Remembering Hugo Bartz (Part 2): Life in Canada

Yesterday I started to share the story of my grandfather, Hugo Bartz, as recounted by my mother in a speech at his 90th birthday party on February 20, 1993. This is the continuation:

In 1928, Dad made another wise decision - to immigrate to Canada. It was not easy, but Dad was able to make all the necessary arrangements. We left Kremnanke, Ukraine, by train to Moscow on November 13, 1928, and arrived in Edmonton, Alberta, on December 13, 1928 - exactly one month later.

The first Bartz son [Theodore] was born in the Ukraine. The family continued to grow and five more sons and two more daughters were born in Canada. Everybody kept busy. We moved many times in those early years, but mostly in the Edmonton area. In the late 1930's, Dad started building dairy barns, for Emil Riske, Adolph Harke, and others. He was paid $3 a day. His helpers, $1 a day!

In 1942, he got his first contract, to build a barn 70 feet by 36 feet for $2000. This was for Emma Schultz. Dad also started building houses in the Edmonton area and in Clyde, Morinville and Westlock, Alberta.

In 1956, Dad and Mom and the youngest son, Bob, moved to Kelowna. Dad bought an old chicken hatching building, where he started a sash and door factory [Glenmore Millwork]. Bob was still going to high school, but he did the bookkeeping for Dad and also helped with the woodwork.

They enjoyed living in Kelowna [where the climate was much milder than in Edmonton]. Family and friends often came to visit, especially in the summer time. Mom was always happy to have guests at mealtime.

In 1964, Mom Bartz had a stroke, leaving her partly paralyzed. Dad was not able to find someone who could look after Mom, so in 1965 he sold the business to Ron [his second youngest son, who had moved to Kelowna to help him] and Dad was able to care for Mom. Dad was an excellent care-giver - compassionate and enduring. Mom passed away on November 28, 1966, at the age of 71.

Almost a year later, on November 25,1967, Dad married Helene Horn, a widow living here in Kelowna. They had a good life together for over 20 years. A few years ago, Helene had a stroke and her health gradually deteriorated. Dad patiently helped care for her. On August 5, 1992, Helene passed away at age 87. 

Dad continues to look after himself. He knows what herbal remedies to use for various ailments. He enjoys his home-cooked meals and still makes his own yogurt. He still enjoys going to Glenmore Millwork to see how Ron is doing, and perhaps he can sharpen a saw or do something useful. That's what makes him happy.

We are thankful that he is able to enjoy life to the full. We wish you a very happy 90th birthday, Dad, and many more to come!

[The photos above were taken in Canada, about 10 years apart. The top photo was taken about 1938, before Bob, the youngest son, was born. The second, about 10 years later, before Ted - the oldest Bartz son, back row in the middle, died of diabetes complications.]

Remembering My Grandfather, Hugo Bartz - Part 1

Going through my mother's papers a while back, I came across a speech she made at my grandfather, Hugo Bartz's 90th birthday, on February 20, 1993. I'd like to share it here - together with my own comments, which I'll add in brackets. Although Hugo Bartz was my mother's step-father - she had lost her biological father when she was two - she loved Hugo, who was her father's first cousin and later her stepfather, and always considered him as her own father. This is what she wrote:

Our dad, Hugo Bartz, was born in the Ukraine on February 20, 1903. From the time that he was very young, Dad always had a lot of responsibilities. [He often stayed home to help his mother on the farm while his older brothers went off with their dad to work at the the flour mill they owned.] During World War I, the German people in the Ukraine had a difficult time finding a place of safety. Many went to Siberia. [That is what happened to my mother's parents and her older brother, Erhardt. My mother's older sister, Lydia, was born in Siberia while they were there, but my mother was born after they had returned to the Ukraine.] To avoid the Russian military, Dad's two oldest brothers had already fled the country - William to the USA and Herbert to Argentina. 

In June 1914, Dad, who was only 11 at the time, together with his parents William and Bertha Bartz, brothers Adolph and Paul, and sisters Alma, Meta and Margaret, had to leave their home and all their possessions, including a newly-built 5-storey flour mill, which had been their main source of income and survival.

