Eighth internment memorial unveiled in Manitoba (11/30/97)

Eighth internment memorial unveiled in Manitoba

by Christopher Guly

OTTAWA - After some wrangling over the location of the memorial, the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association unveiled its eighth plaque on November 27 on the grounds of City Hall in Brandon, Manitoba, where about 800 Ukrainian Canadians were interned starting that day 83 years ago until July 29, 1916.

Originally, the trilingual marker (Ukrainian, English and French) was supposed to be placed on property belonging to the Department of National Defense, said Brandon City Councilor Jim Reid. "There were a number of reasons for DND being reluctant," said Mr. Reid in a telephone interview from his office in Brandon. "Partly it's because it was not just a federal matter at the time and the property that federal government owns is not the property that was the location of the camp."

Since the original holding site, the Brandon Agricultural Exhibition Building, has become a Safeway supermarket, the city decided to offer space at its own municipal complex a half-block away. Though Mr. Reid says he never knew anything about the camp's existence while he was growing up in Brandon, he says the plaque is an "important thing for Canada."

The plaque was installed on a Memorial Wall located at the Brandon City Hall by the UCCLA, working with the city of Brandon and the Ukrainian Canadian community of Manitoba. A grant in aid of the project was provided by the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko.

While Canada's secretary of state for multiculturalism, Dr. Hedy Fry, has not wavered in opposing the funding of individual memorials at the 26 internment camp sites, the UCCLA has financed its own plaques through public donations.

In addition to the Brandon memorial, there are two plaques in Ontario (Fort Henry, near Kingston, and Kapuskasing), two in British Columbia (Vernon and Nanaimo) and three in Alberta (Jasper National Park and two in Banff National Park at the Castle Mountain and Cave and Basin sites).

Unlike the camps in Jasper, Banff and Kapuskasing, the one in Brandon was never a work site. But like northwestern Ontario's Kapuskasing site - the largest of them all, where 1,200 prisoners rioted and several were wounded in 1916 - the Ukrainian Canadians interned in Brandon saw their share of violence.

In June, 1915, 18-year-old Andrew Grapko was among 17 men who tried to escape the Brandon camp. While trying to scramble out of a window, Mr. Grapko was shot to death, becoming one of six people across the country killed for similar reasons.

Commenting on the unveiling in Brandon, the UCCLA's director of special projects, Borys Sydoruk, said: "We have been very fortunate to have enjoyed the support of both the Department of National Defense and the city of Brandon in our efforts to commemorate this unhappy episode in Canadian history. By placing a plaque in Brandon we hope to remind all Canadians of the tragedy that befell these Ukrainians and other Europeans during the first world war, hopefully to make sure that nothing similar ever happens to any other Canadian ethnic, religious or racial minority.

"By unveiling our plaque on the very same date on which the first internees were brought to Brandon we will also be reminding all those present of just how difficult an experience this was for these unfortunate men. Although they were completely innocent of any wrongdoing, they became the victims of a state that defined them, unjustly, as 'enemy aliens' and forced them to abandon their families, friends and communities in the dead of winter to be interned at Brandon."

In addition to Brandon, Winnipeg was the other Manitoba site for internment operations. The UCCLA plans to establish a similar memorial in the provincial capital city.

Starting with the first camp in Montreal in 1914, some 5,000 Ukrainian Canadians were among the 5,441 civilians (plus 3,138 people classified prisoners of war) interned across the country. Two internees, Mary Manko Haskett and Stefa Mielniczuk who were held at the Spirit Lake facility in Quebec, are the only known remaining survivors.

About 80,000 out of a population of 171,000 Ukrainian Canadians were also branded "enemy aliens," losing their voting rights and being to ordered to regularly check in with local authorities during World War I. In early October, Inky Mark, the Reform Party member of Parliament for the southwestern federal riding of Dauphin-Swan River (near Brandon) called on the federal government to support the internment redress awareness efforts of such groups as the UCCLA.

So far, Ottawa hasn't replied.

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