Kinship, Society and Land Selection
 The high priority Ukrainian settlers placed upon the company of their fellows
-- kinsmen, fellow villagers, residents of the same district, and
co-religionists -- also added to their propensity for settling marginal and sub-marginal
land. While the first immigrants to settle an area usually selected
reasonably good land, those who followed them were prepared to accept poorer
land provided they could remain within the social/cultural milieu of their
choice. Some immigrants were even prepared to abandon improved homesteads to
join friends and relatives. Only after Canadian tastes and aspirations had been
assimilated did the quality of land become more important than the social
environment. When this happened the bloc settlements stopped expanding.
Although all settlers sought the company of their countrymen, the degree to
which Ukrainians reproduced kinship, village, district and provincial/religious
affiliations in their settlements was unusual. Immigrants bearing the same
surname frequently settled next to one another. Their closest neighbours tended
to be non-relatives from the same village or more frequently from the same
district. Moreover, Galicians and Bukovynians lived in almost total separation
and rarely mixed because of traditional prejudices, and differences in religion
and popular culture.
There was also a symbiotic relationship among the various ethnic groups from
Galicia and Bukovyna. As the case of Pylypow and the
Star colony illustrates,
Ukrainians tended to settle near established Galician German settlers. Poles
settled among Galician Ukrainians while Rumenians settled among Bukovynian
Ukrainians because of similarities of religion, familiarity with the language
and common folkways. Prior to the 1920s relations between the groups of peasant
settlers seem to have been amicable.
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