Raising a family, doing chores, milking and haying kept Anna Tryhuba busy and she welcomed the arrival of electricity in the 1950s
Anna’s head was in a whirl.
“Now pick something practical, not just pretty”, her mother was telling her.”
Anna (Hewko) Tryhuba was in Kerrobert, Sask., to pick out a wedding dress at the general merchant’s. Everything was happening so fast. She and Mike had planned to marry later in the fall but that September, snowfall put threshing on hold so her parents had decided that now was the ideal time for the wedding.
Anna had crossed the ocean with her mother, Mary (Mychan), and her stepfather, Louis Hewko, landing in Montreal on June 14, 1930.
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The family was enticed to emigrate from western Ukraine to Canada by Mary’s four brothers, who were already settled on the Prairies. After a long train ride, they arrived in Denzil, Sask., where Mary’s brother, Stefan, met them with horses and wagon.
They lived with Stefan until Louis located a farm with a storey and a half frame house. To Anna, it seemed like only yesterday that she had helped her mother clean the house of pigeons that had entered through the broken windows.
Now, she was shopping for a wedding dress. A flapper style dress with a gold satin slip covered with a full dress of embroidered net caught her eye and she purchased it for the hefty price of $15.
Anna’s fiancé, Mike Tryhuba, was from her village in Ukraine and had immigrated to Canada a few years earlier.
Anna felt sad that her only sister, who was still in Ukraine, would not be at their wedding
Anna and Mike were married Sept. 29, 1930 at Wilkie and spent the winter with her parents.
Lon Harlow, Mike’s employer, gave the newlyweds a new granary built of two-ply lumber. They moved it to a farm northeast of the Harlow farm and across from the Hewko farm.
“It was small, but it was ours,” Anna said.
“Mike bought a stove, table, chairs and a bed. He built shelves on the wall for our few dishes and pots. We were comfortable but when the wind and dust storms of the Dirty Thirties blew across the treeless land, I was afraid our home would blow away.”
As the birth of her first child neared, Anna caught a ride with the storekeeper from Cactus Lake to Kerrobert Hospital before Christmas. Mike wanted her to have a safe delivery.
“I was scared as I could not speak any English but thankfully there was another Ukrainian woman in the hospital who knew the language,” said Anna.
“Our first son was not born until Dec. 29 so it was a long stay as we were kept in until two weeks after the birth. A kind nurse took me to the train with the baby and Mike met me in Primate with a team of horses and sleigh box.”
Back home, she recalled picking dry cow paddies to heat the stove.
“I carried water from the well to heat on the stove so I could scrub the baby’s diapers on the washboard in a little tub of that water. I had only a few flannelette nighties and diapers so I had to wash them out quickly during the day and hang them to dry so I wouldn’t run out.”
When her son was two, Mike’s unemployed brother moved in with them for the winter. Mike fashioned a bed for him out of poplar poles and a hay filled mattress.
Anna was digging potatoes the day before her second son was born in 1935. When she felt lower back pain the next day, Anna thought it might be from labour and not gardening.
“If your pain gets worse, just hang a diaper on the clothesline and I will see it and come home,” Mike told her.
By noon, the pains were regular but it had started to shower so the men were not working in the field. Anna realized she had to get to the hospital quickly. She sent her four-year-old son to the Hewkos and as soon as they saw him, Anna’s stepfather rode his horse to Harlow’s to call Mike.
Harlow drove Mike by car to Anna. It was raining hard and the car slipped into the ditch on the dirt road, but Harlow managed to get out and continue to the Kerrobert hospital.
In the spring of 1938, Anna and Mike moved to a farm south of Cactus Lake with a house, a newly planted orchard and shelterbelt. With the arrival of two daughters and two more sons, Anna was busy.
“I fitted in the housework between gardening and the outside chores, milking, pitching hay, stooking, loading grain. Mike bought me a gas powered wringer washer so that helped. We also had a propane cook stove but that smell always bothered me.
“I was so happy when the power finally came through in the Fifties and we bought a deep freeze and an electric stove.
“We always had people dropping in for meals as Mike would ask anyone working on the road grader or travelling Watkins man in for dinner. With the garden, chickens, pigs and cows, we always had enough food.”
The couple retired to Luseland in 1981. After her husband of 60 years died, Anna continued to live on her own until age 90.
Today, she lives in Edmonton with her daughter, Ann, where she enjoys visits from her children, 18 grandchildren, 38 great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.
