Most people are buried along with their spouses, their children, perhaps even the family dog. But when Pauline Chorna, Annie Hrynchak, Anna Baran and Nellie Handiak died over the span of three decades, they did not waver in their plan. The four women are exactly where they wanted to be, buried shoulder-to-shoulder under a pink granite tombstone that lists their names beneath a single word: “FRIENDS.”Under the shade of a white oak, the unexpected inscription has become a landmark of sorts for the joggers and dog walkers who frequent Prospect Cemetery, a reason to pause and contemplate the stories buried beneath their feet.While the women are far from Prospect’s most famous residents — the cemetery is the eternal home of the Group of Seven’s J.E.H. MacDonald, after all — they represent one of its more unusual internments and, arguably, Toronto’s most enduring friendship.Their communal gravestone is also a mystery to be solved. “Friends” — these seven letters explain the connection but reveal so little about the four women who chose to be forever defined by this word.For passersby who lean close to study the inscription, the questions are always the same: Who were these women and why did they decide to spend eternity together?For the Golden Girls of Prospect Cemetery, their stories began more than 7,500 kilometres outside of Toronto, in the pastoral villages that dot the verdant foothills of the Carpathian Mountains.The mountain range begins in western Slovakia and arcs through Poland and Ukraine before tapering off in Romania. Canadians who have never heard of the region would at least recognize its most famous son; when Andy Warhol used to say “I come from nowhere,” the truth was his family — the Varholas — hailed from Mikova, a Carpathian hamlet located in present-day Slovakia.People from Warhol’s “nowhere” might call themselves Ruthenians, Rusyns, Carpatho-Rusy ...
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