“The Story of Nikolai Maksymiuk” is a portion of the chapter “Nikolai Maksymiuk 1886-1915,” in my forthcoming book, Ghosts That Walk the Parkland (NeWest Press 2022). The Ghosts are all my grandparents, and the book tells their life stories both in Galicia and Alberta. Nikolai was my maternal grandfather, who I never knew. He did not homestead but worked until his untimely death in one of Edmonton’s early meatpacking plants. Documentation of his life is very sparse – my mother was only 5 years old when he died and has no memory of him – and so for this part of his story I have relied in good measure on the research and publication of Allan Chambers’ On the Line: The Struggles of Alberta’s Packing Plant Workers (Edmonton: AFL & Alberta Labour History Institute, 2012).
Read “The Story of Nikolai Maksymiuk” here.