Facing The Fear Of Family Truths

Crista Cowan 0:00

How many times have you hesitated to ask hard questions about your family history because you were a little terrified of what you might dig up? We often tell ourselves our parents or grandparents didn't talk about the old country because they just wanted to look forward. But usually that silence covered up something much more complicated: survival, heartache, trauma, or plain old family scandal. Today, my guest is here to remind us that all families are messy. And every single good feeling of connection is waiting on the other side of wading through that mess. She spent two decades chasing down clues her grandparents took to their graves, only to discover that the secrets they hid didn't break her family. They finally showed her who she really is. Enjoy my conversation with Erika Hanchar. Hi, I'm Crista Cowan, and this is the podcast where telling your family stories can help create a deeply connected family. Welcome to Stories That Live In Up. I'm so excited to have you here to have this conversation. When I read your story or a little bit about it, I was kind of captivated by it. So I'm excited to hear the fuller version from you today. So let's just get started by telling me a little bit about what kind of stories were shared in your family growing up.

Erika Hanchar 1:29

Well, that's the funny thing, is that there weren't stories shared in my family when I was growing up, especially not about my ancestors or where any of us came from. Um I had grandparents who were immigrants from Ukraine and I knew that, but they wanted to be Canadians and they, you know, they were like good immigrant workers and they just wanted to really embrace that life. So they never shared those stories. And I think that's why I'm such a storyteller today, is because I had to go looking for them.

Crista Cowan 1:58

Yeah. So um, so are all four of your grandparents immigrants or is it just one side of the family?

Erika Hanchar 2:03

It's my paternal side. So my dad's parents, and then all but his grandparents as well. So that whole entire side of the family is from Ukraine. Okay. And so tell me a little bit about like was your dad born in Canada then? He was, yeah. He okay, and so we didn't know. He was their youngest child. And he um, and so his parents were a lot older. So I had older grandparents. So they had like, you know, these lives that felt probably really removed from me being a young child in the 90s. They probably felt like really old grandparents by then and were not interested in sharing their stories.

Crista Cowan 2:38

Yeah, absolutely. So your dad's the youngest of how many?

Erika Hanchar 2:41

Three. Well, sort of. Okay. We'll get we'll get to that. Right.

Crista Cowan 2:49

So um, did your grandparents immigrate together after they were married or did they immigrate separately?

Erika Hanchar 2:55

No, separately. So um my grandmother um immigrated with her parents when she was a baby. Um, in the early part of like so the early 1900s, they came over. And then my grandfather came over after World War II. Um, he was a displaced person during the war, and then he came over to Canada on like they had like a work-type program where you could come from Europe and get jobs. And he worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway for many years afterwards, almost his entire life. Um, but they had a very interesting relationship because they were both Ukrainian, they both understood the culture. Um, they both were immigrants, but they were from very different time periods as far as their immigration stories and how they would have come together. So they met here in Canada. Yeah. Do you know how they met? I do. So again, this is all coming back to like some really fun stories that I'm sure we'll get into. But they met in northern Ontario while he was on a job right after coming over from the war. Um, and she owned a cafe. And he came in there every day and ordered the same soup every day. And she served him until he asked her out. And um, she was a single mom. And he was like, Come away with me, come and live with me. And you know, I have a great job and I want to move to the city. They were in a very small town at this point, and uh he's like, Come come away with me to the city. And she was like, All right, let's do it. And they did it, and they had this big, beautiful life when they did come to the city, and then they had my dad years later.

Crista Cowan 4:24

Okay, so the children, so the older siblings are your dad's half siblings? Two of them, yeah. Okay. Um, and but he grew up with them.

Erika Hanchar 4:34

Yes. Uh one of them he did. Two of so there's four of them in total, and two of them are half siblings, and one of them is his full sibling, and he did grow up with two of them, yes.

Crista Cowan 4:44

Okay, okay. Um, and so Vic is that a story that you grew up knowing, though, the story about how they met? No, not really. So they did they really didn't talk about anything.

Erika Hanchar 4:55

Right. And and that, so the only I only found out that story about how they met, like when my dad was um, my dad recently passed away in the last year and a half. And so he told me that before he passed. And it was just kind of a funny story to find out. And the reason why he told it was because we had found an ancestor, a long-lost ancestor, that ended up being his sister. And he had to kind of tell me the whole story, so what he knew of it, so that we could try and piece it together.

Crista Cowan 5:24

Okay. So when you were growing up, was there any, like, was there anything that sparked your curiosity? Like, were you a curious kid by nature?

Erika Hanchar 5:33

I mean, I was a kid who was really interested in history, but I think it's because I knew my grandparents came from a time period where it was like World War II and we were learning about it in school. And so all of that stuff felt connected to me, but they never told me their personal stories. But then when my grandparents did eventually pass away, they left behind like this

Inheriting Photos And Cryptic Documents

Erika Hanchar 5:55

life of documents and photos and just all of these cryptic things that felt like a big, huge game and a puzzle for me to go and figure out. So that's where all of this came from. And it quite literally shaped my life. Looking for them and trying to figure out who they were is has shaped me into like the adult that I am today, right? And the person that, you know, who turned out to become a photographer, who became a writer, who loves history so much. It's all because I hate to say it and I love to say it. It's all because they didn't tell me about their past. So I had to go looking and I had to learn about it on my own.

