Karpowich Frank Pauline

In the spring of 1913, 26-year-old Frank Karpowich bid farewell to his family in Mlyniska, Poland, hopped a train to Hamburg, and boarded a ship bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia. He was in search of greener pastures, spurred by nervousness about the hostile political climate developing within his country and its neighbours.

After his discharge from the Austrian army some thirty months earlier, Frank had taken his wife, Pauline Lucy, and infant daughter, Angela Cecelia, into the Iguacu River Basin in Brazil where free land beckoned homesteaders. But homesteading in the jungles of South America was no agrarian dream. Disillusioned, they returned to Poland.

This time, Frank would search out the prospects in Canada. If he found favourable employment, he would send word for his family to join him.

After passing through Pier 21, Frank took the train to Alberta and within a year he had established himself as a coal miner in Canmore.

In July, 1914, Pauline, age 25, arrived in Canada. Accompanying her was her daughter, Angela (Becking), now age 5, her son, John Timothy "Barney", age 2, who had been born in Brazil, and her widowed mother Sophia Karmazynski.

Frank would spend most of his working years in the coal mines of Alberta and southeastern BC, while Pauline raised their family and worked a small farm in Grindrod, BC.

The union of Frank and Pauline also produce four Canadian-born children: Elizabeth Theresa (Shafirka); Mary Frances (Strilchuk); Amelia Patricia (Maksymchuk); and Stanley.