Turning the pages back... May 16, 1895 (05/16/99)

Turning the pages back...

May 16, 1895

Part paternalistic overseer, part establishment mentor, Watson Kirkconnell played an important role in Ukrainian Canadian history. Born on May 16, 1895, in Port Hope, Ontario (about 60 miles east of Toronto), he studied English and classics at Queen's University in 1913-1916.

After a brief stint on the staff at the Royal Military College, he was appointed captain in the Department of Internment Operations, serving at the Fort Henry (1916) and Kapuskasing (1917-1919) camps. After the war Kirkconnell studied economics at Oxford, then in 1922 accepted a request to return to Canada and teach English at Wesley College in Winnipeg. As he wrote in his memoir, on the boat back from England he met "cultured fugitives from Bolshevik terror in Eastern Europe."

In Winnipeg he became interested in the languages and literatures of the city's minority groups and fascinated by the question of ethnic identity and political allegiance.

In 1935 he edited "Canadian Overtones," the first anthology of "New Canadian" writings in English translation. In 1937, he began a 28-year series of annual reviews of "Publications in Other Languages" for the University of Toronto Quarterly, of which Ukrainian writings were a major part.

In 1939 Kirkconnell compiled a study of political attitudes of various European nationalities, "Canada, Europe and Hitler" (1939), in which he provided a sketch of recent Ukrainian history and concluded that Ukrainian nationalists were likely to be hostile to the Nazis.

This work was also a study of allegiance to Canada, of which Kirkconnell found strong evidence among Ukrainians. It also brought to the fore his strong distaste for Communists in general and the Ukrainian Labor-Farmer Temple Association (later the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians) in particular.

In 1940 Kirkconnell joined the faculty at McMaster University in Hamilton, but was also often in Ottawa, advising the government on how to shore up the country's war effort among Canada's minorities. At the request of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, he wrote "The Ukrainian Canadians and the War" (1940), the first of many pamphlets on this theme.

Already in 1939 Kirkconnell helped set up the Department of National War Services and served on advisory committee of its Nationalities Branch.

Kirkconnell also urged Ukrainian Canadian activists to create a united non-Communist organization in support of the war effort. In November 1940, such an organization was formed: the Ukrainian Canadian Committee. He delivered an address at the UCC's first congress in June 1943 in Winnipeg, in which he attacked both fascism and communism. That year, he founded the Humanities Research Council and began a four-year stint as its director.

During the war Kirkconnell was an earnest anti-Soviet despite the USSR's status as an ally, and after the war he continued to denounce Soviet repressions of Poland, the Baltics, Hungary and Ukraine. In 1946 he addressed a UCC-organized rally at Toronto's Massey Hall, in which he roundly denounced Stalin's regime.

In 1948 Kirkconnell was appointed president of Acadia University, where he remained for the rest of his career. The following year he was made a full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society and granted an honorary doctorate in Ukrainian philology by the Ukrainian Free University.

Kirkconnell worked together with Prof. Constantine Andrusyshen to produce two volumes of Ukrainian poetry in translation: "The Ukrainian Poets, 1189-1962" (1963) and "The Poetical Works of Taras Shevchenko" (1964).

Watson Kirkconnell died in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, on February 26, 1977.

Sources: Watson Kirkconnell, "A Slice of Canada," (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967); Watson Kirkconnell, "Canada, Europe and Hitler," (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1939); Thomas Prymak, "Maple Leaf and Trident " (Toronto: Multicultural History Society of Ontario, 1988); "Kirkconnell, Watson," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. 2 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988).

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