Crista Cowan 6:32

Yeah. So how old were you when they passed? 19. Okay. And did they pass fairly close to each other?

Erika Hanchar 6:39

They did. They passed within a month of each other.

Crista Cowan 6:42

Oh my goodness. I know. That's kind of startling.

Erika Hanchar 6:45

It is. Yeah. My grandfather passed of a heart attack, which was really sudden. And my grandma had suffered from Parkinson's for many years. And then she just went in her sleep. And a month later. Wow. And how long had they been married at the time? Oh God. Um, they weren't really married. Okay. I know. So legally they weren't really married. They'd been together. They'd been together since I guess 1950 and passed in 2005. Okay.

Crista Cowan 7:16

Okay. So let's talk about. So you did you inherit this stuff? Was the family cleaning out their house? Like, how did you come into possession?

Erika Hanchar 7:24

They definitely were cleaning out the house. So just like when anybody's grandparents pass away, it's like everybody's getting stuff ready for estate sales and trying to figure out if anything's worth anything. Um, but um right, I noticed like uh I noticed like about a month before my grandparents passed. It was especially before my grandfather, because his was so sudden, that all the photos in the house were switching out. So I would walk down the hallway and I'd be like, oh, that's a new photo. That's interesting. And my dad had noticed the same thing. He's like, you know, he, your grandfather, he keeps changing the photos, right? Like, you know, maybe he just wants to see them. And he hasn't looked at them in a while. And so we just thought nothing of it. And then he passed away. And I looked around and I realized I was like, there's so many photos out right now. And then I went into his bedroom and on his bedside table was a stack of documents, like this tall. And it was old, tattered, like old black and white photos, like, you know, pieces of paper that had been folded many, many times and like shoved into people's wallets. And um, it was just this giant cryptic pile of mysterious documents and photographs of people I'd never seen before. I didn't know them, of documents that were in different languages that I couldn't read. And I was, I went on a quest. I was like, nobody touch anything. I am gonna scour this entire house and find every scrap of paper that has anything on it. Because this is, they had a whole life that I'd never even considered, not considered. I would have considered it had they shared any of it with me, but they never did. So I was like, I'm going on a quest. And I don't know, I just think that the more people I talk to about searching your family history, the more I realize that there's someone in every family, or at least in every generation, that kind of has this weird obsessive calling. Like, you know, my sister looks at like this stack of papers and she's like, whatever, right? And I look at it, I'm like, this is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me. I'm gonna go on this quest and I'm gonna find all this information. So that's what I did. I just went and I collected every piece of information. I didn't know if it meant anything. I didn't know if it was worth anything. I didn't know if it what it said. And I just kept them all. And I slowly kind of peeled through this pile, trying to see if I knew what any of it meant.

Crista Cowan 9:32

So you were you were only 19 at the time. Yeah. Yeah. And the family was willing to let you take all of that stuff.

Erika Hanchar 9:40

Well, because nobody, so again, like we didn't have this, I don't know, like this uh ritual of telling family stories and sharing all of that stuff. So, you know, even for my dad's generation to them, it didn't seem very important. Like he was like, Yeah, of course you can have the family photos, take them, right? Like, oh, you want to take that old document that no one can read, go for it. Like that, and that's so that's what I took. When they passed away, that I got all of those documents and I just didn't know that it was going to put me on like this 20-year quest of figuring out who my family was, finding new family members, and figuring out myself.

Crista Cowan 10:17

Yeah. So you call it a 20-year quest. Did you dive into it right away, or did it take a little time before you got hooked?

Erika Hanchar 10:24

Well, that's the funny thing about searching for your family is that you can't, you can dive in as much as you want, but you you will you will hit a roadblock. Like there will you hit something you don't understand, right? Like, so and again, this was like 2005. So, yes, ancestry was there and available, and you can go on there, but for for my family, like for Ukrainian family members and ancestors, there wasn't, and maybe there still isn't a lot um available online to just kind of find, you know, like you can't just go and say, like, where is this church in this place? Like, if it was Ireland, oh my goodness, like you, if you can put a name to a church, you can find a whole family in Ireland, but it just wasn't possible at the time in Ukraine because they just didn't have stuff digitized, but also they didn't have like you couldn't even Google some of these places in Ukraine. They just didn't have it on, it just wasn't online, that country, right?

Crista Cowan 11:21

Well, and so many of so many of those place names have changed so many times over the years, too, that even if you could have Googled them, that didn't necessarily mean it would have connected you right away with a specific location.

