2000: THE YEAR IN REVIEW: Ukrainians in Canada: making their voices heard (01/07/01)

2000: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Ukrainians in Canada: making their voices heard

The Ukrainian Canadian community's year began with the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCCLA) releasing "Roll Call: Lest We Forget," a booklet listing thousands of Ukrainian and other European internees imprisoned during Canada's first national internment operations of 1914-1920. The roster, compiled by UCCLA Research Director Lubomyr Luciuk, includes the names of over 5,000 men, women and children who were interned in 24 Canadian concentration camps during the period of World War I.

Meanwhile, the UCCLA revealed that Walter Halchuk, president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) Ontario Provincial Council, received hate mail at his home on February 1 - an apparent response to a letter he wrote to The Toronto Star denouncing the vandals who had defaced the Ukrainian Cultural Center in Toronto last year. Mr. Halchuk filed an official complaint with police in Sudbury, where he lives, as well as with the Hate Crimes Unit of the Metropolitan Toronto Police. Mr. Halchuk said the "poison pen letter" included the line, "you sniveling coward: typically Ukrainian."

On a more positive note, the Royal Canadian Mint announced on February 4 that John Jaciw, a Ukrainian Canadian artist, won its "Create a 'CentSation!'" 25-cent-coin-design contest. Mr. Jaciw's entry was one of 12 chosen by the mint for each month of the year. Based in Windsor, Ontario, Mr. Jaciw called his coin "Ingenuity" and portrayed an ideal environment of the future incorporating the themes of modern cities, public transportation, farmlands and space exploration.

Later in the month, the Ukrainian Canadian Students' Union (SUSK) held its 48th annual congress in Hamilton on February 24-27. Attracting 21 delegates from Canada and the United States, the three-day event held at McMaster University featured UCC President Eugene Czolij as keynote speaker. Attendees agreed that Edmonton would be the site of next year's event.

In late April, The Weekly reported that the UCC had written to Canadian Justice Minister Anne McLellan and Citizenship and Immigration Minister Elinor Caplan seeking clarification of the government's policy on alleged war criminals. The UCC letter was prompted by the introduction of Bill C-19 in the House of Commons.

Also known as the Crimes Against Humanity Act, the bill, according to the UCC, would deal with alleged war criminals through Canada's justice system rather than by taking the denaturalization and deportation route. If so, the UCC was pleased, but it sought clarity on a provision contained in the legislation that "would treat crimes alleged to have been committed in Canada differently from those alleged to have been committed outside Canada," according to UCC President Czolij.

Meanwhile, in Kyiv, Canada's Ambassador to Ukraine Derek Fraser paid an April 14 visit to the warehouse where humanitarian goods are distributed to Ukrainian orphanages. One of the initiative's organizers, the Children of Chornobyl Canadian Fund's Help Us Help the Children project, later sent volunteers to deliver medicine, toys, boots and shoes to some of the 150 orphanages throughout Ukraine.

Back in Canada, the UCC's Ottawa Branch welcomed the country's new Ukrainian ambassador, Dr. Yuri Shcherbak, at an April 16 reception.

Also in April, the Saskatoon-based Ukrainian Museum of Canada launched a series of events to mark its 65th anniversary in August 2001. In addition, the museum plans to create a gallery showcasing specialized collections housed there as well as at its five branches in Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver. Canadian comic Luba Goy participated in an April 8 event to help raise money for the initiative.

Over the summer, the UCCLA asked Ukrainian Canadians to nominate Ukrainian survivors of the Holocaust for a September 27 ceremony on Parliament Hill in Ottawa sponsored by the Canadian Society of Yad Vashem. Eventually 15 names were presented, including noted Ukrainian Canadian historian Michael Marunchak of Winnipeg.

And while the UCCLA has had no luck convincing Canada Post Corp. to issue a stamp commemorating the late Ukrainian Canadian war hero Filip Konowal, the association used a new Canada Post program to release its own personalized stamp honoring Cpl. Konowal on July 14.

