In about three months father came back from work and brought, what seemed to us in those days, a substantial sum of money. He had earned $1.50 a day. Since he was economical, he walked all the way home. With his earnings he was able to buy a cow to supply milk for the children. He also brought with him two windows and a set of hinges for a door as he was planning to build a second house. In the winter months there wasn’t much to do on the farm. My father, with the help of neighbours, prepared material for the building. Father cut the trees and the neighbours hewed them into long logs. The house was built within a year of our arrival in Canada. The roof was covered with sod and the house had an open clay fireplace and some wooden beds. We now had one of the nicest houses in the settlement and it cost father all of $1.95. The stable was built of logs without any cash output. The log walls were plastered with mud and later the roof was covered with manure.
Illustration: A log house with a sod roof.Archival photograph
A Ukrainian-style thatched house at Smoky Lake, Alberta, 1922. Provincial Archives of Alberta, G43. Not the log-and-sod house at Drifting River, and not in Manitoba. No known copyright restrictions.
SourceArchival photograph
A sod house in Saskatchewan, 1910s. The memoir’s second house was logs with a sod roof, in Manitoba, not a sod house of this kind, and not this household.
Source
The settlers were good neighbours. They often helped one another. Social gatherings were spent reading, singing and discussing problems and future plans. My father was literate and brought some books with him from the Old Country. The settlers of our community came from Kolomaya, Borshiw and Sokolskoho Counties of the Ukraine.
Illustrated online edition. The memoir text follows the 2011 copy compiled by Rene Nicholas Bilodeau.
