Mike Bilenky. They made their home in the city,
where Mike worked for the C.N. Railway. They
had a' son and a daughter.

The Second World War broke out September
1, 1939. After this things started to get easier. We
were getting more money for our hogs, cattle, and
grain, and cream was bringing about $5.00 for a
five gallon can.

In the summer of 1940 we made a deal with
an International dealer at Ashern for a new W30
tractor on steel wheels, a three furrow plough, and
a ten foot tandem disc, for $1700.00. This does
not seem like a lot of money, but when they un—
loaded the tractor and machinery, the dealer load—
ed fifty hogs at $10.00 a hog and the next day he
took a load of cattle for $1200.00 to clear the bill.

In 1941 we started to build a new house with
full basement. It didn’t get finished until 1943.

In the spring of 1941, my brother, Tony, was
called up for basic training in the army, and in 1943
he was sent overseas, where he stayed until the war
ended. While in England he met an English girl,
Edna Dell, and they were married. In the fall of
1945 she came back as a war bride. To our sur-
prise, we found it difficult to understand her En-
glish when she spoke, but soon got used to her
accent. Tony and Edna stayed on the farm for a
while then moved to Winnipeg, where he became
a city bus driver. They had two sons.

I was called to the army in 1942 for basic train—
ing at Portage La Prairie, and after six weeks train-
ing, went back to the farm.

My sister, Olga, married Mike Szklaruk on
November 22, 1941. They farmed in the St. Mar—
tin area and had four children, two girls and two
boys.

On July 31, 1942, my brother, Peter, married
Mary Olynyk from Sundown, Manitoba, and they
made their home in Winnipeg. They had two
daughters.

On November 22, 1947, our sister Annie mar-
ried Bill Slobogian, and they lived on a farm about
a mile from us. They farmed there for a while then
moved to the city, where Bill got a job with the
City Bus Maintenance Dept. They had five chil-
dren, two boys and three girls.

In 1956 our brother, Sam, married Joanne
Sitoski, who was teaching school in Moosehorn
when he met her. As Sam was the youngest, and
all the others had left home by then, they stayed
on the home farm. They had two sons and a
daughter.

In the fall of 1947 I got tired of farming, and
decided to go to Edmonton to take a course in

557

Welding and Diesel Engineering. I spent two
winters at school and came home for the summers
to help my father and Sam on the farm. In the
spring of 1949 I got a job at Consort, Alberta,
working in a garage, welding farm machinery. It
was mostly acetylene, and the fumes from the
welding in a poorly ventilated garage gave me ter-
rific headaches nearly every day. I quit the garage
and got a construction job, working there for a
while, then went back to the farm.

Things were getting better by then, but I had
visions that to get ahead we had to start improv-
ing our herd, first by buying better bulls so we
could get better prices for our young stock. The
first bull we bought was a disappointment. We had
to sell five young steers to pay for him. He was
a beautiful animal but unable to breed the cows.
We sold him for $75.00, but we continued to buy
good bulls from then on.

In the fall of 1949, I courted Dorothy McCur-
dy, a girl from Gypsumville, who was teaching
school in the Goulbourne district of Ashern at the
time. On August 10, 1950, we were married. We
stayed with my parents for the rest of the summer,
and in the fall we moved to our own farm I had
purchased previously. Dorothy loved the farm and
we were very happy working for ourselves, but we
only had a quarter section with fairly poor pasture
and not enough land to also grow grain. Doro-
thy’s father, Alex McCurdy suggested we buy
Adam Nogiec’s store in Gypsumville, which was
for sale at that time. In the spring of 1953 Doro-
thy’s father and myself went to see Adam and
made a deal to buy the store. We had just sold
some steers we were grain feeding, and this gave
us enough for the down payment.

On June 30, 1953, we left the farm in St. Mar-
tin and moved to the store in Gypsumville. There
were living quarters attached to the store, so we

    

Original Rawluk’s Store, 1953.