped into Germany, crossed the Atlantic to Montreal. There he was offered a job, but he turned it down. Out west, he had heard, land was being given away.

It was not as easy as that. He went to work for a Mennonite farmer at Gretna, Manitoba, for $110 a year and keep. By 1903 he had saved enough to return to the Ukraine for his wife and three children. They brought ten other Ukrainian families to Canada with them.

For four more years Elyniak worked for farmers at Gretna, drew $80 a year plus 80 bu. of wheat and 40 bu. of barley. He bought a team of oxen, two cows, 30 chickens, a wagon and a plow, shipped them west to Edmonton in a freight car, then drove another 50 miles east to Chipman. There he settled with other Ukrainians, raised three sons and four daughters. The homesteading was rough, but not as hard as in the Ukraine.

He cleared his land, expanded his tiny holding into a sizable section and a half (960 acres). A few years ago he turned his farm over to his sons, now lives comfortably with the help of his old-age pension. In his time, the Ukrainians in Canada have increased to 325,000, the Dominion's sixth largest ethnic group. "I have no desire to return to the Ukraine, even to see it," he says. "My life in Canada has been too happy to want to return."

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