THE JOHN (IVAN) KRASNEWYCH STORY

Cristina Fetsych, left, with her Grandmother Julie and Cousin Olga in a
photo taken in 2011, a few months before Julie's passing.

The new age of electronic communications, like God himself, works in strange and marvelous ways; and I am convinced that the two often come together to work in concert.

Less than 24 hours ago I received an email message telling me that a Cristina Fetsych of Rome, Italy, wanted to connect with me through a Facebook tab message.  I was initially hesitant, but there was something about the name "Fetsych" and the sincerity of the request that intrigued me...and I responded accordingly.  As it turned out, and as fate would have it, I learned that this beautiful young child of Ukraine was researching a great-uncle she had never met.  His name was John (Ivan) Krasnewych, also a native of Ukraine.

The following was how she worded her query:  "Below (stet), sorry for disturbing.  I'm searching my uncle John...he is origin from Ukraine...Did you know him?  I'm from Ukraine but live now in Italy..." I was instantly smitten.

Through some means I have yet to figure out, Cristina had determined that one of my Facebook friends was in fact a John Krasnewych who just happens to be my brother-in-law. Unnecessarily apologizing for her broken English, she asked if this particular John Krasnewych was also from the Ukraine.

With the excitement of a child, I could not wait to advise her that my brother-in-law was not from Ukraine, but that his step-father John Krasnewych sure was and that I had met his Ukrainian sister Julie Fetsych (presumably her grandmother) on one occasion when visiting Canada a number of years ago.  That did it!...And we embarked on a 20-minute exchange of Facebook text messages at 3:30 in the morning.   Cristina even forwarded several photographs of herself with grandmother Julie who died in 2012, all of which left my wife Rosanne in tears at the breakfast table the following morning. (Rosanne, of course, was also the step-daughter of John Krasnewych and Julie Fetsych was her dearly-loved, one-and-only aunt.)

I promised to put together an information package to help familiarize Cristina with her Uncle John and his Canadian family.  This quickly-assembled, special Wrights Lane page is a means to that end. Due to a certain language barrier and the fact that John Sr. did not document any of his family history and personal background, I find myself resorting to my own memory of conversations with him and bits and pieces of what Rosanne can recall.  I regret the resultant gaps and broad generalizations in "The John (Ivan) Krasnewych Story."

John Krasnewych in Ukraine,
 circa 1942

Ivan (John in English) Krasnewych was born into an impoverished Ukrainian family near the historic city of Liviv in the 1920s. Schooling was not a prerequisite for the young John who was required to take on odd labor jobs from an early age to help supplement the family income.  He would eventually find a vocational niche as a cook at a rugged lumber camp.

At the outbreak of WW2, John was recruited into the Ukrainian Army and was ultimately taken captive by the German invaders.  He was ensconced in a Polish prisoner of war camp where he was put to work as a cook, his earlier training in lumber camp kitchens serving as a saving grace.

Some time after his release at the end of the war and back in what was left of his Ukrainian home, John visited a fortune teller who told him that "a young woman and her two children were waiting for him across the ocean" and for the first time he thought about the possibility of immigrating to North America.

Camp cook John, far right.

The Ukrainian experience in World War II was especially tragic because, unlike the "Russian glory" and the Jewish Holocaust, it is virtually an unknown page of history. There is no English language history on World War II in Ukraine that fully captures the pain, the terror, the horror and the human story of the suffering of the Ukrainian nation.

What priceless cultural treasures of architecture in Ukraine, world art and literature, were destroyed and looted in the War. Ukraine lost about 10,000,000 people in the war, one out of four of its sons and daughters.  We can only wonder what beauty, genius, and talent was lost to the world as a result of the Nazi German and Soviet annihilation of the Ukrainian people in 1939-1945.

