Obituary of EVDOKIA PUSTOGORODSKY

                EVDOKIA PUSTOGORODSKY

(Nee Boshko)

April 18, 1922 – August 18, 2019

Peacefully, with family beside her, Evdokia passed away on August 18, 2019 at the Holy Family Home, age 97.

Evdokia was predeceased by her loving husband, Wasyl, her sister, Anna, and her brothers, Nickolai, Sergei and Michael.

She will be missed by her son, Sergio, daughter-in-law, Karen van Leusden and her grand-children, Alexandra and Mischa.

Evdokia was born in Hlazunovka, a village in Kursk province, Russia, to immigrants who had come from the Poltava area of Ukraine. When she was seventeen she left with her uncle, Stephen, to go to Donetsk, Ukraine, to work. Caught up in the horror of WW II, she was transported to Germany to work in a slave labour camp. Surviving the war, it was in a refugee camp near Munich, Germany that she met, fell in love with and married Wasyl Pustogorodsky, a concentration camp survivor. Not wanting to return to the Soviet Union, Evdokia and Wasyl looked for a country that might be a safe haven. After four years in refugee camps in Germany the family was finally accepted by Chile. The family spent three years living in Santiago, Chile before being able to move to Canada in 1953.

Arriving in Canada, thousands of dollars in debt for transportation costs, Evdokia began living the immigrant dream that Canada promised. Through hard work at whatever jobs were available, sacrifice and thrift, Evdokia helped build a life in Winnipeg. Starting with a rented two-room apartment, the family paid off its debts, bought their own house and in due course built a cottage at Victoria Beach.

Life revolved around family, her church, the cottage and her garden. Evdokia looked after her garden of tomatoes, cucumbers and various other vegetables well into her late eighties. She loved to go foraging for mushrooms and blueberries, also into her eighties.

Her memory will live on in the love she showered on her family and in the wonderful food she prepared.

The family would like to thank the staff at Holy Family Home for the care that they provided to Evdokia in the last years of her life. They would especially like to thank those individuals who made that extra effort to make sure that Evdokia’s time there was as comfortable as possible.

Funeral prayers will be said at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, August 22 and a funeral mass will be celebrated at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, August 23, both at the Russian Orthodox Church of the Holy Resurrection on 732 Alfred Avenue, with interment to follow at Brookside Cemetery.