Sam Hydechuk was born in Romania and after emigrating
to Canada first lived in the Raymond District as an
agricultural worker. Here he met and married Evelyn Jones
who had been born in Raymond. In 1930 he purchased a farm
situated along the Coutts highway and started to build a home.
The Hydechuk family consisted of two boys, followed by nine
girls.

The two boys and six of the girls were students at the
McMahon School. The family lived a bit more than two miles
from the school by the road so when they were walking
the children usually cut diagonally across the Wocknitz farm,
parts of which were still virgin prairie. This did involve
dodging around sloughs in the spring and fall months, and
breaking through or over snow drifts in the winter. Bernice
Perks, who furnished the information about the family,
remembers the boys breaking paths over the drifts of
snow for the girls to follow through and that when they
arrived at school all wet and cold, the teacher would have
them take their clothes off to be dried by the big pot bellied
stove that heated the school.

In 1941 the farm home burned. Shortly after this, Sam Hydechuk
died. The family moved to Stirling and the two older boys tried
to continue farming but found it too much to manage and the
farm was sold.

Of the children Raymond died and Lucy met an accidental death.

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