Re: Internment of Ukrainian Canadians

The Ukrainian Weekly 9 April 1988

Internee working party, near Castle Mountain internment camp site, Alberta (Photo from the J. Anderson-Wilson Collection, courtesy of the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies)
In a column published recently in The Ukrainian Weekly ("Faces and Places: A time for atonement in Canada," Sunday, March 5) Myron Kuropas repeats a number of allegations first made by Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk in his pamphlet " A Time for Atonement: Canada's First National Internment Operation and the Ukrainian Canadians 1914-1920" (Kingston, Ontario, 1988). Allow me to place this controversial issue in perspective for the benefit of your readers.

1. Between 1914 and 1920 the Canadian government interned 8,579 male "aliens of enemy nationality" including 99 Bulgarians, 205 Turks, 312 persons of "miscellaneous" origins, 2,009 Germans (made up of 1,192 unnaturalized German residents of Canada and 817 German sailors and seamen captured in the Caribbean Sea), and 5,954 AustroHungarians.

According to official reports the Austro-Hungarians included Croats, Serbs, Slovaks, Poles and Ukrainians. No one knows how many of the 5,954 Austro-Hungarians were Ukrainians because a complete list of internees has not been compiled. Historians simply assume that up to 5,000 of them were Ukrainians because a large majority of the Austro-Hungarian nationals in Canada were Ukrainians. These male internees were accompanied by 81 women and 156 children (of all nationalities) who accompanied the men voluntarily and who were provided with quarters and food in two of the 19 internment camps.

2. Canadian-born Ukrainians, Ukrainians who had been naturalized as British subjects (i.e., who had become Canadian citizens) after emigrating from the Austrian crown lands of Galicia and Bukovina, and all Ukrainian natives (naturalized and unnaturalized) of the Russian Empire (Britain's and Canada's ally), were not classified as "enemy aliens" nor were they interned at the Canadian government's behest. They were not "stripped of their rights" for the duration of the war, they were not "forced to report regularly to the police," their families were not "uprooted," and "their farms and other possessions" were not "confiscated."

Only two qualifications have to be made with respect to Ukrainian immigrants who fall into any of these categories. First, a handful (and only a handful) were interned on the orders of ignorant and/or prejudiced local officials; almost invariably such persons were released once the appropriate authorities were notified. Second, Ukrainians and all immigrants born in enemy countries and naturalized after March 31, 1902, were deprived of the federal franchise between September 1917 and August 1919. However, they and their sons were simultaneously exempted from compulsory military service at the front.

3. Only those Ukrainians (and non Ukrainians) who had emigrated from enemy states and were not naturalized British subjects (i.e., those who were still Austrian, German, Turkish, etc., nationals rather than Canadian citizens) were "branded 'enemy aliens,'" required to report to the police if they lived within 20 miles of a major urban center, and subject to internment. There were up to 70,000 Ukrainians in Canada who fell into this category in 1914. The vast majority were young, single, migrant, male frontier laborers (rather than agricultural settlers), who came to Canada for a year or two with the hope of securing a job on railroad construction, in the mines or in the forests, earning some money, and then returning to the old country. By the summer of 1914 many of these men were unemployed as a result of the depression that gripped Canada from the fall of 1913 until the summer of 1916.

Immediately after the outbreak of war many more were fired because "patriotic" employers and laborers refused to work with natives of enemy states. While some Ukrainian laborers responded to this turn of events by organizing street demonstrations, others headed for the American border in search of work. Robert Borden, the Canadian prime minister, was prepared to let these hungry and unemployed men enter the United States, but the Colonial Office in London insisted that Canada must detain all "aliens of enemy nationality." The British feared that many of these men, especially those who were military reservists, would drift back to Germany and Austria via the neutral United States. Hence the introduction of internment operations in Canada. Thus the overwhelming majority of Ukrainian internees were young, single, propertyless, unemployed, unnaturalized migrant laborers. They were interned while trying to cross the American border or because municipal councils, which were unable or unwilling to provide relief for them, insisted that they represented a threat to civil order. It is necessary to bear in mind that for many of these men internment was the only alternative to starvation. There is evidence that at least some hungry and unemployed Ukrainian laborers sought to be interned and that they were not eager to be released from the internment camps.

4. According to the 1907 Hague Convention, which governed prisoner-of-war camps, including Canadian internment camps, officers and civilians "of a standing considered to be equivalent to the officer grade," were entitled to a higher standard of accommodation and subsistence than men in the ranks and they could not be compelled to perform physical labor. The Germans interned in Canada tended to be officers, reserve officers and well-educated, urban middle class commercial travellers. On the other hand, Ukrainian internees were unlettered, migrant laborers of peasant stock in the internment camps, which were located in the same parts of Canada where Ukrainian frontier laborers

usually earned a living, they performed essentially the same type of back-breaking labor that they had performed prior to internment.

