Ukrainians rose beyond eternal victimhood

Despite internment camps, reconciliation was achieved

Victimhood seems well on its way to becoming a national pastime in this country.

And, not content with the alleged sins of today’s too-easily adjudged villains, proponents of this cult eagerly turn to the pages of history to discover long dead Canucks who can be tarred and feathered for transgressions committed in those bygone years.

The latest figure for this oh-so-righteous anger is Sir John A. Macdonald, who, as Canada’s first prime minister, is now castigated as a racist and bigot because of views, common in his time, about Indigenous peoples.

So when you stumble across a group who indeed suffered from quite odious treatment through no fault of their own, yet have not only risen above the blame game but have also become an intrinsic part of this country’s present and future, the effect is almost cathartic.

Not that the Ukrainian community of Canada didn’t request and finally receive an apology from the federal government for the dreadful treatment their ancestors received a century ago. No one could begrudge them that.

At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 more than 8,500 people who considered themselves regular Canadians were rounded up and thrown into internment camps. Ukrainians, who had been welcomed earlier as hardy settlers who could help open up the West, made up the bulk of these prisoners.

They were locked up under the War Measures Act because the government of the day, fearing sabotage, listed them as being enemy aliens — much of Ukraine then being part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and therefore allied to Germany when that dreadful conflict began.

Two-dozen internment camps were opened and prisoners used as slave labour — much of the early infrastructure of Banff National Park was built by these poor souls who were housed at a camp near Tunnel Mountain.

The last camp didn’t close until 1920 and by then more than 100 people had died, either through illness or being shot while trying to escape. It was not, to put it mildly, one of Canada’s proudest moments.

So, 10 years ago the Harper government set up a $10-million First World War Internment Recognition Fund to support projects commemorating the experience of those unfortunate Canadians.

A few years afterwards, Jason Kenney, then federal multiculturalism minister, was in Banff to open just such an exhibit, close to where the original internment camp had stood.

“These sons and daughters of Europe, proud Canadians all, were arrested, detained and transported to one of 24 internment camps like this,” said Kenney at the time.

“They were put to work in what today would only be described as slave labour,” he added. “In unthinkable conditions, without contact with their families, with their communications being monitored, they were treated quite literally as enemy aliens.”

But while the apology and recognition were undoubtedly important, the real eye-opener was the subsequent reaction of Lubomyr Luciuk from the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

“Canadians today should not be apologizing for something your grandfather did to my grandfather. Acknowledge it, perhaps provide some kind of symbolic redress, but the most important thing really is memory.”

Therein lies the rub. Bad things happen to all sorts of folk down the long stretch of history and while it should not be forgotten it should also be placed in the context of the past and not be allowed to poison the present and thereby forever put the future on hold.

Today there are an estimated 1,359,655 people in our country of full or partial Ukrainian origin, making Canada third only to Ukraine and Russia in numbers. Yet a century ago this country locked up and used their ancestors as slaves.

But if Ukrainians had bitten deep into that bitter fruit of eternal victimhood, we may never have heard of Wayne Gretzky, William Shatner, Ed Stelmach, Joe Shuster, Mike Bossy, Randy Bachman, William Hawrelak, Roberta Bondar or William Kurelek: all famous Canadians and every one with some measure of Ukrainian lineage. Now that is real reconciliation.