Dad had an uncle, Henry Bartz, who had lived in the Crimea since about 1900. Thanks to Uncle Henry, dad and his family were able to go to the Crimea instead of to Siberia. Dad spent little time in school. The children had to work in those days. His uncle Henry was a successful cabinet maker in Crimea. He had a large workshop with very efficient tools. So young Hugo, at the tender age of 11, started apprenticing as a cabinet maker. He worked for his uncle for 4 years. Uncle Henry was so impressed with Hugo's talent that he said to him, "Hugo, some day you will have a factory of your own."  That promise was fulfilled about 50 years later, here in Kelowna, when Dad started the sash and door factory [Glenmore Millwork.]

Just before the end of World War I, Uncle Henry had to flee to Germany, but before he left, he secretly gave all his woodworking tools to young Hugo. Hugo cherished those tools, taking them with him when the family returned to Kremnanke [in the Ukraine], after the war in 1918. He did not part with those tools until he left the Ukraine to immigrate to Canada. A good friend and neighbor, Frederick Missal, was the recipient of those precious tools.

In 1923, Hugo Bartz married Olga (nee Sell) Guhl. Olga was a widow with three children - 9, 6, and 4 years of age. Her husband, Theodor Guhl, died of typhoid fever shortly after World War I. Olga said she wanted a man who would be a good father for her children, and Hugo Bartz was that man. After the wedding ceremony, he asked the three children to call him "Papa." Whoever would call him "Papa" first would get a special treat - an apple. All three were a little shy at first, but then the youngest jumped up and called him "Papa." [That youngest child was my mother.She carried this memory with her throughout her life.] Before long the two older children called him "Papa" too.

We never thought of him as a step-father or that we were his step-children. We were one happy family.

(To be continued tomorrow...)

Remembering My Grandmother, Olga Sell

My mother's mother was born on April 18, 1895, in Fedorovka, Ukraine - about 64 miles north-west of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. On February 15, 1914, at the age of 19, she married my mother's father, Theodor Guhl. Unfortunately, he died of typhus a few years later (at the age of 31), leaving her with three young children and a farm to manage. Eventually one of her late husband's relatives came to her aid - and eventually became her second husband!

On November 23, 1923, she married Hugo Bartz, her late husband's cousin. They went on to have eight more children, the first born in the Ukraine - the rest, in Canada.

Here is a picture of the family taken in the 1940's in Alberta.

Why did they immigrate to Canada?

After the Russian Revolution, in 1918, all the farmland in the Ukraine and in Russia was being taken over by Stalin, the Russian dictator. Realizing that they were about to lose everything, and risked being sent to forced labor camps in Siberia, my mother's parents, like many in their predicament, applied to immigrate to Canada. They arrived in December, 1928, a few weeks before Stalin's government closed the doors on immigration. They were lucky to have escaped. This family photo shows them in the late 1930's.

They lived in Edmonton for many years, but eventually my grandfather decided to move to a warmer place for health reasons. They relocated to Kelowna, BC, in 1955, where my grandfather opened a window and door business. Soon their second-youngest son, Ron, joined them.

Their house was next door to the carpentry shop.

This photo shows them at the 1960 wedding of Ron to Evelyn in Kelowna.

My grandmother died several years later, on November 26, 1966, in Kelowna, after having several strokes. She was 71 years old when she died.

Hard to Believe...!

My grandfather, Hugo Bartz, was an amazing story-teller. Often when visitors came, they would begin to talk about bygone years, and the stories and laughter would start...

Grandpa Bartz had a strong memory into his early 90's, but as he approached 100, his memory began to play tricks on him. At times he imagined that he was still a boy living in the Ukraine, waiting for his father to come home for supper.

One of the last times I visited him, he recounted stories I had never heard before... Were they true stories from his past? Or figments of his imagination? I really don't know...

A week or so before our visit, he had told his housekeeper that the Czar of Russia had given him a medal... Where was the medal? So she began to hunt high and low for it. When my mother and I came, she asked my mother if she knew where this medal might be.

