William Kurelek, King of the Castle, 1958–59, gouache and watercolour on Masonite, 53.9 x 45.7 cm, private collection.ĭmytro’s values and attitudes had been shaped by the brutality of the First World War and the struggles of subsistence farming. ” Mental anguish and a fraught relationship with his parents, especially his father, defined Kurelek’s journey into adulthood. Anxious, withdrawn, and prone to horrifying “hallucinations,” he developed a reputation among the family as physically inept, an impractical “dreamer. A timid child, Kurelek’s formative years were deeply affected by the contests of the schoolyard, trials he vividly captured in later paintings such as King of the Castle, 1958–59. He attended the one-room Victoria Public School, a mile’s walk from the family farm. The move to Manitoba coincided with the commencement of Kurelek’s formal education. The eldest of seven children, William spoke little English and was a cultural outsider to the community’s dominant Anglo-Protestant heritage, as was the case for his siblings closest in age, John and Winnie. When the family’s wheat farming in Manitoba produced meagre results, Dmytro turned to raising dairy cattle. Dropping grain prices that accompanied the Great Depression likely precipitated the move, as well as a fire that destroyed their house in the early 1930s. In 1934 the family abandoned Alberta for Manitoba suddenly and settled on a farm near the town of Stonewall, forty kilometres north of Winnipeg. Mary’s Russo-Greek Orthodox Church in Shandro.
Two years later, on March 3 William was born and then baptized at St. The Huculaks sponsored Dmytro’s voyage to Canada and put him to work on their farm when he arrived. The families of Dmytro and Mary originated in the village of Borivtsi and the surrounding region of Bukovyna. The Huculaks established a homestead near Whitford Lake, then part of the Northwest Territories, in a larger Ukrainian settlement.ĭmytro arrived in Canada in 1923 with the second major wave of Ukrainian immigration. These farming families, from what is known today as the Western Ukraine, transformed Canada’s harsh western prairie into a flourishing agricultural region and created an important market for the eastern manufacturing industry. Mary’s parents had arrived in the region east of Edmonton around the turn of the century, in the first wave of Ukrainian immigration to Canada. William Kurelek was born on a grain farm north of Willingdon, Alberta, to Mary (née Huculak) and Dmytro Kurelek in 1927. William Kurelek’s father and mother, Dmytro and Mary Kurelek (née Huculak), c. 1925. After immigrating to Canada, Dmytro worked on the farm of Vasyl Huculak, his sponsor. William Kurelek’s father, Dmytro (Metro) Kurelek (far right), as a young man, c. 1923.
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