Collection search - Kasian, Helen - Interview

Record information – Brief

1

Kasian, Helen - Interview

Item number (ISN):

379727

Series title:

[The Great War and Canadian Society]

Hierarchical level:

Item (Accession level)

Date:

1974-07-22

Item number (ISN):

379727

Type of material:

Sound recordings

Found in:

Archives / Film, Video and Sound

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Record information – Details

Fonds/collection:

THE GREAT WAR AND CANADIAN SOCIETY PROJECT

Accession:

1975-0098

Media:

Sound

Part:

2 of 2

Production date:

1974-07-22

Production company:

Opportunities for Youth

Production credit:

interviewer, Pauline Pytka

Description:

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Interview of Mrs. Helen Kasian, age 72, who was born in Venlaw, Manitoba in 1902 to Ukrainian parents who emigrated from Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire to Canada in 1899. She talks about: their settling on a farm in northern Manitoba; the community of Venlaw; life on the homestead; her illiterate father wanting his children to get an education; the family’s move to the village of Gilbert Plains in 1910 because there was no school in Venlaw; their being the only Ukrainian family in Gilbert Plains, which was predominantly Anglo-Saxon; having difficulty in school when she began at age 9 because she spoke no English; how the teacher and other students tried hard to help her; reading large picture books; taking a few years to understand what she was reading about; the poverty of her family; the family cow being run over by a train; other children pulling their hair and call them Galicians when they walked home from school; the teacher scolding the other children for discriminating against her and her siblings; nice neighbours; more about her elementary school education; not being able to afford to go to high school for more than three years; having to wear other people’s castoff clothes to school; working as a dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant while going to school; leaving school to work as a waitress and chambermaid; other jobs such as picking potatoes; various jobs held by her father; more about the family homestead; taking a bath; her mother getting lost in snowstorm over night while trying to bring in the cattle; selling cordwood to get money for groceries; hardships experienced by her father; social gatherings attended by Ukrainians and Anglo-Saxons; going to church; her mother’s work as a cleaner and laundress; the strict discipline by her parents; the reaction of the farmers and other people in Gilbert Plains when war was declared; patriotic support for the war; anti-conscription sentiment by the farmers and townspeople; a boy who was conscripted when he was out running the binder in a farm field and was arrested by the police; the boy’s father finding out a week or two later; the feeling by the farmers that their sons should not be conscripted because they needed their sons to help out on the farm; a woman in Gilbert Plains who did not want her son to go to war because it was somebody else’s war and was not a war to defend Canada; patriotic activities during wartime; groups of girls and women who knitted scarves and socks; students bringing toothpaste, soap and other things to put in ditty bags for soldiers overseas; children wanting to bring stuff for ditty bags even if they could not afford to; no awareness of hostility toward German Canadians; the arrival in Gilbert Plains of a travelling road show with a sideshow, bands, riders, midgets and a performance of the play Uncle Tom’s Cabin; fall fairs; rationing of sugar, flour and butter; the poor quality margarine during the war; bonfires at the fairgrounds and other celebrations when the war was over; dancing and speeches during the celebrations; the feeling that the war did not settle anything; the effect of the war on farmers; the government encouraging farmers to grow more grain and raise more hogs and cattle during the war; dislike of the RCMP by the ethnic immigrants who came to Canada thinking that there was freedom; hardship faced by the immigrants; people getting laid off or fired after the war because preference was given to veterans; her father getting injured when he was working on construction and a sewer caved in on him; hardship experienced by the family because there was no medical insurance; a farmer being scared by the first truck he ever saw; the description of the truck by a farmer who said "no pushing, no pulling but he go like helling"; the truck as the talk of the village for a long time; postwar prosperity; more people getting cars and trucks after the war; and leaving Gilbert Plains in 1921 to go to work in Regina as a telephone operator .~She also talks about: working as a telephone operator and then a supervisor from 1920 to 1930; sending clothing, money and books back to her family back home; skating, square-dancing and playing cards with her friends; her marriage in 1930; getting a job in a government office where she interpreted for Ukrainian people who could not speak English; more about working on the telephone switchboard; getting an electric shock when lightning struck during a storm in Regina and she was knocked off her chair; the midwife assisting at the birth of her third sister; wearing a corset; her family’s disapproval when her mother joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses; her father’s support for the Liberal Party; little talk of unions in Gilbert Plains because the brickyard was really the only industry there; and her experience that she was too young during World War One for it to have had a big impact on her and she did not have any relatives in the war, unlike World War Two because she lost nephews and cousins in that war.

Language:

English

Notes:

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1. The interviews took place in 1974 and resulted in the publication of a book entitled "The Great War and Canadian Society" edited by Daphne Read - copyright 1978 - New Hogtown Press, Toronto.~2. Release forms, data sheets, and summary analysis/transcripts are available in binders labelled Opportunities for Youth - War and Canadian Society in VSA's audio-visual section.~3. Part of a series of recorded interviews with elderly citizens who lived in Canada during the period of World War I. The interview material consists of their opinions and observations about the war, the war years, and the effect on Canadian society during and after WWI.~4. The interviewee signed an agreement giving consent for a recording of this interview to be placed in the Public Archives of Canada for the purposes of historical research and also signed a publication agreement allowing any transcribed portions of the interview to be used in the book under the condition that no full names, addresses or phone numbers would be published.~5. Subject description is based on information found in the fact sheet, deposit agreement, publication agreement and summary analysis.

Detailed holdings information:

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Vault ISN:

321821

Format:

SOUND

Location number:

C01977

Vault code:

GAT

Number of items:

1

Kind of sound:

R/R

Technical description:

POLY

Made from:

FROM LOANED MATERIAL

Status:

MASTER

Vault ISN:

437632

Format:

SOUND

Location number:

C01978

Vault code:

GAT

Number of items:

1

Kind of sound:

R/R

Technical description:

POLY

Made from:

FROM LOANED MATERIAL

Status:

MASTER

Vault ISN:

737121

Format:

SOUND

Location number:

1975-0098/167
1975-0098/168

Vault code:

GAT

Number of items:

2

Kind of sound:

CASSETTE

Made from:

DEPOSIT

Status:

ORIG
Ordering and viewing options

Conditions of access:

Open

Restrictions on consultation:

No Restrictions / Pas de restrictions

Reproduction access:

With written permission of Copyright Owner / Avec la permission écrite du détenteur des droits d'auteur

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