A TIME FOR ATONEMENT

Canada’s First National InternmentOperations

and the Ukrainian Canadians,1914-1920

Since 1985 the Ukrainian Canadian community hasasked the Government of Canada to acknowledge that theinternment operations and related measures taken againstUkrainian Canadians and other Europeans wereunnecessary and unjust and has requested an accountingof what happened to that portion of the internees’confiscated wealth that was not returned.

The Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association is anindependent, not-for-profit, educational group dedicatedto articulating and promoting the Ukrainian Canadiancommunity’s interests. Since 1994 UCCLA has placedtrilingual historical markers and statues at many of theCanadian internment camp sites and worked with Branch360 of The Royal Canadian Legion to honour theUkrainian Canadian hero, Filip Konowal.

What Should You Do?1. Send this leaflet to your Member of Parliament or tothe Prime Minister of Canada with a note supporting ourcalls for the recognition of this injustice and for therestitution of that portion of the internees’ confiscatedwealth that was never returned, those monies to be used

• to place historical markers at all the internment campsites• for the development of a permanent museum aboutCanada’s first national internment operations, and for providing educational materials about this relativelyunknown episode in Canadian history to schools acrossthe country.

2. Pass copies of this leaflet on to your friends. Byinforming others about what happened, you can ensurethat no other ethnic, religious or racial minority is eversubjected to the same mistreatment that our communityendured.

3. For more information see Lubomyr Luciuk, In Fear ofthe Barbed Wire Fence: Canada’s First National InternmentOperations and the Ukrainian Canadians, 1914-1920(Kingston: Kashtan Press, 2001, ISBN# 1-896354-22-X).

4. To offer us your support please contact the UkrainianCanadian Civil Liberties Association, Suite 277, 3044Bloor Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M8X 2Y8

or visit our web site: http://www.uccla.ca

“It is very probable that if this proposal [War TimeElections Act, 1917] becomes law, the ‘alleged’foreigners and hitherto ‘naturalized’ Canadians willbear their reproach meekly, but they will have sown intheir hearts the seeds of a bitterness that can never beextirpated. The man whose honour has been mistrusted,and who has been singled out for national humiliation,will remember it and sooner or later it will have to beatoned for.”

Daily British Whig, Kingston, 8 September 1917

“ The internment of Ukrainians during World War One as enemy aliens

is one of the sadder stories in the history of this country.”

Her Excellency Madame Adrienne Clarkson Governor General of Canada

Dauphin, Manitoba, 4 August 2000

“ I was one of the thousands of Ukrainian Canadiansrounded up as “enemy aliens” and put in concentrationcamps between 1914-1920. I was just six years old then.I was born in Canada. I lived in Montreal with myparents, brother John and sisters, Anne and Nellie.Nellie was born in Quebec. She was just two and a halfwhen we buried her near the Spirit Lake internmentcamp. Canada’s Ukrainians were not disloyal. Ourimprisonment was wrong. We were Canadians. Thosewho, like my parents, had come from Ukraine toCanada, came seeking freedom. They were invited here.They worked hard. They contributed to this country,with their blood, sweat and tears. A lot of the latter.What was done to us was wrong. Because no onebothered to remember or learn about the wrong that wasdone to us it was done to others again, and yet again.Maybe there’s an even greater wrong in that.”

Mary Manko Haskett, co-chair, National RedressCouncil, UCCLA, survivor of the Spirit Lakeinternment camp, January 1994

