Birthday #2: Margaret’s Birthday

Today is my mother’s birthday. If she were still with us, she would be 102 years old! But she died a few years ago at the age of 97.

Here is a little about my mother’s early history.

My mother’s father, Theodore Gohl was born on November 11, 1890, in a farming community in Lwowek,  Poland. His parents bought farm land in the Ukraine when he was young, and it was there, in the Ukraine that he met his future wife, the only daughter of another farming family. They married young, and my mother Margaret, their 5th child, was born when Theodor was 29 years old.

My mother had no memories of her father, as she was only 2 when he died, on December 27, 1921 of Typhus, leaving a pregnant wife and three young children. (Two of their five babies had died as infants.)

Theodor was apparently very musical - the director of their local church choir. He was also a farmer - and his wife, Olga (nee Sell) struggled to look after the farm and also care for their three young children after he died. (The baby girl  she was carrying when her husband died also died as an infant.)

Eventually olga’s late husband’s cousin, Hugo Bartz, came to help her out. Olga married Hugo in November 1923. She named their first son Theodore.

Here is a picture of the family around the time they arrived in Edmonton, in 1928. 

My mother, second from the left in the front row, was 9 years old.

Hugo and Olga went on to have seven more children in Canada. Born on April 5, 1895, in Volhynia, Olga died in Kelowna, BC on November 28, 1966, at the age of 71 - following a stroke.

I’m thankful that the whole family was, and continues to be close. I knew my grandparents well, just as my own children got to know my parents. In spite of all the sadness in her early years, my grandmother created a caring family home here in Canada - one with lots of laughter and music.