Weekly Genealogy Spotlight — Week 4

February 3, 2026

Ronald Kolosky (1932-2020)

Born: 1932 • New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada Died: April 2020 • Vancouver, BC British Columbia, Canada

I didn’t meet my Uncle Ron often, only a handful of times, but when I did, he left an impression that stayed with me. His wife, Jeanne, remained in touch over the years, writing letters and speaking with me on the phone. Through those connections, and through one unforgettable visit, I came to know who my uncle was.

Ronald Kolosky on Vancouver Island during his years as a logger.

Ronald Kolosky was born in 1932 in New Westminster, British Columbia, the son of Frank and Annie. Life at home was difficult. There were five children, little money, and a great deal of instability. When Ron was just fourteen years old, he left home. My mother was nine at the time.

He moved to Vancouver Island and became a logger, a job my grandmother described as hard, honest, and dangerous. Ron loved it. He stayed on the island for decades, working in timber harvesting camps that were full in those years. “Everyone wanted me,” he once said. Logging wasn’t just work to him. It was independence, survival, and purpose. He never looked back.

Ron with fellow loggers at a timber camp on Vancouver Island. Photo by Dave.

I met Uncle Ron and Aunt Jeanne in the summer of 1996, nearly two years after my first visit to Vancouver. They were living in a small apartment near my grandmother’s home. Ron was warm, humorous, and big hearted, and he couldn’t get over how much I resembled his sister, Donna. Jeanne was soft spoken and kind, greeting my son David with a gift and welcoming us with an easy grace.

After 2000, there was a long stretch of time when we were no longer in touch. For sixteen years, our lives moved forward separately. When we reconnected in 2016, it felt less like picking up where we left off and more like opening a door that had quietly remained closed.

Ron and his wife, Jeanne, during our visit in 2016. Photo by Diana.

Jeanne prepared a late lunch that afternoon, and we sat together talking easily. It was during that quiet moment that Ron began to speak more openly about his life. Hearing him talk about my grandfather and those early years helped me understand how complicated my grandmother’s life had been in ways I hadn’t fully grasped before.

Ron spoke plainly. “We were poor,” he said. My grandmother had five children, and my grandfather was a gambler and a drunk. He left her penniless for another woman. Ron told me that leaving home at fourteen was not a choice so much as a necessity. Work was easy to find then, and logging camps were full. He went where he was needed. It was how he survived, and how he built his life.

Later that day, Ron told me a story he rarely spoke about. In the 1950s, while working as a logger, he was buried alive in an avalanche. It happened in seconds. He was swept hundreds of feet down the mountain and trapped beneath dense snow and ice. Within moments, he could barely move. The light around him faded, and everything went dark. Ron said he remembered screaming one word, “Avalanche,” before the world closed in. He was pulled out seven minutes later. He was one of the lucky ones.

Jeanne stood and spoke quietly then. She said it had been a nightmare for him, one that stayed long after the mountain released him. Ron listened, nodding, and then smiled in that familiar way, softening the weight of what he had just shared. Humor, I understood, had always been one of the ways he survived.

When I asked Ron about religion, he laughed gently. “What difference does it make?” he said. God is with you whether you are Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, or Jewish. God, he believed, was with him that day on the mountain. Listening to him, I understood that faith, for Ron, was not about doctrine. It was about survival, gratitude, and knowing when you had been spared.

I didn’t spend much time with my Uncle Ron, but the time I did have mattered. Some family stories are carried through years of shared presence, while others arrive in a single afternoon and stay with you for a lifetime. Ron’s was one of those stories. It reminded me that family history is not only about how long we know someone, but how deeply we listen when they choose to speak.