Erika Hanchar 11:31

Oh, and and even if you had the right location, which I didn't even know I had the right location, I didn't know how to pronounce it. And I didn't know, so like I didn't know when I was looking at, for example, like a handwritten Cyrillic letter as opposed to an English Latin letter or anything like that. So it's a real learning curve, right? To to say you want to dive into searching for your family and you have all these documents. I know some people only have like they have nothing, they have no documents, and I had a ton that I couldn't decipher. So

A Garage Sale Translation Miracle

Erika Hanchar 12:00

wow, I couldn't dive in right away. But what happened was um one day I was having a garage sale, and I we were just setting up my mom and I, and some people had come really early, and I heard them talking. And I heard that they were talking in I didn't know the language, but I felt like it sounded like something my grandparents would have spoken, right? So it sounded Polish or it sounded Ukrainian, and they were collecting all these things. They just wanted everything we were selling at this garage fell. So I just, I don't know, I got this idea in my head where I was like, if I give them all that stuff they want, I wonder if they would translate some of these documents for me. And so I just took a chance and I didn't know these people, these women, they were so nice, and they just said, of course, we'll sit here. And they sat with me for an hour and a half, maybe two hours, and they just went through every single document and I made notes, like post-it notes beside, just to kind of understand how to read a birth certificate or, you know, anything like that, and to find out where the cities were and what the names of the people were. And because of these strangers who I don't know their name, they just happened to be there one day at a garage sale I was having. Um, they're the reason I knew the village that my family came from, and I could go and find that village. And like I couldn't find it online, but I could go to a historian and ask them about it. So, like that just that connection. Um that that's how I dove in. After that, I was I was in. I I felt I was like, these are clues. And I'm like in this, I'm in this game now.

Crista Cowan 13:32

Oh, I love it. Well, I love that kind of entrance into family history, the fact that you inherited this stuff, the fact that you had this little miracle with these women, and then you were hooked and you were ready to like figure

War Survival And A Hidden First Family

Crista Cowan 13:46

it out. So we're gonna fast forward 20 years, right? If you're telling the story of your grandparents now, um, how do you tell their story?

Erika Hanchar 13:56

I would start with my my great-grandparents. So these are um, so my grandmother's name is Natalia, and my grandfather's name is Vasil, just for just so we understand the story. Um, and Natalia's parents are Anastasia and Peter, and they came over to Canada first. So they're the first people in my family to come from the old country, from Ukraine, and to come over here. And they came over because of a lot of reasons. Um, at the time, Canada was giving free land um to anyone who wanted to settle it, especially farmers. And out in the west, there was no farming in Canada for a long time. So it was just like this like big prairie landscape that was really hard to live on. And they came out here after years, like their whole lives of living in a nice village with houses and proper farms, and then coming to Canada and having nothing, like living on the land. Like their first house was a sod house. They must have, and these are like people who were like in their late 20s, early 30s. So they must have like they had a life already. They knew what that was like. So they came here, they built these sod houses, and then eventually they would build a log cabin, and then they would build another house, and then they would build a farm, and then you know, they ended up living out in the landscape, like out in the prairies for 20 years before they moved to the city. And then my grandfather, Vasil, he came over after World War II. So he um the reason why he even came to Canada is because um in 1941, a lot of um villages were um taken over by Nazi Germany. Nazis came in and they took a lot of the young men and women and put them into work camps. And so they were forced labor. And so my grandfather was part of forced labor, um an enslaved labor force that basically um just was a part of a lot of really horrible parts of history. Um, he wasn't fighting on the wrong side, he was locked up for most of it. Um, but he has some pretty amazing stories about how he got away, and he has a story about how he escaped um a slave labor camp with his best friend, and they this was in Ukraine, and they walked across Europe as most people did, and I know that's the part that always sounded so amazing to me is that they walked across Europe, but they all did, so many millions of people did, and um, they found um a Nazi medical supply truck, and it was empty and abandoned on the side of the road, but it had gas in it, and it started. So they drove it and they drove it as far as they could until they were able to get to um, I guess, a relief camp, somewhere where they were um kind of free-ish. And so they it at least the threat of death wasn't like on knocking at their door every five seconds. Um, so they ended up staying in these um displaced persons' camps. They still had jobs. Um, they were there for quite a few years, and during that time, my grandfather met a woman, and her name is Anna. And Anna was also a slave laborer, but she had a job at a really amazing resort and a resort that served Nazi officers and their wives on vacation. So, some people, so my grandfather worked in like a real camp, like a real concentration camp. And this woman that he ends up meeting later on, she was still young, they were like only in their early 20s. Um, she ended up working at this amazing place. And they got together and they fell in love, and they ended up deciding that they were going to immigrate to Canada together. And uh she came first to Canada, and then usually the men didn't come over right away, they had to wait. Women and children were allowed to go first, and so he eventually got a job within a couple of months of her going over, and uh he came back to Canada and he met up with her again, and they had a baby. And that baby is my aunt Vicky, who we didn't know until a couple of years ago. So funny story.

