William Andrew (Vasyl Andrii) Czumer, a pioneer schoolteacher, was born on 5 February 1882 in the village of Drohoiv, Peremyshl county, Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He arrived in Winnipeg in 1903 and, after a brief stint as a railroad worker, became a member of the first class to enrol in the Ruthenian Training School established by the government of Manitoba in Winnipeg in 1905 to prepare teachers for schools in the Ukrainian settlements. He taught in Manitoba and Alberta (1907–13), operated the Smoky Lake Mercantile Store in Smoky Lake, Alberta (1921–38) and helped establish Merchants' Wholesale in Edmonton, from which he retired in 1961. William Czumer died on 2 August 1963, leaving behind a fascinating collection of early memoirs presented here for the first time in a complete and unabridged English translation.