Pauline was excited and relieved, but apprehensive, as she stepped onto Canadian soil at Halifax on a warm September day in 1912. Excited because she and her children, Bertha, 7 years, Adolph, 5 years, Alwine, 3 years, and Rudolph, only one month old, were finally in their chosen country. Soon they would be reunited with her husband Daniel Stein who had gone ahead six months earlier to find a place to live near Leduc, Alberta. Relieved because it had been a difficult three-week journey from her home village of Antonowka in the province of Volhynia in Russia. She was tired and weak from seasickness and caring for her children in the confined space in the steerage hold of the ship. Apprehensive because she spoke only German and was worried about the long train trip in an English-speaking country.
Pauline was only seventeen when she agreed to the arranged marriage with Daniel. He was handsome and a hard worker, although quite stern with a sometimes volatile temper. But Pauline had spunk and warned him that if he ever struck her it would be the last time.
Now they were leaving a country where the government had implemented laws restricting land ownership by ethnic Germans even though they were born in the country. Prior to leaving, Pauline sold their few farm implements and animals on condition the buyers not take possession until the family left, lest it become known that Pauline had some money. A neighbour drove them by wagon at night to the station where they boarded the train to a Baltic port, thence by ship to England and finally Canada.
Many Volhynian Germans had already settled in the Leduc area, including Daniel’s brother and sister. This eased the transition to the Canadian culture, language, and way of farming. But getting started wasn’t easy for the Stein family. They rented a farm for six years until they were able to purchase their own with the aid of a mortgage from Daniel’s brother-in-law. Daniel built a house and barn over the winter and the family moved to their new farm in the spring of 1919. As they worked outdoors one fine early summer day, they turned to see their house ablaze. It burned to the ground; everything was gone including Pauline’s most valued possession, her sewing machine.
They learned quickly how kind their Canadian neighbours could be; they were given clothes and household utensils and a log house was disassembled, moved to their farmyard and re-erected. This log house was to be their home for the next nine years. It had two rooms, one for cooking and eating, the other the bedroom for Daniel and Pauline. The children slept in a loft reached by a ladder. Later in 1919, this house welcomed the birth of the family’s last child, a healthy daughter whom they named Wanda. She made up for Pauline’s disappointment at having to watch her first two children born in Alberta succumb to childhood diseases. The family is seen in the accompanying photograph from 1922. They look rather unhappy, maybe due to the very bright sky or the photographer’s demands that they hold still.
After the rocky start, things improved greatly from 1923. The crops were excellent and prices for grain were high. A new house was built, a windmill to pump water was erected, and machinery including a threshing machine was purchased. Daniel even bought a 1928 Ford Model A car, although he left the driving to his sons. With Pauline’s childcare demands diminishing, she devoted herself to growing vegetables and small fruits, and raising chickens, ducks, and geese. Perhaps this was the happiest time of her life. She was able to attend church regularly and to visit with German-speaking relatives and friends.
Like so many others, the Stein family believed the good times would continue. But the 1930’s brought the depression with dry years and poor crops, and low prices for everything they produced. Daniel even resorted to making and selling a little moonshine for a few dollars. Then illness. Pauline was stricken with breast cancer and it was spreading in her body. The doctors said nothing could be done and prescribed painkillers. Unfortunately, Daniel, who drove himself very hard whether he was well or sick, had little understanding or sympathy for is wife’s illness. After the first prescription of painkillers was gone, he refused to use what little money he had for more drugs or for hospital care. In the last months of her life, Pauline suffered excruciating pain until, mercifully, she passed away in her home at the young age of 48 years. On a bitterly cold March day she was laid to rest in the church cemetery, with no permanent marker on her grave.
If only she hadn’t got cancer, if only there was better health care, if only ------. If only Pauline had lived through the depression, there were better times ahead and she could have enjoyed the fruits of her hard labour and sacrifice, and she would have known her grandchildren, and they her.