A month later, a trilingual plaque and sculpture were unveiled in Cpl. Konowal's home village of Kutkiv, Ukraine, on August 21 - 83 years to the day on which the soldier's battlefield heroism as a member of the Canadian Expeditionary Force's 47th Battalion earned him the Victoria Cross in 1917.

Over 1,000 people, including Cpl. Konowal's granddaughter, Hanna, turned out for the ceremony. A delegation from the Canadian Embassy in Kyiv planted a Canadian maple tree at the site, which is now home to the plaque and sculpture made by Lviv sculptor Petro Kulyk.

A commemorative postal envelope was also released in Ukraine, while plans were in the works to issue an official Ukrainian postage stamp honoring Cpl. Konowal. A parallel ceremony commemorating the war hero, who immigrated to Canada in 1913 and died in Ottawa in 1959, was held the same day in Ottawa.

August also found the UCC releasing highlights from its activities during the spring session of the Canadian Parliament. In addition to making recommendations on Bill C-19, the UCC also appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration on March 30.

In its presentation on the bill, also known as the Citizenship of Canada Act, the Winnipeg-based UCC suggested modifications to "ensure naturalized Canadians due process of law in cases of revocation and annulment of citizenship" and to introduce a five-year limit when initiating revocation of citizenship proceedings. The UCC made a similar appeal before the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs on September 26.

On June 8 the UCC appeared before another Commons standing committee, this one on Canadian heritage, concerning a bill that would create an exhibit recognizing crimes against humanity at the Canadian Museum of Civilization across the river from Ottawa in Hull, Quebec.

In its brief, the UCC called for an "all-inclusive" museum that would remember all such crimes and genocidal activities throughout history.

The same day, UCCLA member Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch, author of children's books on Canada's first-world-war-era internment operations and on the Ukrainian famine, appeared before the committee echoing the UCC's position.

Known for her award winning children's book, "Silver Threads" (Penguin, 1996) which recalled the unjust internment of Ukrainians as "enemy aliens" in Canada, Ms. Skrypuch has more recently published a novel for young adults, "The Hunger," (Dundurn, 1999) recalling the Armenian massacres. Forthcoming is another children's book, "Enough" (Fitzhenry & Whiteside), which revolves around the genocidal Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine.

Ms. Skrypuch presented an alternative proposal: the creation of a foundation mandated to encourage research and publication of credible and inclusive information about war crimes and crimes against humanity, whose major purpose would be the development of a "Canadian Book of the Dead."

In Manitoba, Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson addressed a gathering at Dauphin's Selo-Ukraina during the annual Ukrainian National Festival. In her August 4 speech, Madame Clarkson, who is of Chinese descent, referred to the internment operations as "one of the saddest stories in our country's history."

While in Dauphin, the governor general and her husband, philosopher John Ralston Saul, viewed a trilingual plaque unveiled later that day. Though there never was an internment camp in the area, the plaque is meant to recall all Ukrainians and other Europeans interned during the six-year-long operation.

In Quebec, meanwhile, over 300 Canadian Plast members concluded their Zustrich-Jamboree on August 13. Over a two-week period campers participated in obstacle courses, rappelled down walls and attended liturgies celebrated by the Ukrainian Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox eparchs of Toronto.

The Ukrainian Canadian Professional and Business Federation (UCPBF) was getting down to serious business as it prepared for a September 16-17 roundtable in Ottawa on Canadian issues. In advance of a session on Canada's policy toward Ukraine, the UCPBF lobbied the federal government to press for an extension of an International Monetary Fund loan to Ukraine.

During the two-day roundtable, federation President Oksana Bashuk Hepburn presented a grocery list of ideas for action, including the assignment of a tax credit to families that support family members in Ukraine and the establishment of a "world-class policy and study center" on Ukraine in Canada.

She also called on the Canadian International Development Agency to increase its technical-assistance budget to Ukraine "to more favorably reflect the tax base of some 1 million Canadians of Ukrainian descent," or about 1/30th of the national population. And, in light of Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy's retirement from politics, it wouldn't be a bad idea to have his successor hold Ukrainian ancestry, Ms. Bashuk Hepburn added.

