George and Anna Huculak came to Canada before the First
World War. George arrived in 1913 at Taylorton, a coal
mining hamlet a few miles from Eastern Saskatchewan.
His wife Anna followed and came in 1914. They had two
sons and one daughter.

In 1920 the family moved to Coalhurst where George started
to work in the coal mine. The family grew larger with the addition
of three more sons.

Coalhurst had a large Ukrainian community with their own small
meeting hall. They always tried to preserve their culture. The
children attended Ukrainian language lessons after four p.m. on
school days and were also taught music and drama. The
boys were taught violin or guitar and the girls the mandolin.
Not all were musically inclined but managed to get some instruction.

Life on a whole was not easy. Those were the days of kerosene
lamps, water kept in a barrel outside the back door for all
purposes, freezing in winter that you had to chop and remove
the ice before you could fill it again, because you paid forty cents
a barrel, and coal of course to cook and heat your home.

The children were getting older but in December 1927, one
day on the way to school at noon, John got caught in a snow
storm and perished. George, the father, contracted coal miners'
lung disease and after a lengthy illness passed away in 1929.