Reconnecting With Relatives In Ukraine

Erika Hanchar 18:00

So funny story, if you go back to like the story I was telling where I start looking for my family history, so somewhere around like 2009, I um I start really getting information about Ukraine and like what the villages were like. And these women who were at this um garage sale with me hadn't told me the name of the village, so I could go after something. And no one could find this village anywhere. But I was on Facebook and in one of those Facebook groups where people are talking about their ancestry, someone said that at the Kiev Archives, which is the capital city of Ukraine, there's people there who will help you, like genealogists and archivists, who will help look through village archives and just find the names of villages for you and see if there's any connection. So I took a chance and I called this guy because there was nothing that I could find on Ancestry. And I gave him everything I had, and he said, Listen, no promises, but he's like, I'm gonna just phone around. I'm gonna look in the phone book and just see if your last name's even in there and if this village is even there. So I leave it with him and I'm like, I can't believe I'm paying for this. Like somebody to make phone calls, but how am I supposed to do it? I couldn't who I can't make phone calls in Ukrainian to strangers, right? So in the meantime, um Ancestry had come out with uh the DNA, like little spit kit that you send away. So I did that, and I ended up hearing back from the guy in Ukraine before the DNA came back, and he was like, guess what? We found people in your family, and they are living in the same village. And that's all he did, and the reason and how he found them was all he did was phone people in the phone book that had my last name. And that's the thing, is that like it's it sounds so simple, but it really like I could never have done that. Like, you know, I would have never been able to even recognize my name in a Ukrainian phone book. So right he was like, here's the proof that you need. And he sent me, my family in Ukraine had sent him a ton of stuff that said, like, here's our proof that this is our family. Like, we we've been waiting for someone to find us, right? Because we didn't know where to look. So they've been waiting, and I've been looking, and we finally connected.

Crista Cowan 20:13

And so, what what is the relationship of them to you?

Erika Hanchar 20:16

So, my grandfather's brother had children. So, my great uncle had children, and all of the children live in the village still. So, these are your dad's first cousins. That's right. Yeah.

Crista Cowan 20:28

Oh my goodness.

Erika Hanchar 20:30

And they are they all still live there, and they all their children live there, and they live in cities too, but like they they keep the the old village like lifestyle going, which is wonderful. And I've been there and I went and visited them. But the funny thing is that even in that time period, so in the time of like 2009, uh 2012, I went to Ukraine for the first time and met them in person, went back to the homeland, did the whole thing, did the amazing trip. And it wasn't until three or four years after that that I even got a ping on ancestry. Finally, someone with my DNA did the spit kit too. And this woman who found me was my aunt. She was my grandfather's first child.

Crista Cowan 21:14

So you took the DNA test and then you went to Ukraine. Did you take your did your dad go with you? Did any of your family go with you? Just you. No, I went, yeah, just went. You are a woman on a mission.

Erika Hanchar 21:27

Yeah. Um, it was a strange thing for um my dad to my dad, first of all, my dad never would have traveled that far. He he never left the country. He's not one of those traveling type of people. Um, but I think it was a very um, a very strange uh concept for my dad to think about that there's this other family that maybe his family didn't want us to know. And I think that comes up a lot in families, you know, where they, you know, why why wouldn't they tell us about this if they didn't want us to know? There must be something bad there. There must be something that we're we don't want. Other people to know we don't want to go and relive that. Well, yeah, there was there was, but it wasn't in Ukraine. So I went to Ukraine. I have this beautiful trip. I reconnect with uh which is I think my favorite part was like just so many generations of women um in my family, you know, like living in Canada with my grandmother and my mom. That was those were the those are the two women, right? Like it only went back like two generations and they lived really close to me and it wasn't very culturally like um rooted in our Ukrainian culture. However, in Ukraine, they're all these women who live there and who are all part of my family. And it was just so nice to feel that like, I don't know, that bond, right? Between all of these women who've like, you know, centuries or not centuries, but like generations of women who all get to be together in that moment.

Crista Cowan 22:49

So that was really special. That is lovely. And did they have more information about your ancestry that they were willing to share with you? Actually, no, which is the sad part.

Erika Hanchar 23:00

Um, they a lot of the um a lot of the information that they had um went back one more generation. So they knew who their um who the parents of my grandparents were my great-grandparents. And I got to learn who they were. Um, and actually I got to learn that some of the photos that were in that cryptic pile that my grandfather left were pictures of his mother that I didn't know. And so like I learned years later that this woman I'd been looking at in these photos was actually my great-grandmother. So it's really special just to realize that, like, oh, these are these are my people, these are my family.

Crista Cowan 23:34

So yeah, that's lovely.

