POSTED ON AUGUST 22, 2014
The next few days will be filled with extra emotion for the nearly 1.25-million Canadians who trace their family heritage to Ukraine — including about 13% of Saskatchewan’s population.
At 11:00 o’clock local time this morning, August 22nd, at more than a hundred locations across Canada (including St. Basil’s Ukrainian Catholic Church in Regina) historical plaques will be unveiled marking a very sad dimension of Canada’s participation in World War One — that is the arbitrary internment in Canada of thousands of Ukrainian and other eastern European immigrants out of ill-founded fear about their loyalties during that global conflict.
Authorized by an Act of Parliament, the internment was a deeply regrettable abrogation of human rights and civil liberties. Without specific cause, due process or natural justice, people of certain ethnicities were forced into 24 heavy labour camps for the duration of the War, and even two years longer. Once branded “enemy aliens”, their lives, livelihoods and reputations were severely compromised.
Now a hundred years later, the installing of these plaques is an effort to acknowledge, commemorate and educate Canadians about what actually took place in those dark days of fear, suspicion and xenophobia between 1914 and 1918. We like to think such things just don’t happen in Canada, but they did — long before the Charter of Canadian Rights and Freedoms would render them unconstitutional after 1982.
And this internment wasn’t a solitary incident. Ukrainians and other minorities faced another period of irrational victimization in the 1920′s and 30′s when, in the name of patriotism, the Ku Klux Klan got a foothold on the Prairies and actually helped to elect a short-lived government in Saskatchewan. Then there were more internments in World War Two. And let’s never forget the devastating legacy of Indian Residential Schools.
As Mary Haskett reminded us so powerfully, it is vital that such sorry chapters in our history are not glossed over, but remain properly documented and remembered down through the years, so their painful but valuable lessons can be learned and future mistakes avoided.
I am pleased that Sir Wilfrid Laurier, in Opposition during WWI, broke from the wartime “union” government over this issue back in 1917. Fast-forward nearly 90 years, I am also pleased that Prime Minister Paul Martin entered into an Agreement-in-Principle with several Ukrainian-Canadian organizations in 2005 which launched an “acknowledgement, commemoration and education” process to help get Canada to the point we’re at today.
That national agreement was actually signed right here in Regina in the UNF hall. And the initial funding was in my 2005 budget. It was former House of Commons Speaker, Peter Milliken, in 1991 who was the first MP to call for the righting of this historic wrong. And it was former Dauphin MP Inky Mark who presented a Private Member’s Bill to move it forward.
But most of all, it was the dedication, persistence and hard work of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, the Shevchenko Foundation and other groups and individuals who carried the flame unfailingly to the unveilings taking place today. Thank you and congratulations to all.
Adding to the emotions on this weekend — beyond the internment plaques — will be a host of activities marking the events of 1991 that brought on Ukraine’s Independence. And we are all painfully aware of the tortured course of events since, from the euphoria of the Orange Revolution in 2004 to the despair, violence and loss of life brought on by the unconscionable aggression of Vladimir Putin.
Even as we try to learn from historic errors made in Canada a hundred years ago, we need to be unshakeable in standing with and for the freedom-loving people of Ukraine today. While supporting the country ‘s security requirements, Canada also needs to invest in the institutions and traditions of democratic development and an effective market economy in Ukraine because that is the fertile soil in which enduring freedom, democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of law can take root and flourish.
https://ralphgoodale.liberal.ca/blog/solemn-commemoration-ukrainiancanadians/
The next few days will be filled with extra emotion for the nearly 1.25-million Canadians who trace their family heritage to Ukraine — including about 13% of Saskatchewan’s population.
At 11:00 o’clock local time this morning, August 22nd, at more than a hundred locations across Canada (including St. Basil’s Ukrainian Catholic Church in Regina) historical plaques will be unveiled marking a very sad dimension of Canada’s participation in World War One — that is the arbitrary internment in Canada of thousands of Ukrainian and other eastern European immigrants out of ill-founded fear about their loyalties during that global conflict.
Authorized by an Act of Parliament, the internment was a deeply regrettable abrogation of human rights and civil liberties. Without specific cause, due process or natural justice, people of certain ethnicities were forced into 24 heavy labour camps for the duration of the War, and even two years longer. Once branded “enemy aliens”, their lives, livelihoods and reputations were severely compromised.
Now a hundred years later, the installing of these plaques is an effort to acknowledge, commemorate and educate Canadians about what actually took place in those dark days of fear, suspicion and xenophobia between 1914 and 1918. We like to think such things just don’t happen in Canada, but they did — long before the Charter of Canadian Rights and Freedoms would render them unconstitutional after 1982.
And this internment wasn’t a solitary incident. Ukrainians and other minorities faced another period of irrational victimization in the 1920′s and 30′s when, in the name of patriotism, the Ku Klux Klan got a foothold on the Prairies and actually helped to elect a short-lived government in Saskatchewan. Then there were more internments in World War Two. And let’s never forget the devastating legacy of Indian Residential Schools.
As Mary Haskett reminded us so powerfully, it is vital that such sorry chapters in our history are not glossed over, but remain properly documented and remembered down through the years, so their painful but valuable lessons can be learned and future mistakes avoided.
I am pleased that Sir Wilfrid Laurier, in Opposition during WWI, broke from the wartime “union” government over this issue back in 1917. Fast-forward nearly 90 years, I am also pleased that Prime Minister Paul Martin entered into an Agreement-in-Principle with several Ukrainian-Canadian organizations in 2005 which launched an “acknowledgement, commemoration and education” process to help get Canada to the point we’re at today.
That national agreement was actually signed right here in Regina in the UNF hall. And the initial funding was in my 2005 budget. It was former House of Commons Speaker, Peter Milliken, in 1991 who was the first MP to call for the righting of this historic wrong. And it was former Dauphin MP Inky Mark who presented a Private Member’s Bill to move it forward.
But most of all, it was the dedication, persistence and hard work of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, the Shevchenko Foundation and other groups and individuals who carried the flame unfailingly to the unveilings taking place today. Thank you and congratulations to all.
Adding to the emotions on this weekend — beyond the internment plaques — will be a host of activities marking the events of 1991 that brought on Ukraine’s Independence. And we are all painfully aware of the tortured course of events since, from the euphoria of the Orange Revolution in 2004 to the despair, violence and loss of life brought on by the unconscionable aggression of Vladimir Putin.
Even as we try to learn from historic errors made in Canada a hundred years ago, we need to be unshakeable in standing with and for the freedom-loving people of Ukraine today. While supporting the country ‘s security requirements, Canada also needs to invest in the institutions and traditions of democratic development and an effective market economy in Ukraine because that is the fertile soil in which enduring freedom, democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of law can take root and flourish.
https://ralphgoodale.liberal.ca/blog/solemn-commemoration-ukrainiancanadians/
