Social life in what they called the “Dirty Thirties” was glorious to my boyish eyes. In the painting The Barn Dance I am the little boy standing high up in the corner, enthralled. Those country dances, which followed the same pattern in the Ukrainian settlements of Saskatchewan as they did in Manitoba, were exciting to watch. As a boy, I usually dreaded dancing and was exciting content to stand on the the sidelines, but I remember one party at the Tomyk’s place where the adults cleared the floor to make room for the children to have a bash at the schottische. It is a dance where partners stand side by side in a circle holding each other one hand by the waist as a I have shown it in the painting.

I recall a summer wedding party held in the hayloft of a Ukrainian neighbor. The young couple were married in a Ukrainian Church in Winnipeg and then drove back to the farm for the celebration. The bride wore the usual North American wedding dress, but the party was Ukrainian. As each family of guests arrived, the orchestra would switch to a special song to mark their entrance. The bride and groom stood at the head table and the guests would approach in couples to wish them well. The man would deposit a gift of five dollars – a grand sum in those days.