Going Back

By Volodymyr Kish

I am writing this as I prepare for a sentimental little journey to rediscover my youth.  Back more years than I want to remember, I was born in the remote mining town of Rouyn-Noranda in the wilderness of Northern Quebec. It was there that I spent the first twelve years of my life and where I believe much of what I am today first took form – my essential personality, my values, my core beliefs, my strengths, my weaknesses, my feelings towards my Ukrainian origins, and much more. 

There is a well-known Jesuit saying – “Give me a child for his first seven years and I’ll give you the man.”

I would tend to agree.  What happens to us during those formative years moulds much of how we will behave in our adulthood.  The problem is that few of us, including myself, are able to remember much of what happened back then.  Despite that, when I honestly examine what are the key aspects of my character and how I view the world, I inevitably find that my experiences in childhood have indeed cast a long shadow.

I have been thinking more and more in recent years about those years spent in Rouyn-Noranda.  Part of the reason is that I have some ambition to write a history of the significant Ukrainian community in that town that emerged in the wake of the large wave of Ukrainian immigrants to Canada following World War II.  Secondly, my kids have for a long time been urging me to write an autobiography.  A visit to my original home town would, I hope, reawaken some dormant memories.

Another reason is that in the neighbouring mining town of Val d’Or, Monsignor Lev Chayka, the resident Ukrainian Catholic priest for North Western Quebec and North Eastern Ontario, is still going strong, despite the fact that he must be pushing ninety. I would dearly love to tap into his memory banks and archives, as he has been the central figure for much of what happened in the Ukrainian community in that part of country for nigh on sixty years.

Sadly, there are few Ukrainians left up there in the “North Country”.  I suspect that there may not be more than a half a dozen or so left in Rouyn-Noranda, or Val d’Or, or Kirkland Lake, Virginiatown, Timmins, Kapuskasing, or any other of the dozens of northern mining towns that during the fifties and sixties boasted of thriving Ukrainian communities.  Their stories are worth telling and I hope to be able someday to do just that.  This visit is but a small step towards achieving that goal.

I have no delusions that I will find much that has remained unchanged since I left some fifty years ago.  I last visited the area some ten years ago and it was obvious then that progress had left its mark.  I can still recall that when I was a kid, the milk would be delivered to our door by horse drawn wagon. In contrast, Rouyn-Noranda now boasts of a Walmart.

Time and tide move on and care little for nostalgia. What I seek is more in the line of a virtual and emotional connection to a key period in my life, one that I hope will spur the revival of dormant memories.

I hope also that Monsignor Chayka will be able to clarify and elaborate on the activities and dynamics of the Ukrainian community of that time. As a child, I understood little of the political, generational and immigrant wave conflicts that were a very real part of everyday life then.  Now that my knowledge of Ukrainian history and politics is a little more developed, I hope to be able to make a little more sense of some of those disjointed and confusing recollections I have of Ukrainian life in Rouyn-Noranda in that era.

Tomorrow, I set off on this personal little pilgrimage of mine. Though I may not be entirely sure of what I am looking for, I hope I find what I am seeking.