THE STORY OF UKRAINIAN SETTLEMENT IN CANADA
Canada has provided a haven to immigrants from every corner of the globe, all of whom have come seeking a better life and a chance to realize their full potential in a peaceful democracy governed by the rule of law. Of course, for thousands of years Canada has been home to diverse Native communities, who have had to struggle to preserve their language, culture, and ancestral rights alongside those who have settled Canada since the arrival of the first colonists from abroad. Although Canada’s treatment of its aboriginal inhabitants has frequently been shameful and hypocritical, there can be no doubt that our First Nations are essential partners in the creation of our multicultural society, and are at the forefront of our united efforts to build a truly inclusive country based on mutual respect and opportunities for all.
Immigrants from Ukraine have contributed greatly to the richness of the Canadian mosaic, coming to Canada in four major waves over a span of 125 years, from the last decade of the 19th century to the present day. Despite physical hardships, economic challenges and often painful discrimination, they have not only earned the privilege of Canadian citizenship, but have become staunch patriots and proud ambassadors of Canadian values both in their ancestral homeland and around the world.
Today, some 1.2 million Canadians claim to have varying degrees of ethnic Ukrainian ancestry, some of them newcomers, others direct descendants of immigrant forbears, and a growing percentage boasting partial Ukrainian heritage on one or both sides of their family. If one adds to this number non-ethnic Ukrainians who came to Canada over the same period from Ukrainian lands — such as Jews or German-speaking farmers from Tsarist or Austro-Hungarian Ukraine, along with Mennonites and Swedish colonists from the southern steppes as well as Poles and Romanians from towns and villages in Ukraine’s borderland regions — one can begin to appreciate the huge impact that settlers with Ukrainian roots have had on the development of Canada over a major part of our history since Confederation.
The mass movement of Ukrainians to Canada started in the 1890s, when the Canadian government began actively encouraging large-scale immigration from Central, Southern, and Eastern Europe. Fearing that the western territories of the young Canadian Dominion might once again rebel against Ottawa’s authority, as they did under Louis Riel, or pass into American hands if left sparsely populated, the Canadian state moved to settle the prairie region with agriculturalists capable of bringing the fertile lands under cultivation.
The catalysts to Ukrainian migration were two farmers from the village of Nebyliv, Galicia — Ivan Pylypiw and Wasyl Eleniak, who visited Canada in 1891 to investigate accounts of “free land” in the Western plains. Their positive reports, along with Canadian government advertising, soon convinced many of their fellow Ukrainians to flee the poverty of Austria-Hungary for a fresh start in the New World. By the time the flow of Ukrainian immigration was interrupted in 1914 due to the outbreak of war in Europe, approximately 170,000 land-hungry peasants—overwhelmingly from the Habsburg territories of Galicia and Bukovyna, though a small number also came from Russian-dominated Tsarist Ukraine — had made the trans-Atlantic crossing to Canadian shores.
The incoming farmers were primarily settled in a belt that extended from southwest and central Manitoba through central Saskatchewan into east central Alberta, where the Canadian government was offering 160-acre (65 hectare) homesteads for a ten dollar registration fee. Although much of the available land was of marginal quality and required extensive clearing before crops could be planted, the Ukrainian newcomers persisted and prevailed, successfully establishing a series of large, ethnically homogeneous rural communities, known as “bloc settlements”. Other Ukrainian immigrants, many of them single males, found work in cities or in the resource industries of the frontier, where farmers also frequently sought seasonal employment to earn cash for the purchase of livestock, machinery and supplies.
Those in this first wave of immigration faced many hardships in setting down roots in Canada, enduring back-breaking toil to carve farms out of wilderness, and often suffering injuries or death in such dangerous occupations as mining, lumbering, road- and railway-construction. At the same time, they were frequently the target of both blatant and subtle prejudice, berated by those who feared that Canada’s British character was being threatened and diluted by immigrants regarded as coming from an “inferior” race. This antiforeigner sentiment reached a peak during the First World War, when some 5,000 Ukrainians were among more than 8,000 prisoners who were incarcerated as “enemy aliens” in camps from Nova Scotia to British Columbia. In addition, Ukrainians from Austria-Hungary were at the same time prohibited from enlisting in the Canadian Armed forces because their loyalty was deemed suspect, and they were also subjected to regular monitoring by the police and harassment by Canadian officials. As a result, some resolved to Anglicize their names and renounce their Ukrainian origins in the hope of avoiding discrimination and outright persecution on the basis of their ethnicity.
