CANADA COURIER: The father of Canadian multiculturalism (06/16/96)

CANADA COURIER

by Christopher Guly

The father of Canadian multiculturalism

After last October's Quebec referendum and a recent visit by the crew of "Good Morning America" to Canada - which included interviews with Prime Minister Jean Chretien and Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard on the issue of Canadian unity-Quebec sovereignty - most of the world knows Canada remains a place divided. It is a country still struggling with two solitudes.

Many philosophers have come and gone urging an end to the cultural acrimony. One man, who died on July 6, 1986, at the age of 73, spent his life promoting Canadian unity.

In 1963, Progressive Conservative Sen. Paul Yuzyk's idea centered around a then-unfamiliar concept: multiculturalism. Among the first Ukrainian Canadians appointed to Canada's upper house of Parliament, Sen. Yuzyk was living proof the concept worked.

Within the community, his influence is legendary. Sen. Yuzyk helped organize the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) and the Ukrainian Catholic Brotherhood. He also chronicled "Ukrainian Canadian history in numerous books, including "Ukrainian Canadians: Their Place and Role in Canadian Life."

Outside the community, the former University of Ottawa history professor's role, in the words of his one-time colleague Sen. Rheal Belisle, was to serve as a "cultural witness who helped enormously to promote [Canadian] multiculturalism."

Thanks to former Tory Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, Dr. Yuzyk obtained the necessary forum - the Senate - to call national attention to the fact Canada was more than just British and French.

Eight years after his maiden speech as a senator, in which he introduced the concept of multiculturalism, Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau made it official policy. Canada was 104 years old; Senator Yuzyk, 58. Both had lived through turbulence that suggested a need for ethnic tolerance and harmony.

In the Saskatchewan-born senator's case, finding a job as a Ukrainian Canadian schoolteacher in 1933 wasn't easy. He applied for 77 jobs and was turned down for all of them. One of the reasons: the 20-year-old Ukrainian Canadian might "contaminate" the children. Eventually, Dr. Yuzyk landed a job teaching in Hafford, a rural Saskatchewan community heavily populated by Ukrainian Canadians.

"He was horribly chastised by his family for wanting to speak Ukrainian," says Sen. Yuzyk's daughter, Vicki Karpiak, 49. Two of his brothers anglicized their family name; his sister, Mary, used her husband's name, Brown.

Of his early days in Saskatchewan, Senator Yuzyk later recalled, "If they called me a foreigner when I had been born in Canada, it meant Canada needed some changing."

Sen. Yuzyk set out to do that first through academe - obtaining bachelor's degrees in mathematics and history, a master's degree in history, and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis in 1958. His thesis: the social history of Ukrainian Manitobans.

Before arriving at the University of Ottawa, Dr. Yuzyk spent seven years teaching Slavic studies and history at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.

While writing about it and teaching it, Dr. Yuzyk was given a chance to influence the future of Canadian ethnicity when Dr. Diefenbaker sent him to the Senate.

The timing was right. That year, 1963, the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism was looking at ways to improve relations between Anglophones and Francophones to fully entrench them in Canadian society. Sen. Yuzyk reminded the commissioners the Canada of the 1960s was more a mosaic of people than an envelope composed of two halves.

Within a year, Ottawa formed the Canadian Folk Arts Council. But beyond celebrating decorated Easter eggs and twirling Kozaks on town hall stages, the idea of multiculturalism remained toothless.

Undaunted, the Ukrainian Canadian senator convened a Thinkers' Conference on Cultural Rights in Toronto in late 1968. Representatives of 20 different Canadian ethnic groups attended and created the framework for a multicultural policy for the country. The blueprint was sent to the prime minister and the 10 provincial premiers.

It took three years, but on October 9, 1971 - at a triennial meeting of the UCC in Winnipeg - Mr. Trudeau said multiculturalism was officially a Canadian reality.

However, 25 years later, that reality is threatened with becoming a memory.

In a recent report, the Canadian Ethnocultural Council (CEC) - headed by Ukrainian World Congress President Dr. Dmytro Cipywnyk - expresses concern the Department of Canadian Heritage's review of its multiculturalism program "is occurring at a time when the backlash against multiculturalism has become very political, threatening Canada's democratic laws and humanitarian values and fostering the belief that multiculturalism is divisive."

The report is titled, "The 42 Percent Solution: Making Equality a Reality." The number 42 is significant: a 1991 census identified 42 percent of Canadians as claiming origins other than French or British.

There is also some irony in the document. Among the CEC's many recommendations for multicultural integration in Canadian society, they suggest "school boards must increase the hiring of ethnic minorities in management and teaching positions." Sixty-three years ago, a young Paul Yuzyk, the future father of multiculturalism might have had an easier time.

| Home Page |