5. Conditions varied from one internment camp to another, but it is simply not true that all internees were obliged to labor under harsh conditions or exposed to rough treatment by their guards. Canadian historians who have studied internment agree that Ukrainians interned at the remote and inaccessible camp in Castle Mountain, near Banff, Alberta, were indeed abused and mistreated. Yet, while there is some evidence of abuse in several of the other camps, on the whole, Castle Mountain was an exception. A number of Ukrainian internees have testified that they rarely exerted themselves while they were interned. Ukrainian Catholic priests visited several camps on a regular basis; reading clubs and literacy classes were organized by internees in several of the camps; interned craftsmen had plenty of time to carve picture frames and to make violins; concerts and plays were staged; and it was not uncommon for internees at Kapuskasing to spend the evening hours singing and dancing the hopak and the kolomyika to the accompaniment of a mandolin orchestra.

Most of the 67 "Austrians" who perished were the victims of tuberculosis, contracted years earlier while they were still in the old country; others died during the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919. Only one "Austrian," who may or may not have been a Ukrainian, committed suicide. And, for the sake of perspective, it is necessary to bear in mind that literally thousands of Ukrainian laborers, who were at liberty, were killed, maimed and mutilated during these years because their employers (railway and mining companies, etc.) were negligent and absolutely indifferent to the fate of their employees.

6. Only internees in the camps, were paid "at a rate equivalent to that of a soldier" (25 cents a day). Ukrainians and other "Austrian" internees who were released on parole to work for private companies (and virtually all Ukrainians had been paroled by 1917) were paid exactly "what they might have expected to make if they had been able to offer their labor in the marketplace." 7. Although it is quite possible that a handful of interned Ukrainian urban dwellers had "their valuables, real estate and securities...seized" it should be borne in mind that the vast majority of Ukrainian internees had little if any property to lose. If they managed to save any money migrant laborers usually sent it back home to their relatives in the old country. To the best of my knowledge the greatest property losses were sustained by the Ukrainian Social Democratic Party and one of its members, an outspoken anti-war activist who had his printshop, press and publications confiscated. 8. Federal and provincial authorities received relatively few letters, petitions and memoranda from Ukrainian community leaders protesting internment. Internment simply was not a major issue within the Ukrainian Canadian community. Ukrainian Canadian community leaders and the Ukrainian Canadian press preferred to focus their energies on the preservation of bilingual public schools (Ukrainian editors routinely compared AngloCanadian critics of these institutions to "the Russian Black Hundred gangs") and on overseas developments. It must be remembered that "respectable" Ukrainian community

leaders -- "intelligenty," businessmen, clerics and some homesteaders -- often looked upon Ukrainian migrant laborers with contempt and embarrassment because their intemperance and frequent fisticuffs brought "shame" upon "decent" Ukrainians.

9. As for assurances "that Ukrainians were neither 'Austrians' nor supportive of the Austrian war effort," the Canadian government had evidence to the contrary. Even if we dismiss the appeal issued to Austrian military reservists by a prominent Ukrainian Catholic cleric shortly before the war broke out, we cannot dismiss the editorials and articles published in several Ukrainian Canadian and Ukrainian American newspapers. During the first 18 months of the war Ukrainian Canadian newspapers (Kanadiyskyi Rusyn) and Ukrainian American newspapers (Svoboda) which circulated in Canada published blatantly Austrophile and Germanophile editorials and articles on a number of occasions. Moreover, prominent Ukrainian Canadians maintained contacts with proAustrian elements in Vienna and in Philadelphia. 10. Finally, comparisons between the Ukrainian Canadian experience during World War I and the Japanese-Canadian experience during World War II are, on the whole, inappropriate. Between 1914 and 1920 about 2 percent of Ukrainian Canadians, virtually all of them unnaturalized propertyless, unemployed, single, male migrant laborers were interned, for two or three years (1914-1917). in the depths of an economic depression. Property losses (if indeed there were any) were minimal, and at war's end all but a handful of Social Democrats, who were interned between 1917 and 1919 and deported for their alleged Bolshevik sympathies, were allowed to do just as they pleased. They could settle in any Ukrainian Canadian rural or urban colony, they could move to the United States, or they could return to Galicia or Bukovina. For many Ukrainian Canadians, especially naturalized rural settlers, the war years were a period of unprecedented economic prosperity and cultural efflorescence.

Between 1942 and 1946 more than 90 percent of Canada's Japanese population -- men, women and children; old and young; firm and infirm; employed and unemployed; Canadian-born, naturalized Canadian citizens, and Japanese nationals -- were in fact uprooted from their farms and businesses in British Columbia, separated from their loved ones, and forcibly resettled in ghost towns, in road construction camps and on farms owned by Occidentals. All of the property accumulated by Japanese Canadians in the course of 70 years -- everything from farms, houses and automobiles to radios and cameras -- was confiscated and auctioned off by the government at bargain-basement prices. Japanese Canadian institutions and organized cultural life ceased to exist. After the war Japanese Canadians were not allowed to return to their homes on the West Coast. They were obliged to choose between repatriation to war-ravaged Japan or forced dispersal all across Canada. At least 4,000 Japanese Canadians were repatriated to Japan. Orest Martynowych Orest Martynowych is a research associate at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. He is currently writing a history of Ukrainians in Canada.