Nevertheless, the hardy “pioneers” who played a key role in opening the Canadian West, persevered and eventually prospered, laying a firm foundation for their countrymen who followed in subsequent waves of immigration. Building schools for their children and founding churches, educational and cultural societies, as well as an array of political and self-help associations, Ukrainians created a network of vibrant institutions and halls that extended from Cape Breton in the east to Vancouver Island.
The First World War put an abrupt halt to the settlement of East Europeans in Canada, which finally resumed in 1924 on a much more modest scale from a dramatically changed Ukraine, which in the wake of bitter fighting had been divided and occupied by authoritarian Soviet, Polish and Romanian regimes. Beginning as a trickle, the influx of a second wave of Ukrainians, once again chiefly from western areas, peaked in 1929, before steadily declining when the Great Depression severely restricted Canada’s intake of newcomers. In this second wave were scarred survivors of the wars and revolution that had rocked Ukrainian lands for seven years, many of them veterans of the failed struggle to form an independent Ukrainian state after the collapse of the Habsburg and Tsarist empires. By the time that another world war had erupted in Europe at the end of the 1930s, 68,000 Ukrainians had made Canada their home, simultaneously building on and revitalizing the structures that had been founded by the pioneers, while launching new organizations to serve their specific needs and goals. In the meantime, Ukrainians had begun to make gradual inroads into the Canadian mainstream, thanks to their active and growing involvement in politics, business, the professions, and a host of other careers and vocations. They slowly began to overcome their negative stereotype as simple peasants in sheepskin coats, even if they were not fully accepted as equals by many of their fellow Canadians.
During the interwar years Ukrainian Canadians initially benefited from the economic boom of the roaring twenties, then suffered the tremendous setbacks that accompanied the world-wide Depression. The latter undermined the confidence of many in democracy as well as capitalism, and prompted some to look sympathetically, if naively, to the radical alternatives offered by Communism and Fascism. Ukrainians were also confronted with challenging and horrific events that unfolded in their homeland. Thus, they continued to be persecuted in former Austro-Hungarian territories, where under the Treaty of Versailles they had been promised cultural rights and significant political autonomy, only to be betrayed and subjected to arbitrary justice and physical abuse. However, they were especially oppressed in Soviet Ukraine, where Stalin unleashed a ruthless campaign to fully subjugate and then Russify Ukrainian lands under Moscow’s control, “liquidating” anyone who sought to defend the distinctiveness of the Ukrainian language, culture and identity.
Millions of Ukrainians died in a famine artificially created by the Kremlin in 1932-33, and millions more fell victim to wide-ranging purges that included mass deportations to the Gulag and summary executions of tens of thousands of Ukrainians. While the former included large numbers of women, children and the elderly, the latter took the lives of gifted intellectuals, artists, and spiritual leaders, who were accused of plotting to overthrow Soviet rule. Ukrainian Canadians loudly protested these genocidal policies, but their pleas mostly fell on deaf ears, and they had to watch helplessly as the flower of the Ukrainian nation was nearly destroyed. Then, with the rise of the fascist movement in Europe, especially the Nazis in Germany, Ukrainians were caught in a vice between two totalitarian dictatorships, both cynically promising to “liberate” Ukraine, one from poverty and social injustice, and the other from Russian Communist tyranny. The conflicting messages further polarized parts of the community, with some Ukrainian nationalists looking to Germany for salvation, whereas Ukrainian Communists stubbornly defended the Soviet Union and denied Stalin’s atrocities. The leaders of these radical wings of the community were watched closely by the RCMP, and both were caught off guard by the outbreak of the war, first when Stalin entered into an almost two-year alliance with Hitler that resulted in the invasion of Poland and Western Europe, and then when Hitler imposed a cruel, despotic and racist administration after militarily conquering Ukrainian lands. Mindful of the internment of “enemy aliens” in the Great War, it is not surprising that the response of Ukrainians in Canada was to enlist in the Canadian Armed Forces in disproportionately large numbers and to throw their full support behind the home front. Coming from all parts of the community and serving with distinction in every branch of the military, the enthusiastic participation of Ukrainian Canadians in the war effort had the effect of winning them the respect of many of their neighbours, even if it failed to entirely eliminate all of the prejudices towards them as “foreigners.”
Following the defeat of the Axis Powers in 1945 and the redrawing of borders throughout Eastern Europe, millions of Ukrainian refugees were left precariously stranded in central Europe, where they became a bone of contention between Stalin and the Western Allies. The former insisted that all Ukrainians be repatriated to the Soviet Union, where a large number were immediately sentenced to lengthy terms in Siberia, along with Red Army prisoners of war who were “lucky” enough to survive their incarceration in German concentration camps. However, with the help of Ukrainians already established abroad, including the large Ukrainian Canadian community, 35,000 Ukrainian “Displaced Persons” were eventually allowed to move to Canada between 1947 and 1953, comprising the third major wave of immigration.