Erika Hanchar 23:37

But my family didn't know as much as I did in Ukraine. Like, so they they asked me, they were like, why didn't your grandfather come back? And I was like, well, he thought that, like, you know, just wartime and what it was like over in, well, after the war in Ukraine, and like, you know, what it was like in kind of like that Soviet era. Um anybody who had left um Germany or any of those like camps at the time, even the displaced persons' camps, even if they immigrated, they were kind of looked at as being a traitor, right? Somebody who defected, somebody who left. So my grandfather was always afraid of that. Um, even though, from my perspective, it's nothing to be afraid of. Like he was already here, he was safe, he didn't do anything. But when he came to Canada, he did have a child. He had a daughter with this woman, Anna. And um, when he met my grandmother at the cafe that that time, like that, I guess

AncestryDNA Brings Aunt Vicky Forward

Erika Hanchar 24:35

that day, or like I don't know when he fell in love with her, but somewhere in that time period, when he was going to that cafe, he fell in love with my grandma, Natalie, Natalia, and he left Anna and his two-year-old daughter behind. So he abandoned a child and never told well, his sons, like so. My my dad and his brothers, they didn't know this. So when the DNA thing came up, I'm like at the gym and I'm like going through my emails, and I see this email in my junk mail that is like, you have a DNA match on Ancestry, and it's a four-month-old email. And I'm like, oh my goodness, I can't believe I didn't see this, right? I missed it. And um, then there were all these messages, and it was like, Hi, you don't know who I am, but we're a DNA match, and another one's hi, I'd really like to talk with you. Um, my name's Vicky. I don't know how we're related. You know, next one, hi, I think I might be your aunt. And then finally he left her phone number and she was like, I hope you'll call me. She's like, This will be my last message because it sounds like you don't want to talk to me. And it wasn't true. I just hadn't totally missed the emails. And I also didn't think that there was gonna be any connections. It it'd been years since I did this this test, right? So I just, you know, I forgot about it, kinda. And when the email, or I just thought about it when I saw her phone number, and I was like, you know, I'm just gonna call it. I'm just gonna call this number. Like, what's the worst that can happen? That I don't know, if she doesn't want to talk to me, like she's she's reaching out. So I called her and she was like, here's the story that I have. And she tells me from her perspective, like her her mother's perspective, and like how her mother was with my grandfather and he left her for another woman. And I'm like, that woman was my grandmother. So that's where the story came too. And um, and even just with my own personal journey of writing, like that's where this all came from.

Crista Cowan 26:39

Yeah. So Vicky was raised knowing that her father had left, knowing his a little bit of his history and story, and knowing that he likely had another family out there, or was the fact that he had another family out there a total surprise to her?

Erika Hanchar 26:56

Um, I don't believe she ever knew there was another family. And like, I mean, when she was older, I'm sure that this occurred to her. Like she knew that he remarried. Um, but there was no connection. Like she did not have any connection to that family at all until I came along. She was raised for the most part of her life, um, from my understanding, that um the father that raised her, like so her mother did remarry and she had a great life, and she had a great father and very successful family, just really um a great upbringing. She was the first person in our whole family to go to post-secondary. So just really amazing stuff. But when she got older, like she did know that that wasn't her real father, but it was, it never mattered to her. And then when I think her mother and her father were both gone, like when she was older in her older age, um, she had never even told her children or her husband that that wasn't really her father. And so she came out and told them because she did the DNA. So, like around the same time that um I did the DNA, I guess she had gotten it as a gift and she didn't do it right away. And her daughter gave it to her, and then she did this gift, and then all of a sudden she's like, I gotta tell this story now. Because you're like, I have to tell the whole family everything. And so she does, and that's where we come in. And so that's we're the only two, well, other than my sister, um, you know, that are connected now on this side because everybody's passed away since then.

Crista Cowan 28:18

So so uh your dad was still alive though, at the time you made this discovery. How did he and his brothers take this news?

Erika Hanchar 28:26

They did not. Well, because you know, and I don't feel bad for them by any means. Um, it it's some people have really mixed reactions about these things. Yeah. My dad did um end up building a very limited relationship, I guess you would call it with her. Um, and it's only because he kind of felt like if he was his position was if my dad wanted me to know, he would have told me. And I'm like, I don't know about that. You know, like I don't I don't know. Like he he had every I think that sometimes when people just feel really guilty about things that they they just hide them and they don't know how to deal with their feelings. And that was my grandfather. But his wife knew. So like my my grandmother knew it's not like just because yes, she did, she did. How did you figure out that she knew that? Because the story that Vicky was told growing up, when her mother finally told her like what happened, she said that one day, um, her um one day, um, my grandmother came to the door of their house and she knocked on the door, and she was surprised that there was a woman with a baby there. And she said, He's leaving you and he's coming with me. Now, my dad tells me the other side of the story, which even before he like the story that we knew in our family, and this is just a little blip of a story, was that when my grandmother owned this shop, like this um, this cafe, my grandfather would come in there and they fell in love. And he promised this life to her, like, come away and live with me. And one day she went and sold her shop, like she sold the cafe so she could go and live and move away with him. And she went to go and tell him that. And he had lied to her and he was like living with another woman. Well, it was his, it was the woman that he was living with. She was the other woman. And so she, and we can only gather, because we don't know her perspective, but we can only gather that in that moment after she had sold her business and she was a single mom, that she was like, You said you were coming with me and we're starting a life. And I guess I'm not saying it was the right thing to do. I'm just saying that they really did love each other and they had a beautiful life afterwards. So it's not like it was forced. Like, yeah, but apparently from Vicky and her mother, they said that he left right away. He went and walked out right with her, and they didn't see him again.

