1880 – 1959

My father was born in Howilow Weilki, Poland¹, in 1880, the son of a wealthy baron. He was a quiet man, well-educated and intelligent. When we were young, he told us he immigrated to Canada because his parents wanted him to join the priesthood.

After my father arrived in Winnipeg he rented, or bought and managed, a bookstore on Selkirk Avenue near Main Street in North End Winnipeg during the first World War. We had living accommodations on the second floor of the building.

My memory is rather vague at this point, but a flash of an incident comes to mind. I watched a group of men in uniform run through the bookstore and up the stairs then down and out the front door. My guess is that they were looking for an army deserter. When I was older, I asked my mother why my father didn’t go to war She told me when they came for him, he was at the barber shop. My guess is that it was because he was a family man with four children.

A little later my father gave up his bookstore and opened a second one without living accommodations, so the family moved to a rented house nearby. Some years later he worked at the Ukrainian Printing Press², about three city blocks from our home, where he worked on the press. Not long after, he became an editor, a job he held until retirement. He worked long hours. By today’s standards he would have been considered a workaholic.

When my siblings and I wanted to see him, we would drop in at his office. He always seemed to enjoy our visits. He took us for walks on Sunday afternoons, one at a time.  We had to be cleaned up, I believe, because he wanted to show us off to his friends who were also out for their Sunday stroll. He walked on the side nearest the road and told me it was to protect me from traffic.  

I never knew my father to be angry with me or any of my siblings. I only witnessed his anger with my mother one time, but they must have had their differences because he often referred to my mother and himself as “Maggie and Jiggs” a famous comic strip in those days. Maggie always carried a rolling pin.⁴

I believe he must have been waited on hand and foot in his youth. He worked hard all his life, but was not capable of doing chores and was definitely not domesticated. My mother worked as a domestic and had several small children to care for. We spent our summers in Gimli, Manitoba.⁵ My mother spent most weekends at the farm including the last weekend of every summer to take us home. When we arrived home every dish in the house was in the sink unwashed. I don’t believe my father ever washed a dish in his life.

I knew very little about my father’s family. His sister’s son, Eugene Romanowsky, came to Winnipeg in the late twenties and died about a year later from tuberculosis, a contagious disease with no cure at the time.

My parents separated when I was sixteen years old. It was decided that my mother was to receive financial support each week. She had a house to maintain and five children living at home. All this was arranged by a committee who dealt with family affairs at the Ukrainian Labour Temple, where my father worked. We eventually all left home (at different times) and settled in Toronto except for my father. He stayed in Winnipeg, living in a room on Main Street by himself. In his retirement years he earned a living doing income tax returns for several restaurants on Main Street. In his spare time, he played checkers regularly with men his age. 

He came to Toronto to visit us a few years after my mother died and stayed for about two months, dividing his stay among his children. I was happy to spend time with my father and get to know him. We asked him if he would ever consider living in Toronto, but he said he would miss all the friends and acquaintances he met daily in North End Winnipeg. I enjoyed his visit and believe my children did as well. He taught them to play checkers and always let them win. I missed him when he left. We asked him to stay, but he didn’t like Toronto where he would walk for hours and not meet a familiar face. 

I don’t remember keeping in touch with him on a regular basis during our long separation of about thirty years, other than exchanging birthday and Christmas cards and an occasional letter. But when he returned to Winnipeg, we corresponded about two or three times a month.

He died in his sleep several years later at the age of seventy-nine in the winter of 1959. My brothers Bill and Paul flew to Winnipeg to make funeral arrangements.

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¹ Galicia was a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until it ceased to exist in 1918 at the conclusion of World War I.  It straddled present-day Poland and Ukraine. Howilow Weilki, Galicia (also spelled Velykyi Howyliv), is a village located in present-day Ukraine about 450 km south-west of Kiev. Weilki means “greater”. The current village population is 7,300. According to various census records Martin Bobowsky arrived in Canada between 1903 and 1906. Return

² The Ukrainian Printing Press was a printing plant located in the Ukrainian Labour Temple at 519 Pritchard Avenue. The location is three blocks from the Bobowsky family home at that time, on Burrows Avenue. The printing plant was opened in 1926. The Ukrainian Labour Temple, a community centre, was part of the Ukrainian Labour Farmer Temple Association, a Canadian educational and cultural non-profit that is now known as the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians. Return

³ Source: Manitoba Historical Society. The photograph is dated 2010. Return

⁴ Angela is referring to the American cartoon strip, Jiggs and Maggie, also called Bringing Up Father. Return

⁵ Gimli, Manitoba, is a town on the west shore of Lake Winnipeg about 90 km (60 mi) north of Winnipeg.Angela relates her family’s summers in Gimli in a separate memoir. Return