Nicholas Kostyniuk was born December 9, 1921 in Plain Lake, AB. His parents were Joseph and Annie Kostyniuk (Predyk). They married in 1917 in the old Plain Lake church and settled on a farm. They had four children: Mary, Nick, John and Tillie. Joseph died in 1938 at the age 44. Nick's older sister Mary married Peter Stepushyn in the fall of 1938. In 1946 Tillie married Alex Werbitsky of Innisfree. In 1949 John married Mary Chmilar of Two Hills and moved to farm in that area.
Nick contributed a great deal to running the household. He hurt his hip in an accident as a young man, causing a permanent limp. For this reason, he did not participate in the war. Nicholas taught at Plain Lake school for one year. He wrote and published poetry. He was active in the youth activities of his parish and was active in the Ukrainian Catholic church his whole life. In 1950, Annie and Nick moved to Edmonton. Two years later in 1952, Nick married Olga Soldan of Two Hills and settled in Edmonton. For a little while he owned a hat store on Whyte Ave close to 99 St. He worked at "Inland Cement" for over 25 years. Nick and Olga had two sons: Brent and Alan.
Annie lived in her home and kept boarders until early 1981, at which time she moved to the St. Basil's Senior Citizens' Residence in Edmonton. She passed away in March of 1975.
Composer Marian Kouzan (b. 1925, Isai, Ukraine, d. 2005, Fremont, France) moved to France at a very young age and began music lessons at the age of eight. In 1945 the entered the Paris Conservatory and graduated in 1948. He supported himself by taking various positions in the music entertainment industry and wrote music in popular music genres. Kouzan considered the 1960s to be the beginning of his composing career, which combined music for stage, and film and television soundtracks for the “show business” industry, as well as a wide variety of instrumental music for unusual combinations of instruments, with an emphasis on brass and percussion. Many of his works had Ukrainian themes, including the soundtrack to a documentary film about artist Jacques Hnizdovsky, the oratorios Neofity and Poslaniie to texts by Taras Shevchenko and the Chornobyl Requiem to a text by Vasyl Barka.