©UCCLA, 2002

with the support of the Ukrainian Canadian

Foundation of Taras Shevchenko

Even though there was never anyevidence of disloyalty on theirpart, thousands of Ukrainiansand other Europeans wereneedlessly imprisoned and forcedto do heavy labour in 24internment camps located inCanada’s frontier hinterlandsduring Canada’s first nationalinternment operations of 1914-1920. Tens of thousands of

others were designated “enemyaliens” and obliged to reportregularly to the policeauthorities. Subsequently,Ukrainian Canadians enduredvarious other state-sanctionedindignities, includingdisenfranchisement, restrictionson their freedom of speech,movement, and association,deportation, and the confiscation

of the internees’ wealth andproperty, some of which remainsin government coffers to thisday. These measures took placeeven though Ottawa wasinformed by the British ForeignOffice that Ukrainians and othereastern Europeans in Canadawere “friendly aliens” whoshould be given “preferentialtreatment.” Despite their

mistreatment, UkrainianCanadians over-enlisted in theCanadian Expeditionary Forceduring the First World War andone of their number, CorporalFilip Konowal, became the onlyUkrainian Canadian ever to winthe highest military decorationof the British Empire, theVictoria Cross.

“The prisoners in Canadian InternmentCamps came to the Dominion as peacefulemigrants and the great majority of them atleast have been good, law-abiding residentssince their arrival, doing their bit to furtherthe development of its great resources. In otherwords, these men now held as prisoners, as aclass, are good, sturdy, inoffensive men, ableand willing to work, most of them desirous ofbecoming Canadian citizens. The idea,therefore, of a treatment of such men as quasi-criminals seems contrary to the very bestinterests of the Dominion, and the temporarysaving, which may be effected by the payment,or rather allowance, of such pittance as 25cents per day for a full day’s work, not evenpayable to them or to their families in full,

seems to be as inexpedient as unjust, theformer because men will not render a day’swork for that amount, even when pretendingto do so; unjust because most of these men hadgood profitable work prior to their internmentand families to support which are nowpunished more than they are. There is nodoubt in my mind, that at the present moment,the great majority of the prisoners at SpiritLake could safely be returned to their homesand families, and that such return would bemore profitable to Canada in the end thattheir retention in the camps as unwillingworkers or strikers.”American Consul G Willrich to theHonourable Secretary of State, Washington,29 December 1916

“Fear is the only agency that can besuccessfully employed to keep them withinthe law and I have no doubt that if theDominion Government persists in thecourse that it is now adopting the foreignelement here will soon be as gentle andeasily controlled as a lot of sheep.”Sir Hugh Macdonald to the Honourable AMeighen, 3 July 1919

“My dear father: We havent nothing to eatand they do not want to give us no wood.My mother has to go four times to getsomething to eat. It is better with you,because we had everything to eat. Thisshack is no good, my mother is going downtown every day and I have to go with herand I don’t go to school at winter. It is coldin that shack. We your small children kissyour hands my dear father. Goodby mydear father. Come home right away.”Letter from Katie Domytryk, aged 9, to#1100, H Domytryk, father of four,arrested in Edmonton, March 1916,initially interned at Lethbridge, latertransferred to Spirit Lake

“The conditions here are very poor, so thatwe cannot go on much longer, we are notgetting enough to eat–we are hungry asdogs.” Letter from Nick Olinyk, #98, Castle Mountain, Alberta, to his wife

“I say unhesitatingly that everyenemy alien who was internedduring the war is today just asmuch an enemy as he wasduring the war, and I demandof this Government that eachand every alien in thisdominion should be deported atthe earliest opportunity....Cattleships are good enough forthem.” Herbert S Clements,MP (Kent West, Ontario),24 March 1919

“ To estimate the number ofUkrainians who have enlistedwith the Canadian ExpeditionaryForces would be very hard as theywere enlisting in variousbattalions from the Atlantic tothe Pacific coast, but it is safe tosay that, to the approximate halfmillion soldiers in Canada, if thefigures of the War Office wereavailable, it could be shown that

these people, per population, gavea larger percentage of men to thewar than certain races in Canadahave, after having enjoyed theprivileges of British citizenshipfor a period of a century ormore.” Henry A Mackie, MP(Edmonton East) to PrimeMinister Robert L Borden,October 1918

Canada’s first national internment operations, 1914-1920