Crista Cowan 30:57

Wow. Ugh.

Erika Hanchar 30:59

So I know horrible, but it's it's drama.

Crista Cowan 31:03

It is, but also like it's it's human, human weakness and human nature, and all of the messiness that is life and love. And, you know, he made a choice and she made a choice, and they lived with those choices and apparently lived with enough shame that they didn't, they weren't open about it, which is heartbreaking because you know, who knows what what would have happened or been different had they been a little bit more open about that. So so I'm thinking about like, at what point did you realize your grandparents had never married, or were like where did that information come to light?

Erika Hanchar 31:40

I think my dad just basically said it just one day off the cuff, like, oh, your your your parent, your grandparents were never really married. They but they loved each other so much and they were always together. And I'm like, okay, like I that's fine. And in my family, that was not a big deal. Like it wasn't a big deal that they weren't formally married. It's it's ship, I mean, just given their upbringing and where they come from and like, you know, their religions and everything, like it would have been a big deal, but it just wasn't for them. I guess they probably felt very modern about their decisions. And I I'm sure it was a I hope it was a whirlwind romance. Like I hope that they were so in love and they were like, we don't care, we're just together. And they had like, you know, two more kids after that. And yeah.

Crista Cowan 32:22

Yeah. Oh, wow.

Preserving Records Through Digitization And Donation

Crista Cowan 32:24

And then um, so for your grandmother, Natalia, like, were you also able to discover more about her side of the family?

Erika Hanchar 32:31

Yeah, actually, her family, hers is the side of the family that I have the most documents on. Um, because the church that they actually were all baptized and born in, like, was it was still there and it they kept all of their documents. And so there's a big, huge ledger in a little village called Antonov in Ukraine where everything about that family is. And actually, I just called, I just called a historian who found all that information for me. Um, and I asked them, I was like, Can you keep going? Can you keep going further back? Can we go deeper and deeper? And he's like, I think so. Let's keep he's like, I think we can go to 1760 in that church. So I'm like, I hope they lived there that long. So I guess we'll see. But right now, on that side of the family, we just go back to the early 1800s. Um, they had lots of kids like on the on that side of the family. Their last name is Rodumsky. And so they had like eight kids. And I know I know at least three or four grandparents back. So I think it's five generations removed from me.

Crista Cowan 33:30

That's amazing. That's actually really impressive. Um, like my Irish family doesn't go back that far.

Erika Hanchar 33:35

So well, this is all new too. Like, you know, for the 20 years that I've been doing this, all that information has just um has just kind of come to light. And part of the reason is, and you know, just just to lightly mention, it's just because in Ukraine right now, documents are so um, well, they're kind of under attack. You never know if it's going to be the building is gonna be blown up one day or if they're gonna lose, so a fire is gonna take something. So they've been working really hard to digitize all these documents or at least like scan them and bring them to life and have like historians going out and archivists go out and look at this stuff. So it is um they're they're scanning records faster than anybody else right now. They are.

Crista Cowan 34:16

As a matter of fact, yeah. Um, when the war started, like within weeks, both Ancestry and Family Search had scanners made available and gathered from around different places in Europe and made available so that they could get those records preserved. So yeah, there has been a lot of concerted effort by by many organizations to make sure that that that happens and that those records are as protected as possible during this time.

Erika Hanchar 34:41

Well, I love that because there's just no other way to know this information if we don't. I hate I hate that too. Like I hate that there's no, and I don't mean like that there isn't like some you know digital archive somewhere. I just mean that like it's it's just in one place. And it's I think of the way that I felt about all of my documents, I was like, oh my gosh, like I f I every time I left the house, I was worried that the place was gonna burn down and that I didn't understand these yet, you know what I mean? And I just I was too afraid that they were gonna get lost. And just on another note of archival, um, which is I I love, I love the topic of archiving. Um, but one of the things was is as soon as I kind of got an understanding of where my family came from, and I had some new connections, like a like real living relatives in Ukraine and like my new aunt, well, she's new old aunt, you know, she's um here in she only lives 12 hours from me, which is amazing, right? So I it's a long drive, but I can still do it. Um it's not like taking a flight to Ukraine to go visit family. But once I had an understanding of what those records all meant, I was like, I can't have this burden anymore. I can't keep these, right? I can't keep them all. So um I scanned them all, I re photographed them all professionally and made my own personal digital archive. And then I donated them to there's a Ukrainian-Canadian archive here in Canada at the University of Alberta. And I donated them there because, well, they can be used for scholarly pursuits, and anybody can go look them up. Um, but also I wanted to be part of the narrative of, you know, Ukrainians in Canada at that time period and just generally just archiving because even though my family's not some famous family, we don't need to be famous. We're all peasant farmers. But I read a lot of other people's family stories in looking for my own family because I just didn't have, I had to fill in the blanks somehow. I was like, I don't understand what life was like at that time, so I'll read a book about it. And sometimes I would read testimonials from family who'd done research, like, you know, they'd done their own family research, you know, watching a lot of kind of documentaries about people going through like finding their relatives. You never know what little piece of information you're gonna pull from someone else's experience. So if I could give my family's documents and, you know, my goodness, if somebody even found a piece that answered their question, you know, like maybe they were like, oh, I don't know how to pronounce this. And then they hear it, like, you know, in my podcast or they read it on a document I donated. Oh my goodness. Like, you never know what that can do for a family. It did everything for me, you know?