What medal? Do you have a medal from the Czar?! my mother asked Grandpa in surprise. She had never heard about it...

Of course. When I was a boy, I played the tuba in a Mennonite band. One day the Czar and his family were passing by on the train going to their winter home in the Ukraine, so the whole band stood at the side of the tracks and played as he drove by. We were all sitting on horses to play. The train stopped and they listened. When we were finished, someone from the train came up to me and asked me how old I was. I was about 12 or 13 - the youngest in the band. I told him my age, he wrote down my name, and a while later I received a medal in the mail from the Czar.

You played with the Mennonites? I asked... And you played sitting on a horse?

Yes, he replied. We sometimes played while the horses walked. Then someone had to walk in front of me holding the music... Sometimes, the horses walked so fast that the poor guy had to run! He could barely keep up!

One time I took the horse home to show my mother. I brought it into the house - and she yelled at me: "Get that horse out of here!"

You brought the horse into the house? I asked...

Yes, when you were issued a horse, you had to keep it with you. You were responsible for it. The horse was smart... It even knelt at the alter in the church...

You took the horse into the church?! I asked, laughing...

Yes, he said. The horse even knelt...

It knelt?!!

And it took communion...

It took communion?!!

That day I left Grandpa puzzled and confused... His stories were so rich in detail, I could visualize them... But could they be true? ... Why had nobody in the family heard about this medal before? And the strange story about horses in church...

Then I remembered the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi in the Catholic Church, where people bring animals to be blessed by the priest. Did the German Lutheran Church or the Orthodox Church in the Ukraine have a feast to bless animals too? I looked it up on google... Yes, there were apparently some ceremonies for blessing animals...in both traditions... Was this what he was referring to?

As I looked for more clues about the practice of blessing horses on the internet, I googled "blessing of horses orthodox church." I then came across a travel blog where a visiting North American discovered priests in Romania, who once blessed horses and carts, now bless cars... Suddenly Grandpa's story didn't seem all that far-fetched!

And what about his other story - about his medal from the Czar? Did this really happen to him or was it a story he had heard from someone else? If it happened to him, where did this medal end up? Did Grandpa leave it behind at his parents' home when he got married? Was it abandoned when they fled the Ukraine when Stalin took their land? Did Grandpa have it or did someone in his family - perhaps his mother - take it along? In those hard times, was it perhaps sold?!

I will probably never know!

Two Stork Stories

My grandfather, Hugo Bartz was a great storyteller, often sharing stories of his childhood. Two stork stories stand out in my memory.

Hugo was a middle child in a large German family living in the Ukraine. They were farmers, but his father had also built a flour mill where he spent much of his time, often taking the older children along to help.

On this particular day Hugo was the oldest child at home. Suddenly his mother called him and said: Take the other children outside and watch them while they play. Then she closed the door.

A while later, as he was entertaining his younger siblings, he thought he heard a baby crying inside the house.

That's strange - we don't have a baby, he thought.

A few minutes later his mother came to the door.

Come and see what the stork just brought, she called to them. They came running and saw a newborn baby all washed and wrapped in a blanket. She had given birth alone without a midwife! With her husband and her older children away, she had no one to send for help. So she had managed to deliver the baby completely on her own.

She was strong, Hugo commented. Short - and wide - but strong. And, of course, it wasn't her first child either, so she knew what to do.

The second stork story may have taken place a few years later, when Hugo was a little older. The sky looked threatening, so his mother sent him to bring the cows from the pasture and put them in the barn.

As he was returning with the cows, his mother came out and shouted in a panic: Hurry up! Get them in the barn and come into the house. There is going to be a bad storm. That tree over there is going to be hit by lightning and burn up!

She pointed at an old dead tree not far from the barn.

How do you know all that is going to happen? he asked in amazement.

I saw the stork that has a nest in that tree leave the nest and take her young with her, she replied.

Hugo rushed to do what his mother told him. Soon the cows were locked in the barn and he was back in the house. True to his mother's prediction, lightning flashed around them until the storm passed.

