Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan

The All Saints Orthodox Church in Meadow Lake, SK. was built in 1957. Bill Krasicki’s father Petro was the head carpenter on the project. He came over from Ukraine and built many houses for local farmers. Bill doesn’t know how his dad learned carpentry, but he thinks that he was self-taught. On any particular job, Peter Karsicki was not the only builder, rather, he would work as the head of a crew. When building the church in Meadow Lake, Peter Krasicki and his team used the plans that were drawn for the Orthodox Church in North Battleford, SK. To make the church more suitable to Meadow Lake, Peter and his team simply down-sized the building plans. According to Bill Krasicki, the banyas, or domes, of the church demanded special skills and man was brought in from Winnipeg to build those on top of the structure executed by the local construction crew. Winnipeg was also the source of the icons used to decorate the church.  The iconostas inside the church was made 20 years ago (15 years ago at the time of the interview). The parishioners and builders of the All Saint Church heard that there was a young man from Ukraine doing iconostases in the area. They hired this young man to do their iconostas while he was here in Canada.