Crista Cowan 37:20

Yeah, what a gift. And and how and like the forethought that you had about that and the intentionality with which you did that, I think that's such a beautiful thing because I think far too many people like hold on to those things and then they get lost because you know, I think about that moment when you're standing in your grandfather's house looking at that pile of papers. And if you hadn't been there at that moment, the rest of the family may have just tossed them and then they're gone.

Erika Hanchar 37:46

They would have been gone. And that's that is so terrifying to me. Yeah. And well, you know, because you're one of those people, right? I am you're one of those people. You I I can't even look at somebody else's old photos now or old documents without feeling like a kinship to them. I'm like, we have to take care of these, we can't let anyone touch them.

Crista Cowan 38:07

Right.

Building Identity By Joining The Story

Crista Cowan 38:08

So so okay, as you think about like the way that you've found this story and this identity and the way that you've connected with your relatives in Ukraine and your your new old aunt, like how does that change, how does that change how you view yourself and your own place in the world and your own story?

Erika Hanchar 38:28

Well, I feel like my whole life I had, you know, well, as an adult now, looking back on it, a little bit of an identity crisis, you know, not really knowing where I came from, even though I didn't know to ask the questions at the time, like when I was really young, when I had my grandparents. Like, I mean, as a teenager, I don't know if we can expect our teenagers to go and interview their grandparents about who they were, right? Like and where they came from. But in doing all this research, because they didn't do that for me, because I didn't have, I didn't have the person in front of me to ask the questions to and get the real stories. And doing all that research, I kind of proved to myself that for one, I'm a person that can do this. But also, um that I'm part of the story now. So I think when you look at like old documents, and I think that this is like the disconnect for even young people who are like, you know, we're kind of like, how do we get young people inspired to, you know, want to care about where their family comes from or, you know, history or genealogy? Like, what's the disconnect here? And the disconnect is that you feel really removed from it, right? Like, I didn't feel like I that wasn't my story. This is these are a death line, you know, this is somebody's death date on a document. This is somebody's birth date on a document. I have no connection to that. Like you say, that's my great-grandmother. I don't know. It I just don't feel it, right? But when you put yourself in the story, even if you're the person searching for the story, like there's a lot of identity in that too. I was very lucky that I had some real living relatives that came out on the other side of it. Um, I think that's the best. Um, I think that's the best thing that anyone can hope for, is that you can make a new memory, you can make a new connection. And then you get to be part of the story. So, like your identity, you build your identity over time. You can't build it based on like these past documents or someone else's story. But you can only do it when you start inputting yourself into like the narrative and then build the future that way. And I that's that's kind of where I'm at right now. It's like, yeah, sure. I feel more identity. I feel more closer to my culture than ever, I feel closer to my ancestors than ever. But I think it's only because I'm part of the story now.

Crista Cowan 40:39

That was so, so beautifully said. I love that. I love the framing of that because that is always how I have felt. Um, and it is, it's one of the challenges of transmission of that feeling of belonging and connection has to come from how we see ourselves in that story. And as the seekers and the preservers of the stories, uh, it's easy for us to see ourselves in the story. And so figuring out ways to transmit that becomes a little bit of a challenge sometimes.

Erika Hanchar 41:11

And I think we all have to um, I think like, you know, one of those like things that like one of those boundaries or like those barriers to entry into looking up your family is, you know, do I want to find something bad? Like, you know, am I prepared to find something that I don't want to face? And I'm gonna be honest with you, like everything that every good feeling is on the other side of finding out bad truth.

Crista Cowan 41:33

Yeah. Well, all I often say all families are messy. And that is that like every fam, every family has something messy. And the fact that we're willing to wade into it, uh, I think says something about who we are as the as the family historians, but also you're right, the the beautiful things are on the other side of wading through the messy.

Erika Hanchar 41:56

Yeah, even if it's finding out who you are on the other side of that.