When it was over, he went out to check on the tree - to see if his mother had been correct in her prediction. Sure enough, it had been struck by lightning, splitting it in two. But it hadn't burned up.

It was probably too wet to burn, he concluded.

The practical wisdom of that generation leaves me in awe.

Remembering Hugo Bartz

Hugo Bartz, the only grandfather I ever knew, was a man ahead of his time - though as a child, I viewed him and my grandmother as very old-fashioned! (Just as I would later view my parents - and my children now view me! "What goes around, comes around.")

I say he was ahead of his time because life has a way of cycling - returning to ideas that went before. In the 1950s, before herbal health supplements were popular, Hugo was already a believer in homeopathic cures. He made his own yogurt (or thick milk, as he called it) and tried to go to a natural hot spring for a few days holiday whenever he could. Fortunately western Canada, where he lived, has many mineral hot springs: Radium, Harrison, Banff, to name a few. At the time, I viewed his practices as "quaint" - the remnant of another era - but here we are, 50 years later, buying natural supplements and appreciating the health benefits of natural hot springs! Hugo lived to the ripe old age of 100 - another indication that his lifestyle was a healthy one!

Hugo married my grandmother when he was only 19 years old. She was the 29-year-old widow of his first cousin, Theodore Guhl (or Gohl, as some of our relatives spell it). Hugo's mother and Theodore's mother were sisters.

Theodore and my grandmother, Olga Sell (pronounced and sometimes written Zell) had 3 children (though a number had died in infancy. As my grandmother recounted her story, it seemed to me that every other child survived.) She was expecting yet another child when, at age 27, her husband, a farmer in the Ukraine, contracted typhoid fever and died in 1921. Tragically, my grandmother's only surviving sibling, a brother, died at the same time - they must have both drunk contaminated water. As my grandmother often said, miraculously the children survived!

My grandfather, Theodore Guhl, was a very religious man. He knew he was about to die, and told my grandmother that he sensed that this baby - this unborn child - was going to go with him. Sure enough, the baby, another daughter, did die in infancy.

Death certainly was no stranger to this generation. When I think of all the losses my grandmother had before she was even 30, it boggles my mind!

Left alone with 3 children, the youngest (my mother, Margaret) only 2, another daughter, Lydia age 4, and a son, Erhardt, age 7, she found it impossible to run their farm with no help. So she appealed to her late husband's aunt, Hugo's mother, to get one of her sons to come and help her. One of the middle children, Hugo, was sent for the summer, and - as the story goes - when fall arrived and the work was done, he said, I guess it's time for me to leave, and she replied: Maybe you should just stay and marry me. And he did!

Together they farmed the land until Stalin threatened to take it from them - and from all farmers who owned land at that time - to create communal farms under the communist system.
Fortunately a Russian friend of Hugo's, a peasant farmer, helped him get the proper documentation to immigrate to Canada. They arrived in Halifax on December 13, 1928: Hugo, Olga, Erhardt, Lydia, Margaret, and Theodore, the firstborn son of Hugo and Olga.

I began to understand my grandfather and his generation a little better after reading a book entitled My Russian Yesterdays, by Catherine de Hueck Doherty (1896 - 1985) an immigrant to Canada from Russia, around the same age as my grandmother. Although Catherine was Russian Orthodox, and my grandparents retained their German Lutheran religious practices, her descriptions of village life in her childhood remind me so much of my grandfather Hugo's lifestyle.

I discovered Catherine de Hueck Doherty and her writings when I read about Madonna House, a Catholic community she founded in Combermere, Ontario. I was interested in buying her book, Poustinia, so rather than order it online, Terry and I drove out to Combermere to buy it - and I bought My Russian Yesterdays as well.














Here is the log-cabin Russian-style church at the Madonna House Community.














A peaceful flower garden at Madonna House.














The Gift Shop at Madonna House

Reading Catherine's book about village life in Russia at the time of my grandparents made me appreciate my Grandfather Hugo in a new way. Life in other countries seems less strange or "quaint" when we learn more about it!