The man normally credited with starting the Ukrainian immigration into Canada is Ivan Pylypow who first made the trip along with Wasyl Eleniak in 1891. However, there is considerable evidence of an earlier Ukrainian presence in Canada. Several Ukrainian names such as Ivan Ruchkowsky from Shchuriv and Andrew Yankowsky from Ternopil in Western Ukraine, may be found among the soldiers of the De Watteville and De Meuron Swiss mercenary regiments brought from Europe to defend Canada from an American invasion in the War of 1812. Later, in 1817, two of the soldiers, Andrew Yankowsky and Petro Komdrovsky, accompanied Lord Selkirk when he went west to defend his Red River settlement in what is now Manitoba.
Between 1883 and 1891 when American settlers started moving north to take advantage of the free homesteads offered in Canada several Ukrainians were among their numbers and the birth records of the Immaculate Conception Church in Winnipeg includes names such as Koleshar, Bubnyk and Chapets.
Despite this Pylypow does deserve the credit for starting the flow of settlers that would bring nearly 200,000 Ukrainians to Canada in the years prior to the First World War. Ivan Pylypow was born in the village of Nebyliv in Austrian Galicia near the city which is now Ivano-Frankivsk. The village had no school, but the local priest identified him as being suited for scholarship and encouraged Ivan's father to send him to school in Stanyslaviv. There he acquired a command of the Polish and German languages and made friends with a German boy named John Krebs. After leaving college Ivan worked as a logging contractor before falling on hard times. His thoughts turned to emigration and after investigating the possibilities offered by eastern Russia he thought to write to his old friend, John Krebs. The letter he received back came from a settlement near Medicine Hat, Alberta and was full of glowing visions of the possibilities which existed in Canada.
Encouraged by this news Ivan convinced the heads of about 10 families that their future lay in Canada. However, doubts soon arose and the group decided that they would send a delegation of three men ahead to see the land for themselves. These would be Wasyl Eleniak, Yurko Panishchak and Ivan Pylypow himself. Panishchak would be turned back at the Austrian border due to having insufficient cash while the other two continued on to Hamburg and then across the Atlantic to Montreal where they arrived on September 7, 1891. They took the train to Winnipeg where they found some Germans with whom they could converse including some who had worked with Pylypow in Austria. They visited the homesteads of the Germans near Langenburg, Saskatchewan and continued on as far west as Calgary before returning to Manitoba where they found work with a Mennonite colony in Gretna. While they were unimpressed with the land around Calgary as it had no trees in sight, they were sufficiently convinced by the land in Gretna that Pylypow returned to Galicia to get their families while Eleniak stayed behind to work.
Once back home Pylypow's accounts raised both excitement and skepticism. However, when it was revealed that Pylypow had made a deal with a Hamburg shipping company, Spiro and Company , by which Pylypow would receive a commission for directing Ukrainian immigrants to the company Pylypow was arrested. He would spend four months in jail for soliciting emigration but the publicity of the trial helped spread the word further and in June 1892 seven families set off to Canada led by Anton Paish and Nykola Tychkowski. Some of these families would stop in Winnipeg while others continued on to meet up with John Krebs who by this time had relocated to what the local people called the Beaver Hills, but what the Germans called Josefsberg. Here, where the South Victoria Trail crossed Deep Creek, not far south of the modern grain elevator at Scotford, Tychkowski and Paish would file for their homesteads.
When in the spring of 1893 Ivan Pylypow was finally able to return to Canada with his family he would file on a quarter adjoining Paish's. Within a year a fire would claim his new house along with all of his possessions. After spearheading the Ukrainian immigration Ivan Pylypow and his family were reduced to begging in the streets of Edmonton. At this time three more families arrived from Nebyliv, those of Fedor Melnyk, Mykhailo Pullishy and Wasyl Fenniak. Together with Pylypow these families would settle section 22 of township 56, range 19 and would form the basis for the Edna-Star colony which became the center of the Ukrainian settlements in Alberta.