![\"Mark_and_Sonja_2\"](\"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/Mark_and_Sonja_2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nCropped:<\/p>\n
Left to right, Mark, Sonia and me.<\/p>\n They were good kids – Mark was earnest and good-hearted, and Sonia had an uncommon intelligence that she mostly hid but you could see in her eyes.\u00a0 We often went to each others’ places for play dates, but most often they came over to our place, because primitive though it was, it was a better place for us to socialize.<\/p>\n I lost touch with them when we moved away to Toronto, and I don’t recall if we re-stablished any contact during the brief period we returned in 1992.\u00a0 A number of years after we again left and moved to Calgary, I heard that they had both passed away.\u00a0 Sonia had needed a liver transplant (cause unknown, but I doubt she was a drinker even in her adult form) and her body rejected the transplanted organ, killing her.\u00a0 Mark fell off a roof he was working on, and suffocated as a result of the severe asthma attack that ensued.<\/p>\n On today’s return trip, I learned from a neighbor that almost the entire Olynyk family had been wiped out one way or another.\u00a0 Their older sister Laureen had died, though I don’t recall the cause of death now.\u00a0 Their father Peter fell down a well, was unable to climb out and died of exposure.\u00a0 The remainder I don’t know about, but apparently only two of the youngest children survive and are living in Alberta.<\/p>\n I was given the location of their graves – within sight of their home – and went to visit them one last time. The cemetary:<\/p>\n Turns out they all were married before their deaths.\u00a0 Not surprising; being single in your late 20s is unheard of here.<\/p>\n Sonia and Laureen’s graves: Mark’s grave is just off to the right. His headstone:<\/p>\n Grave marking technology has advanced.\u00a0 Thanks to their headstones, I now have more recent photos of them both. Sonia:<\/p>\n And Mark and his wife Victoria, whom I never met:<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n