At first, Ottawa’s were calming. People were told that if they went about their business and caused no trouble they would be left alone, at peace.
Soon after, The War Measures Act was enacted. Tens of thousands of immigrants, lured earlier to the Dominion with promises of free land and freedom, found themselves suddenly branded “enemy aliens,” subject to arrest and other state-sanctioned indignities, not because of anything they had done wrong, but only because of who they were, where they had come from.
Under armed guard, Ukrainians and other Europeans were caged behind Canadian barbed wire in 24 internment camps, forced to do heavy labour for the profit of their jailers. In some cases, women and children were sent away, too — to Spirit Lake in Quebec’s Abitibi region and to Vernon, B.C.
The first survivor I met, in 1978, was Nick Sakaliuk. In 1912, he had left Bukovyna, a western Ukrainian region then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, not wanting to soldier in the emperor’s army. When the First World War broke out, he was working at the Canadian Car and Foundry Company. Fired by a “patriotic” boss, Nick became destitute.
Searching for work, he tried leaving for the United States, a neutral power. Arrested, he was jailed at Montreal’s federal immigration building, next sent to Kingston’s Fort Henry, this country’s first permanent internment camp. He arrived there Oct. 17, 1914. Later relocated to the Petawawa camp, and then to Kapuskasing’s, this “enemy alien” was finally paroled, ironically, for work in a munitions factory. No teacher or professor ever spoke to me about Canada’s first national internment operations. It was this plain-hearted man who told me about what he and others had endured.
Mary Manko Haskett, another victim, recounted her story in 1988. She was a Montreal-born British subject, six years old when imprisoned with her family at Spirit Lake. Her younger sister, Nellie, 2-1/2, perished there. It was Mary who ennobled the Ukrainian-Canadian redress campaign by insisting it must be “about memory, not money.” Mary wanted no compensation and never asked for any apology. All she wanted was for Canadians to remember.
At first, Ottawa’s men tried to tell us the internment operations never happened. When that didn’t work, they instructed us to forget this past injustice and move on. We often wondered why others raising historical grievances were never offered a similar prescription — not then, nor since. But we did not falter. We stayed true to Mary’s charge. In 2005, thanks to Inky Mark, a Chinese-Canadian MP whose family members paid the Head Tax, we secured passage of Bill C-331, The Internment of Persons of Ukrainian Origin Recognition Act. That led to the creation of the Endowment Council of the Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund, an inclusive body charged with hallowing the memory of all of the First World War’s “enemy aliens” through commemorative and educational initiatives. I take great satisfaction in recalling how two men working together, one of Chinese and the other of Ukrainian heritage, saw justice done despite all the naysayers and thwarters. The country Inky and I share is one we are proud to be citizens of.
This Friday, 100 years after passage of The War Measures Act — the same act invoked in the Second World War against our fellow Japanese-, Italian- and German-Canadians, and against some Québécois in the October Crisis of 1970 — more than 100 plaques will be unveiled at 11 a.m. local time in more than 60 cities, starting in Amherst, N.S., then flowing west to Nanaimo, B.C., a first in Canadian history. Seven will be in Edmonton, another 10 at other Alberta locations. We call this Project CTO (Ukrainian for 100), a national wave of remembrance, beginning and ending at internment camp sites, sweeping from coast to coast where a wave of repression once passed. CTO plaques, inscribed with “Recalling Canada’s first national internment operations, 1914-1920,” fulfil Mary’s dream.
That will do, because words do matter. I am glad I listened.
Lubomyr Luciuk, a professor of political geography at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, was Project CTO lead.