Myrna Kostash
Chrystia Chomiak grew up in the 1950s and 1960s in a modest bungalow in Canora, a core neighbourhood of Jasper Place. Her parents, Mykhailo and Alexandra Chomiak, were Ukrainian post-war immigrants who, together with their four children at the time, and “three great big suitcases,” moved into the house on the double lot at 10440 – 152 street in 1950 when Chrystia was three years old. Their home was one of 265 “occupied private dwellings” in Canora [tabulated by federal census) between 1946 and 1960.
Mykhailo had worked as a journalist, Alexandra in a publishing house, but in Jasper Place they were poor in a “poor part” of Jasper Place, living in a house (there were eventually two more children born to them) without indoor plumbing or running water until 1954. Chrystia Chomiak describes her parents as “impoverished intellectuals,” who never lost their social standing from Ukraine as well-educated multilingual professionals. Chrystia, whose first language was Ukrainian, remembers a house full of books and music; and eventually all six Chomiak children would go to university.
There were few other Ukrainian families in Jasper Place – most postwar immigrants had settled in Edmonton where an earlier generation of Ukrainian immigrants was already established. But the Chomiaks did become active in the Ukrainian Catholic Church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God at 15608 – 104 avenue where Mykhailo served as cantor and midweek Alexandra taught Ukrainian school. Chrystia’s best friends at school were non-Ukrainians. She always felt that her family “were kind of an island or our own” in Jasper Place.
Myrna Kostash is a writer publishing since the 1970s. Her latest book is Ghosts in a Photograph: A Chronicle. She lives in Edmonton.