It was that kind of national devastation that John left behind in about 1951 or '52 and found himself knocking on the door of a rooming house on Argyle Street in Toronto, run by Maria Smorhai and her daughter Micheline Hanuschuk, a divorced mother of two (remember the fortune teller?). Micheline, better known as "Mickie", for some reason, was not initially impressed with John and made her feelings known to her mother.

Not to be deterred, however, John kept calling back in hopes of a change of mind and heart.   Eventually his persistence paid off and he was taken in by the landlady pair, mostly I suspect out of pity and compassion for the young Ukrainian looking for a place to call home with only a couple of dollars in his pocket.

...And the rest is history.

A four-year-old Rosanne was the first to fall in love with Roomer John and every night she would run up the street to greet him on his way home from his job as an apprentice plumber.  John always gave credit to Rosanne for breaking the ice between he and her mother.

John and Micheline, wedding
photo, 1954.

To make a long love story short, Mickie gradually developed a fondness for the soft-hearted and personable John and, just as the fortune teller had predicted, they were married in 1954, subsequently moving into their newly-built home home at 46 Coney Road, Etobicoke, in 1955 along with a very happy little girl and boy who became the "Krasnewych kids", John being the only real father they ever knew.

Rosanne and brother John were still in Grade school when they began helping their dad qualify for his plumbing licence.  Night after night they would sit with him as he struggled with answers to test questions in English and the tutoring eventually paid off when John passed his final exam enabling him to go into business for himself as a contract plumber and gaining a reputation in Etobicoke as the much-in-demand "John the plumber".

John once confided in me that at one time Rosanne knew as much about the technical aspects of plumbing as he did.  All these years later, however, Rosanne admits that she has "forgotten everything."  Just as well too, because she is all thumbs with any kind of tool.

Ukrainian folk dancers Rosanne
and John with their dad.

Due mainly to their father's influence, Rosanne and brother John were raised in the Ukrainian tradition and celebrated all the religious holidays carrying over to this day, especially when it comes to traditional food on special occasions like Easter and Christmas.  John was a neat-as-a-pin, clean freak and drove his son crazy trying to keep up to his dad's standards when setting up housekeeping with his bride Jane in Scarborough.

John's main claim to fame as a plumber came in 1984 when he was contracted to install a toilet at Downsview Air Base for the exclusive use of Pope John Paul 11 during his historic visit to Toronto and other Canadian cities.  He always told the story with a smile and a suppressed sense of pride.

Julie Fetsych
on one of her visits to Canada

He remained loyal to his family back in the Ukraine, especially his sister Julie Fetsych, and her three children -- Olga, Myroslava and Andrey -- and paid numerous visits to his homeland over the years.  He also brought Julie to Canada for extended stays on several occasions.

Grandchildren were the joy of John and Mickie's life and they dotted on Rosanne's Bob and John and Jane's twin sons Paul and Ryan and a younger sibling Sean.

Still living in his original Etobicoke home, our John sadly succumbed to heart failure in 2003 at 79 years of age, followed by Mickie who passed away in a Canadian-Ukrainian Care Centre in 2005.  Lifetime supporters of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, they are interred at St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery in Oakville. Gone but not forgotten, they lived a good life and there is a daughter and son, their spouses and three living grandchildren in addition to (at last count) three great-grandchildren as testaments.

Your uncle and aunt were fine, down-to-earth family-oriented people Cristina...and they would have loved you just as much as they loved all of us!  You would have loved them too!

Rosanne and her Aunt Julie during a Christmas visit to Canada, circa 1980.

The two Johns with grandsons (from the left) Ryan, Bob, Sean and Paul, circa 1980.  Rosanne's Bob has since passed away but the other three sons of John and Jane are now grown men with families of their own.

John and Mickie with grandson Robert Webb.

One of the last photos of John taken at our wedding, September 14, 2002.  He gave the bride away. Also in the photo are my grandchildren who were part of the wedding party, from the left, Josh and Ryan Rocha and Alyssa and Becky Koch.