BradfordToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following poem was submitted by Walter Prokopchuk.
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Farmers — Proud
We are the Farmers — from Ukraine — who’d tamed our Steppe, but here remain
In Canada — that welcomed us — from far away: Freedoms — obtained,
From despots ruling our homeland, determined to, our being smother;
Since for most of last century, our harvests fed: their nation, rather.
With suitcases — ’twere filled with much — of tattered clothes, progressing small,
As refugees — we immigrants, answered the need for labour’s call.
As well we brought determined will, and talents those, that were instilled,
By generations in those fields, we practised our, best growing skills.
So, here we mustered strength of muscle: to toil, and break the virgin soils;
Moved rocks and stumps, in weathers wild, though driven back, we’d not be foiled.
Across new Prairies, planted grains, in swampy marshes — vegetables,
Harvesting the goodness reaped, to feed new populations’ tables.
Our heads held high, ’neath Azure skies, amidst new Golden fields so large,
So gratefully, with these lands blessed, relentlessly, we assumed new charge.
And some of them, Bodnarchuks came, and as well, the Kemenys,
And too, Homeckos grew their crops, in recent years, through droughts and freeze;
And many more — don’t know all names — to all this nation’s corners came;
Carried the torch, to us been passed, we worked with pride, buried all shame.
But still today — two brothers be — a force of power, truly does reign;
Their onions’ quality unmatched, translates to best nutritional gain;
For Horodynskys continue to, nurture their crops, unique in way,
To overcome all challenges, in Cookstown Marsh, still yet today.
And now, though be Canadian, we can retrace, from there our routes,
Remembering, when we got here, but not forgot, our families’ roots.
Walter Prokopchuk
Bradford
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