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Authors: Pierre Berton
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politics. The difference was that his subsequent stature as a leading Canadian editor and an international figure made his close political ties seem acceptable to others who followed. The link between the Liberal party and a new generation of respected journalists surely begins with the Dafoe example. Such partisan newspapermen as Grant Dexter, Blair Fraser, and Bruce Hutchison were to carry it forward into the mid-century. Fraser, for one, was so close to being an apologist for the Liberal party during his years as Ottawa editor for Maclean’s that, when the government changed, he found his sources had dried up. * And Bruce Hutchison, while editor of the Vancouver Sun and Winnipeg Free Press , actually wrote speeches for Lester B. Pearson. Thus, like so much else that happened in the West during those yeasty years, the pact that was sealed in 1901 between the ambitious young newspaperman and his hard-headed publisher created a ripple that was not without effect half a century later.
* Arthur Irwin, the former editor of Maclean’s , told me in 1983 that he had always believed the story that Dafoe had a contract with Sifton guaranteeing editorial independence. No such contract existed.
* To Maclean’s editors, Fraser played down the rising importance of John Diefenbaker, referring to him as “a lightweight, not destined for power.” It was almost certainly his influence that prompted the then editor, Ralph Allen, to commit to type in 1957 an editorial on another Liberal win before the actual election took place. To Allen’s embarrassment, the Liberals lost.
1
The long voyage
In the mountain trenches of Galicia, the land was too precious to be wasted. The furrows of the strip farms ran to the very edges of the houses. Cows and sheep dotted the pasture land on the lower flanks of the mountains. Oats, rye, and potatoes sprouted up from the valley floor. Above the huddle of thatched roofs the great peaks rose, clothed in oak, beech, and fir, each ridge effectively sealing off one village from the next, maintaining a peasant culture that was frozen in time.
Since there were no fences – only corner stakes to identify personal holdings – each fertile Carpathian valley resembled one gigantic farm under a single management. Appearances were deceptive. Each peasant required fourteen acres to provide for himself and his family, yet 70 per cent of the farms were no more than half that size. Some families, in fact, tried to subsist on a single acre.
Wages were as low as five cents a day, but the price of land for those who could afford it was high. The mean was eighty dollars an acre, but some land fetched as much as four hundred dollars. Taxes were among the highest in Europe. Under these depressing conditions thievery was common and alcoholism endemic. The wealthy pahns (lords) owned not only the forests, meadows, and villages; they also owned the taverns, of which there were more than twenty-three thousand in Galicia. It was in the interests of the ruling class to keep the peasants drunk and underpaid. The consumption of liquor was stupendous: twenty-six litres a year for every man, woman, and child. One of the commonest words in the language was beeda , meaning misery. To the question “How is everything?” the usual reply was “Beeda.”
No wonder, then, that Josef Oleskow’s pamphlets were so successful. Across the ocean lay a promised land where 160 acres of fertile soil could be had for the asking. Thus was initiated the great emigration of Poles and Ukrainians from Austria-Hungary. Until the Great War, Canadians lumped them together as Galicians because so many – 150,000 – came from that region. To save confusion, that is what we will call them in this book. It was these people that Clifford Sifton was describing when, more than twenty years later, he talked of “a stalwart peasant in a sheep-skin coat.”
It is a spring morning in 1897, and in the Galician village of Ghermakivka the Humeniuk family is
* Arthur Irwin, the former editor of Maclean’s , told me in 1983 that he had always believed the story that Dafoe had a contract with Sifton guaranteeing editorial independence. No such contract existed.
* To Maclean’s editors, Fraser played down the rising importance of John Diefenbaker, referring to him as “a lightweight, not destined for power.” It was almost certainly his influence that prompted the then editor, Ralph Allen, to commit to type in 1957 an editorial on another Liberal win before the actual election took place. To Allen’s embarrassment, the Liberals lost.
1
The long voyage
In the mountain trenches of Galicia, the land was too precious to be wasted. The furrows of the strip farms ran to the very edges of the houses. Cows and sheep dotted the pasture land on the lower flanks of the mountains. Oats, rye, and potatoes sprouted up from the valley floor. Above the huddle of thatched roofs the great peaks rose, clothed in oak, beech, and fir, each ridge effectively sealing off one village from the next, maintaining a peasant culture that was frozen in time.
Since there were no fences – only corner stakes to identify personal holdings – each fertile Carpathian valley resembled one gigantic farm under a single management. Appearances were deceptive. Each peasant required fourteen acres to provide for himself and his family, yet 70 per cent of the farms were no more than half that size. Some families, in fact, tried to subsist on a single acre.
Wages were as low as five cents a day, but the price of land for those who could afford it was high. The mean was eighty dollars an acre, but some land fetched as much as four hundred dollars. Taxes were among the highest in Europe. Under these depressing conditions thievery was common and alcoholism endemic. The wealthy pahns (lords) owned not only the forests, meadows, and villages; they also owned the taverns, of which there were more than twenty-three thousand in Galicia. It was in the interests of the ruling class to keep the peasants drunk and underpaid. The consumption of liquor was stupendous: twenty-six litres a year for every man, woman, and child. One of the commonest words in the language was beeda , meaning misery. To the question “How is everything?” the usual reply was “Beeda.”
No wonder, then, that Josef Oleskow’s pamphlets were so successful. Across the ocean lay a promised land where 160 acres of fertile soil could be had for the asking. Thus was initiated the great emigration of Poles and Ukrainians from Austria-Hungary. Until the Great War, Canadians lumped them together as Galicians because so many – 150,000 – came from that region. To save confusion, that is what we will call them in this book. It was these people that Clifford Sifton was describing when, more than twenty years later, he talked of “a stalwart peasant in a sheep-skin coat.”
It is a spring morning in 1897, and in the Galician village of Ghermakivka the Humeniuk family is
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