Aside from Ukraine and Russia, Canada counts the largest number of people of Ukrainian descent. Ukrainians contributed much to the building of Canada, by settling farmlands, building railways, laboring in mines and being professionals. Hence, more should be known about their history in Canada and a few facts reemphasized.
Before and during the First World War, Ukrainians in Canada were seen as strangers in sheepskin coats, namely very foreign. About 130,000 came to Canada before the war, invited to help settle so-called open lands in the west. Because of the depression of 1913, many Canadians, and especially those of British descent, saw the migrants from central and Eastern Europe as a threat to their employment.
To illustrate: In the manufacturing city of Brantford, large public works were being undertaken to help the unemployed. Many of British background asked that “Turks,” as they termed the foreigners, not be employed. In Northern Ontario, in Sudbury and other mining centres, the anti-foreign attitudes focused on Austrians, Finns, Ukrainians, Russians, and Germans.
As is now fairly well-known, during the war these attitudes hardened into hatred of anyone with that background because they were considered a threat for two reasons: most were left-wing and many were from countries at war with Britain.
As a result, starting in 1914, more than 9,000 were interned as enemy aliens and the rest had to register with and report to local police. The 5,000 Ukrainians who were interned have received an acknowledgement of the injustice from the Canadian government, but the 3,000 Germans and others have not. In 1916, as a result of the wartime labour shortage, most of the interned were released, but forced to work for industrial firms. Those who refused were locked up again. Burwash Industrial Prison Farm near Sudbury was one of the places they were imprisoned. You can read about the consequences of that here.
The British Canadian negative attitude towards people of eastern and Central Europe can be seen in wartime letters and newspapers.
An illustration is a comment made about fellow Canadians, lumping French-Canadians with bohunks, the slang for Ukrainians from a soldier’s letter. On Feb. 7, 1915, Frank Betts wrote, “The 101st Batt[alion] of Edmonton were not good enough as a unit and they were split up. We get a lot of them in our Batt[alion]. Most of them are hunkies [slur, usually against east Europeans], Frenchmen I guess.”
The anti-immigrant attitudes were reflected in newspapers such as Timmins’ The Porcupine Advance. Among the many articles focusing on so-called aliens who were not registering with the police, it reported on May 28, 1917 that “Provincial Officer Allen picked up Geo. Yuezuk, an Austrian [of Ukrainian background], for travelling without permission, being an enemy alien … it being necessary for all aliens of enemy origin to have written permission before they can move from one town to another. When alien enemies are given their registration cards this is impressed upon them…”
We must remember that the Canadian government had invited most of these workers to come to Canada before the war to settle lands, build railways and to labour in mines. On April 25, 1917, the same paper noted that “over 600 aliens registered here” for the Timmins area and added “The Dominion officers made it quite plain to the aliens last week that now they must conduct themselves very carefully if they wished to avoid heavy penalties and internment. They were warned not to get together in large crowds nor to hold meetings, nor to discuss the war.”
Despite the discriminatory treatment, during the period between the world wars another 70,000 Ukrainians came to Canada, especially to settle on the prairies because they were of peasant or farming background, though quite a number worked as labourers in the mines of Northeastern Ontario. During the Spanish Civil War, many of the Canadians who joined the MacKenzie-Papineau battalion to fight on behalf of democracy were left-wing Ukrainians.
Immediately after the Second World War, another 50,000 Ukrainians came to escape the Soviet control over Eastern Europe, or in some cases because they had collaborated with the occupying Germans during the war (including the grandfather of our present deputy prime minister who edited a pro-Nazi journal). This group came more from an urban background and many settled in Canadian cities. Similar to other immigrant groups these generations of Ukrainians contributed much to the building of physical Canada, at first as farmers and labourers, later as professionals, for instance in architecture.
After the Second World War, my refugee German family lived in Alberta. The ethnic pecking order and stereotyping was known even to us schoolchildren: Indigenous at the bottom (graffiti in a toilet at Hobbema, Alberta: “please flush toilets, Indians will eat anything”), next came Ukrainians (bohunks, dirty), then Germans (Krauts and square heads) and Italians (wops). Despite the stereotyping, in the town where we lived these ethnic groups were all present, related well with one another and witnessed much intermingling, especially through schooling.
In Sudbury, the situation was probably similar, although here the Ukrainians were divided by ideology for much of the 20th century, namely socialist versus conservative. They even had separate so-called progressive and national halls for dances, choirs, sports and community activities.
Those in the national federation emphasized the distinctiveness of Ukrainian culture (stereotype of coloured eggs, costumes, dances), promoted anti-Soviet outlooks and proclaimed that Ukraine had been and was a separate nation and independent country.
The progressives, too, fostered an appreciation of Ukrainian culture (more eggs, embroidery, dances, choirs, poetry), but generally accepted the country being within the Soviet Union of states dominated by Russia. By the time the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, the progressives were having to sell their hall, and without demographic reinforcement their organizations disintegrated. The national group, though also declining in numbers, was revitalized and mentally continued to live in the Cold War after Ukraine became independent.
Like Russia, in the West until recently, Ukraine was generally portrayed as backward, corrupt and undemocratic. According to the American institute that ranks world corruption, Transparency.org, as recently as 2019, Ukraine was considered nearly as corrupt as Russia with similar oligarchs and political manipulations. Even a Ukrainian-American poet, Ilya Kaminsky from Odessa, who has been in the U.S. for eight years, wrote this about his home country when the present conflict started: “But alas Ukraine is not a perfect country. There is corruption and a lot of crime, especially among political figures. There are oligarchs. Although the Ukrainian president is Jewish, there is still anti-Semitism in daily life (which is why my family left).”
Certainly the great powers have repeatedly meddled in Ukrainian affairs, partly for security reasons. The context must be remembered: the country has been linguistically and ethnically divided, which is why many of the Russian speakers of the two regions in the southeast sought alignment with Russia (even before Putin).
I will avoid the present situation except to note the speed by which a relatively unknown and often much-looked-down-upon place and people have gained recognition and appreciation. Further, I oppose this war, as I did Vietnam (three million killed) and Iraq (100,000 killed) and Libya, in all of which civilians suffered the most due to bombing.
In those previous conflicts, the world did not show enough support for the attacked people, with too much focus on their leaders. As an optimist, I continue to hope that the same standards will be applied equally to all aggressors.
To be clear: Bush and Blair should share a cell with Putin. Perhaps the most hopeful sign in the present conflict is that masses of unarmed people in Ukraine have stood up to military force and two million in Russia have signed statements or petitions calling for an end to the war, including 4,000 at the University of Moscow. Here’s hoping they succeed. As a former refugee, my donations go to the International Red Cross for humanitarian aid.
Dr. Dieter K. Buse is Professor Emeritus, History, Laurentian University. He has published many studies on modern European history and more recently on our region, including "Come on Over: Northeastern Ontario" (co-authored with Graeme S. Mount; prize for best non-fiction study on northern Ontario, 2012)) and the two-volume work, "Untold: Northeastern Ontario’s Military Past vol. 1: 1662-World War I" and "Vol. 2: World War II-Peacekeeping" (available from Latitude 46, Sudbury; Ontario Historical Society award as best regional study in past three years, 2020). Buse, as an educator, researches and writes as his social contribution to better understand the present in historical context.