Having endured both Soviet and Nazi terror, and the incredible suffering wrought by the war—which again failed to bring freedom to Ukraine while killing at least 1 in 6 of its inhabitants—this battered but unbroken generation of Ukrainian patriots quickly threw themselves into Ukrainian community life, injecting new energy and new ideas into Ukrainian Canadian society. Often well-educated and thoroughly European in their outlook, the “DPs,” as they were sometimes disparagingly referred to, simultaneously animated and contributed to the further development and increasing sophistication of organized Ukrainian life. Although much smaller than previous waves, the postwar refugees had a huge impact not only due to their fierce commitment to the Ukrainian cause, but because
they overwhelmingly settled in large urban centres, even if upon arrival they were initially required to work in the forestry industry, mines, or on farms.
Spurred in part by the continuing repression of their fellow Ukrainians by the Soviet government in the post-Stalin-era, Ukrainians in Canada worked hard to educate the world about the true nature of Communist regime, and to support the dissident movement that emerged in opposition to it. They also devoted great energy to preserving the Ukrainian language and culture in Canada and to resisting the effects of assimilation, in part by promoting Ukrainian scholarship as a means of countering Russian propaganda. Thanks to the combined efforts of the “new” and “old Canadians” who cherished their Ukrainian heritage, the Ukrainian community played a leading role in spearheading the campaign to have Canada adopt a policy of multiculturalism, which would recognize the value in keeping alive the languages and customs brought to Canada by all immigrants regardless of race or creed.
When in the late 1980s the Soviet Union began to founder due to its inefficient economy, the ideological bankruptcy of its Communist dictatorship, and its inability keep pace with the progress of Western societies, Ukrainian Canadians quickly mobilized behind rapidly growing popular movements to wrest Ukraine free from Moscow’s orbit. And when the Iron Curtain started to crumble, Ukrainian Canadians redoubled their efforts in support of those working toward the peaceful secession of Ukraine from the Soviet Union. With a mixture of joy, pride, and relief that bloodshed had been avoided, Ukrainians Canadians welcomed Ukraine’s 1991 declaration and resounding vote for independence, and then dedicated themselves to the difficult task of helping to rebuild the country after decades of economic mismanagement and stifling repression.
Beginning in the late 1980s with a small influx of Ukrainians defecting from Poland, followed by others escaping the instability in Yugoslavia, a new wave of Ukrainian immigrants had already started coming to Canada before the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. However, with Ukrainian independence it became possible to repatriate long-divided families and for sponsored and qualified Ukrainians to follow in the footsteps of those who had come before them, opening Canada’s door to another fresh groundswell of migrants with the dream of becoming Canadians. This time, the newcomers immigrated from every province of Ukraine, bringing with them their skills, their optimism, and their determination to succeed and join in the process of taking Canada through the 21st century. Although not characterized by large numbers on an annual basis, the cumulative effect of Ukrainian immigration to Canada since independence has been considerable and is still growing, so that this latest wave has already outstripped that of the Displaced Person’s migration and is now believed to have topped 50,000.
Sadly, Ukraine’s right to an independent existence is again being threatened by Moscow’s attempts to reconstitute the Russian empire, long known as an autocratic and chauvinistic “prison-house” of nations. This has compelled Ukrainian Canadians to rally in aid of their ancestral homeland, which is not only physically under attack but is being deliberately targeted by blatantly false propaganda. The latter is intended to destabilize Ukraine from within, and to undermine international condemnation for Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and its undeclared war in southeastern Ukraine. Fortunately, Canada has been a pillar of support for independent Ukraine and its on-going efforts to overcome both its totalitarian legacy and the violations of its territorial integrity, for which Ukrainian Canadians are profoundly grateful.
Today, Ukrainian Canadians from every wave of immigration are engaged and committed citizens of Canada. They can be found living in every province and territory of the country, and in virtually every walk of life, some of them famous and prominent in their field of endeavour, others quietly raising families and doing their best to instill their children with values that define Canadian citizenship. Proud of their Ukrainian heritage, they are also passionate Canadians, who treasure the opportunities that Canada has provided them with and are keen to take part in building Canada’s future as one of the most envied countries in the world. Jars Balan is with the Kule Ukrainian Canadian Studies Centre, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta.