This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on June 10, 1939
In putting a picture of the statue to a Ukrainian poet as the frontispiece of her new book, E. Cora Hind pays a graceful tribute to the Ukrainians in Canada, and one that will be appreciated by these patriotic people.
The Ukrainians in Canada are greatly burdened in spirit by the happenings in Europe. Their lovely country lies in the path of the storm. Five million of their countrymen are living under Polish rule and their lives are made bitter by the zeal of their masters in trying to stamp out their language, their organizations and their independent spirit.
Recreation centres have been closed, churches have been burned, their leaders, both men and women, have been arrested, assaulted and imprisoned. Poland seems to have learned nothing from its long years of oppression, and still seems to believe people can be coerced into loyalty.
These conditions have been a matter of concern to the Canadian people, and appeals have been made to Poland, on behalf of their Ukrainian subjects, but now that England — and Canada — are assuming responsibility for Poland’s safety, it seems like a most fitting time for us to ask that the Ukrainians be treated fairly.
Canada knows their worth, their eagerness for learning, their love of music, their loyalty to this land of their adoption. Five million people living on their own land surely should have the right to assemble and to worship in their own way.
To return to the poet, whose beautiful memorial at Kharkov Hind has brought to us in her book: Taras Shevchenko was born March 9, 1814, and died March 10, 1861, at the early age of 47.
The Ukrainian people in Canada (who are our third largest national group) love the name of this great man, whose burning words voiced a love of liberty, justice and freedom. Ukraine, with its 36 million people, suffered bitter humiliation under the tyrannous rule of Czarist Russia, and when Shevchenko, in his poems, voiced their feeling, he fell under the displeasure of the Czar and his emissaries.
He did not survive. He was allowed no visitors, no books, no writing material and so passed another great man, whose only crime was love of liberty.
Each year, the Ukrainian people in Canada celebrate his birth and death, and hold his words in reverent memory.
Hind gives two translations of his best poem, and I have a third which was given to me by one of his loyal followers, who edited one of the Ukrainian papers in western Canada. It is so beautiful in its simplicity I will quote it in full.
Dig my grave and raise my barrow
By the Dneiper’s side;
In Ukraine my own land,
A land far and wide,
I will lie and watch the corn fields.
Listening through the years
To the river’s voices roaring,
Roaring in my ears.
Bury me, be done with me,
Rise and break your chain;
Water your new liberty
With blood for rain,
Then in the might family
Of all men free,
Sometimes, maybe, very softly,
You will speak of me.
Hind’s book, My Travels and Findings, the second since her trip around the world, is dedicated to the memory of her aunt, Alice Anna Hind, a dainty little lady who mothered Cora and her brothers after their parents had died.
On a farm in Grey County, Ont., Cora got her love for agriculture as she followed her English grandfather around his well-cultivated acres. Everything on the farm was carried on with precision, and Cora learned there about rotation of crops and the best method for feeding stock. People marvel at her uncanny knowledge of farm problems, her intuitive sense in estimating crop returns, and her deep love for the soil and those who abide with it, but she came by it honestly, both through heredity and environment.
Her two books are mines of useful information, but they are more than that — they are minute pictures of life in other lands, seen by a keen-eyed woman who sees clearly and speaks fearlessly. Cora was never known to trim her sails to the winds of public opinion.
The name of her aunt, Anna Hind, brings back the story of Cora’s childhood. She was too young to know that the coming into the home of the three orphan children caused their handsome young aunt to forgo her marriage to a young man in the neighborhood.
Years afterward, some busybody told this to Cora, much to Anna’s annoyance, who never felt that she had been a martyr on the altar of duty, for there were great compensations.
No mother and daughter were ever more closely knit in affection than Anna and her clever little niece. Their home in Winnipeg where they came when Cora was 16 years old was a delightful one. Cora never knew the lack of motherly affection, and as years went on the comradeship between the two women held against all distractions. Perhaps it was due to her aunt’s influence that it had been possible for Cora to preserve in her character the best of the old tradition, and absorb at the same time all that is of value in the new.
She still likes to make her own bread, but she never takes a train if there is an airplane going. She had the first fireless cooker I had seen, and she made it herself. I still have a silk dressing gown she made for me. Her taste in clothes has never been questioned. It is just as unerring as her judgment on seed grain.
No wonder her books are eagerly read, for Cora has not only the gift of happy expression, but she can interpret what she sees and relate it to everyday life, and she has seen so much.
I Saw for Myself and My Travels and Findings are treasures for the intelligent reader.
