History

Attempting to piece together any early history of the family has been somewhat challenging since no one, it seemed, had any information at all much beyond their own parents. Neither did there seem to be any great desire to 'dig' into the family's past and learn about the generations that came before. With very little to start with other than my grandfather Fred's insistence that he was "Austrian", I tried to gather and record as much information as I could from him, realizing that this source of knowledge would not be available forever.

In 1975 during a visit to my grandparents' home in Goodfare, Alberta, I asked my grandfather any questions that I could think of about where he was born, and what he might remember from that time such as geographic features, etc. I had hoped to be able to discover a birthplace from which to start some serious research. Fred's memory of the 'old country' seemed almost too detailed to me because he was only about five years of age when he came with his family to Canada in 1901. I wasn't to discover until the summer of 2000 just how accurate he'd been when I visited the Romanian province of Bukovina (Bucovina) and saw first hand the places he had described to me 25 years earlier.

As anyone who has studied Eastern European history knows, this region has often been in turmoil, with national and regional boundaries being redrawn frequently due to war and politics. Some of the heaviest fighting of the Second World War occurred here, resulting in the loss of a staggering amount of historical documents, church and civil records, etc., not to mention the cost in human lives. Consequently there is no detailed chronology of the Tosczaks, but rather a history lesson to provide a context in which to present the facts that I have been able to gather over the years.

As more archival material becomes available in the state and regional archives of the Ukraine and Poland, there is a good chance that I will be able to trace the family back beyond the point in time that I have. Presently, the oldest ancestor I have been able to confirm is Basil Toustiuk. Basil was a farmer who lived in the small village of Nanczulka which lies in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains in western Galicia. At that time, Galicia, along with Bukovina, was a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire which explains why my grandfather referred to himself an 'Austrian'. Since the end of World War II however, this area lay within the borders of the Ukraine, about 5 km from the Polish border.

Although Basil's exact date of birth is not yet known, he would likely have been born between 1820 and 1825. Basil married Katarina Halkowicz whose family still lived in this village when I visited. In fact, there were two villages named Nanczulka - big Nanczulka and, just a few hundred metres down the road, little Nanczulka. Both village had its own church, constructed in the late 1700's and dedicated to Saint Peter, however one was destroyed when the villages found themselves on the front lines between German and Russian troops during WW II. The population in this part of the Ukraine is predominantly Greek Catholic (also referred to as Uniate), where followers still look to the Pope in Rome as their spiritual leader, while many of the religious rituals resemble those of the Orthodox Church.

If you experience any problems with this site, or if you have any questions, comments or suggestions,please email the Webmaster