Peasant Perceptions and Ukrainian Land Selection
Unlike farmers from southern Ontario, the United States and
Northern Europe, most Ukrainian peasant immigrants expected to continue
practicing semi-subsistence peasant agriculture in Canada. Ukrainian
peasants were not motivated by a burning desire to turn a profit but by the need
to provide for their families. Most simply hoped to establish an
equilibrium between family needs and the drudgery of labour. Consequently
they assumed that 30 acres of good land would be enough to satisfy their needs
and chose homesteads according to the criteria of a subsistence peasant economy
rather than a capitalist market economy.
In a peasant subsistence economy fertile agricultural land was
simply one among many necessary resources. Other resources were almost as
important. The peasant required woodlands for fuel, building material and
fencing. Fruits, berries and mushrooms gathered in the forest added
variety to the peasant's diet, and ingredients of folk medicines could also be
found in the woods. A marsh or swamp was valued as a source of slough
grass, water for cattle, thatched roofing and game birds. Heavy yellow
clay deposits were essential for the construction of the traditional peasant
dwelling. Stone, sand, willow and juniper were also perceived as valuable
building materials.
Ukrainian peasants prized such resources for at least two other
reasons. They realized that they had been reduced to total dependence on
their former masters after 1848 because the nobility had appropriated so much of
the forest, meadow, pasture and marsh lands. Secondly, since few were well
capitalized when they arrived in Canada, they based their appraisal of a
prospective homestead site upon the potential for long term economic
growth.
Subconscious factors also entered into the selection of
land. Sentiment and nostalgia played an important role. Peasants who
had suddenly left the district in which they and their families had dwelt for
hundreds of years and found themselves in a distant land where the customs and
the language were incomprehensible, felt a strong desire for environmental
continuity. The peasant's material and popular culture, his songs and
folklore, were tightly intertwined with the natural environment of his
homeland. Galicia and Bukovyna, it must be stressed were not steppe lands
resembling the Canadian prairie. They were forested regions at the base of
the Carpathian mountains. A woodland environment could create the illusion
of "at homeness," a comforting sense of continuity that facilitated
adjustment to the new land.
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