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LEVEL OF DESCRIPTION: Fonds
No.: PR1328
TITLE: Demetrius Metro Ponich fonds
CREATOR: Ponich, Demetrius Metro
DATE RANGE: 1900-1982
EXTENT: 0.07 m of textual records and other material
The fonds also includes 125 photographs, 97 negatives, 8 discs.
ADMINISTRATIVE
HISTORY/BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: Many families from the village of Toporiwtsi in the province of Bukovyna, Ukraine, left between 1897 and 1899 for Canada. The Poniches were one of twenty families that left in 1899. Dyordie (George) Ponich, his wife, Domka and sons Tanasko (Tom), Metro and Alex, arrived in Alberta in 1899; some of the families they traveled with settled near Andrew, Alberta while the Poniches and a few other families settled just north of Victoria, later known as Pakan, Alberta. The Poniches homesteaded the north-east quarter of Section 26 of Township 58, Range 17, West of the 4th Meridian (26-58-17-W4). Metro, born October 7, 1887, worked as a farm labourer at the age of fourteen, and later worked on the railroad. In 1908 he was hired as an interpreter by Rev. Dr. C.H. Lawford, a medical Methodist missionary in Pakan. In 1909, Metro joined the Methodist Church, and the following year enrolled at Alberta College. He began studies at St. Stephen's College in 1912, and graduated in Theology in 1915 and became an ordained Methodist minister, later a United Church minister. His charges included Andrew, Pakan, Radway, Smoky Lake, Bellis, Cold Lake, St. Paul and Edmonton. In 1915, he married Magdalene Feschuk, daughter of Wasyl and Mary Feschuk; Metro and Magdalene had six sons: George, Peter, Paul D., Vladymir, Paul V. and Andrew. In 1943 Metro retired from ministry and he and Magdalene moved to Kelowna, British Columbia. After living for a time in Vancouver, British Columbia, they returned to Kelowna and organized a Ukrainian Protestant Church there.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY:Rev. D.M. Ponich allowed the records to be copied by the Provincial Archives of Alberta in 1982. In 1992, Historic Sites Services transferred material belonging to Ponich to the Provincial Archives of Alberta.
SCOPE AND CONTENT: The fonds consists of photocopies, originally written in the 1970s, of the Ponich’s diary, memoirs of Demetrius Metro Ponich, including immigration to Canada from the Ukraine and life on the family homestead, and an “Autobiographical and Historical Account of Settlement in the Pakan and Smoke Lake Areas” by Ponich, edited and transcribed by Isidore Goresky. The fonds also includes 125 photographs, 97 negatives, and 8 rpm discs, belonging to Ponich, documenting the people and activities of the Pakan, and Smoky Lake, Alberta area dating from 1900 to 1930.
ARRANGEMENT NOTE: Material arranged according to original order.
RELATED RECORDS: See the Isidore Goresky fonds for the edited and transcribed reminiscences of D.M. Ponich.
GENERAL NOTE: Information for the biographical sketch is from the records and from Ukrainians in Alberta, which is available in the Provincial Archives of Alberta Reference Library, 971.2300491791 U35 1975. The homestead location is represented according to the Alberta Township Survey (ATS) system.
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