Also this fall, the UCC reactivated its Ottawa Office and named longtime community organizer Modest Cmoc as director.

On October 3, the UCC joined the country in mourning the passing of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who addressed the congress's triennial meeting in 1971 where he highlighted his government's recently introduced multiculturalism policy. "Prime Minister Trudeau was a man with a vision," said the UCC's chief, Mr. Czolij. "His commitment to Canada and to developing a tolerant and just society will remain with Canadians," he noted.

Later in the month, the UCPBF put a call out to the community to have a documentary produced to chronicle the contributions of Ukrainians in Canada.

Meanwhile, the UCCLA busily pursued items on its agenda through the autumn.

On September 9, the association unveiled an interpretive panel memorial in British Columbia's Mount Revelstoke National Park at a site where an internment camp operated in 1915-1916.

A month later, the UCCLA unveiled another memorial - its third this year - a trilingual (Ukrainian, English and French) plaque at the Petawawa Militia Camp in Ontario on October 14. The site functioned as an internment camp for so-called "enemy aliens" from 1914 to 1916.

Following Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's late-October call for a November 27 election, the UCCLA turned its attention to him and decided it was time to hold him to a commitment he made in 1993 as leader of the official opposition to help the Ukrainian Canadian community seek redress over the internment issue.

In reply, the Liberal Party of Canada, not the prime minister's office, sent the UCCLA a letter the association considered "non-committal" and which prompted UCCLA Chairman John Gregorovich to call for Canadians "to vote for politicians who keep their promises."

But Mr. Chrétien wasn't the only Liberal politician targeted by the UCCLA. His justice minister, Ms. McLellan, came under fire for her "two-tiered" justice policy. At their annual retreat in Canmore, Alberta, over Canada's November 11 Remembrance Day weekend, UCCLA members accused Minister McLellan of unfairly treating the more than 5 million naturalized Canadian citizens who, when accused of committing a crime, could be deported to their country of birth without the benefit of a trial.

As a result, the UCCLA hoped voters in the attorney general's Edmonton riding would elect another candidate. Though she was narrowly re-elected, the UCCLA vowed to pursue the Liberals on the redress and Canadian citizenship issues.

The association had better luck with other parties and other governments.

Inky Mark, who was re-elected as a Manitoba member of Parliament who holds the chief citizenship and immigration critic's job with the official opposition Canadian Alliance, said he would continue to press the government over the redress issue.

Mr. Mark, who is of Chinese descent, planned to re-introduce a private member's bill seeking "restitution for the confiscation of property and assets" of internees when the Parliament resumes sitting in January 2001.

In the meantime, Alberta's Conservative government said it would include UCCLA internment-related materials in the province's Grade 10 social studies curriculum.

In November, Provincial Premier Ralph Klein also announced that Alberta would mark an annual Holocaust Memorial Day remembering victims of "systemic violence, genocide, persecution, racism and hatred that happened in the past or continue today."

UCCLA First Vice-President Marco Levytsky cautioned in a letter to the premier that the day, which would be marked on Yom ha'Shoah when Jews throughout the world recall the horrors of the Holocaust, should not be "historically specific to one particular ethnic group."

Instead, Mr. Levytsky, who also serves as vice-president of the UCC's Alberta Provincial Council, suggested a "World Genocide Memorial Day," which could be held around ethnic-community-neutral Remembrance Day.

The bill was passed on November 16, though Mr. Klein added the words "genocide remembrance" to the observance, which will be marked annually based on a day on the Jewish calendar.

As the year wound down, in late November observances commemorating the 1932-1933 Famine-Genocide were held across Canada - including services, ceremonies and lectures in Edmonton, Calgary and Toronto that drew survivors of Stalin's genocidal campaign.

The UCCLA's Dr. Luciuk, a political geographer by profession, did his own bit for remembering Ukrainian history when his latest book, "Searching for Place: Ukrainian Displaced Persons, Canada, and the Migration of Memory," was released and made available in both Canada and the United States.

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