Crista Cowan 42:00

Oh, well

One Word One Story Telephone

Crista Cowan 42:01

said. Okay, well, Erica, we have a segment on this show that we usually end with called One Word, One Story. And so, and I don't even know what the word is. Oh, this is fun. Today's word is telephone.

Erika Hanchar 42:18

Telephone. Well, telephone. I know I mentioned a lot of stories in here where I was talking on the phone. You know, I found out I called my Aunt Vicky when I found out right away that she was a DNA match. The archivist in Ukraine phoned all of my family members from the telephone book. But when I think of phone, I think of how I got all these clues. And my dad was sick for many, many years. And so we spoke on the phone a lot. And we would always have these really long conversations. Because one of the things that we really loved to talk about was all the family lore. And he would be like, Oh, go look this one up. You know, look at see if you can find anything on this person. He gave me like a random name. But they were these long telephone calls where the two of us would talk and talk and talk and try to find some common um, some common clue, or he would remember something from his childhood. And two weeks before my dad passed, um, and I and I highlight this in my podcast, it's one of the last episodes. But two weeks before I passed, or he passed, my goodness, um, he told me a story. And the story was he said, it's very short, but he said that um when he was like five or six, he went to New York City for the first time. And his parents, it was his mother, Natalia, and his father, Vasil, and his, you know, great aunt, and you know, just it was a carload of people, and they all went down to New York City. And he um he wanted to take photos, and his dad gave him his camera. And so he's like spinning and he's spinning and he's taking photos, and he's looking up at the Empire State Building. He's got This little tiny camera, and he feels this giant hand like pull him over from falling over. And he almost fell in the street because he was spinning so much. And it was his dad's hand. And he just kind of looked at him and he was like, you know, be careful. Right. And he's like, That's that's a story I just wanted to tell you about your grandfather. And I was like, Well, that's a sweet story. I was like, that's a very interesting story. And um I was like, Oh, you know, I'm not sure what it really means. He's like, I don't know. He's like, we just went to, he's like, I just wanted you to know that. And I was like, well, thanks. So I'd taken it down. So we're on the phone and I write it all down. And we talked a little bit more. But then he passed away like a week later. Maybe almost almost a week and a half later. And I remembered that story. And I thought, that was my last phone call with my dad. Was this really sweet story with his dad? Yeah. So yeah, so telephone. There you go.

Crista Cowan 44:48

Oh, I love that. Well, here's my telephone story. So my grandparents um bought a house in Los Angeles when my dad was about five years old. So it was about 1954. And uh they had a telephone installed. And my grandparents, like inside their kitchen, had this horrible, horrible, like golden brown patterned, flocked new uh wallpaper. It was just hideous. And the phone was this boxy phone with like this big handle and the you know long cord, and it was bright gold. Yeah. Like like 1950s gold. Uh, and and that was the phone. You know, it had one of the like dial dials. Like we talk about dialing a phone, that's why we do it, right? Um, and uh that was the phone in their kitchen, like my dad's whole life, my whole life. Um, my grandmother actually lived to be uh how old was she? 96 years old. Um, so she just passed in 2018. Oh, wow. I I yeah, I had her well into my 40s. And like actually that that's a young grandma, right?

Erika Hanchar 45:52

Like you grew up having a young grandma.

Crista Cowan 45:55

Yeah, she was she was 50 years old when I was born. And I'm I mean, I'm the oldest grandchild. So yes, I had her for a very long time. And that was, you know, that was the phone. Like when I would call her, like I'm, you know, I'm migrating from a house phone to a cell phone through a series of cell phones. And I always knew when I called that's the phone she was talking to me on. Well, when we were um, we had a family gathering uh after we had moved her out of her house into a care facility, and we had the gathering at her house, and one of the young grandcousins, right? Like my dad's cousins' grandkids, came into the house and took one look at that gold phone hanging on the wall and went, What is that? Like, literally had no clue what that was. And his mother was standing there trying to explain to him, well, it's a telephone. And then he's like, How does it work? And so she's showing him like how to dial, and he's like, Does it actually work? And she's like, Yeah, hold on. And she like calls her own cell phone and it rings, and he just could not wrap his brain around that. Like, it was the funniest, and everybody kind of gathered like in the hall and in the kitchen. People are like eavesdropping on the conversation, like, because we're all just like laughing at this poor child who had no idea that that monstrosity hanging on the wall was a telephone. So there you go. Well, for those of you who are watching on YouTube, uh, I would love to hear your one word, one story about a telephone. Leave it here in the comments. If you're listening on Apple or Spotify or wherever you get podcasts, share your story on Instagram or Facebook. Tag me. I'd love to read it. But most importantly, share your memories with your family. Erica, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for sharing your family with us. Before we go, would you let us know where we can listen to your podcast?

Erika Hanchar 47:53

Um, my podcast is called Granddaughter of Immigrants, and you can listen to it on Apple and Spotify and Audible and wherever you listen to podcasts.

Crista Cowan 48:01

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Studio sponsored by Ancestry.