During the month of June, Canadians are commemorating the centennial of the end of the country’s First Internment Operations, a shameful episode in Canadian history that took place in 1914-1920 against the backdrop of the first world war.
During those national operations, persons deemed to be “enemy aliens” because they came from countries then at war with the British Empire – including Ukrainians who emigrated from lands that were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire – were sent to internment camps across the country. There were 24 such camps, where 8,759 men, women and children – Canadians of Ukrainian, German, Austrian and other Eastern European descent – were held. They were considered “enemy aliens” not because of anything they had done, but simply because of where they were from. The internees were disenfranchised, isolated, mistreated and used as slave labor to build roads and other infrastructure, experimental farms and more. It was Canada’s War Measures Act of 1914 that made this operation possible. (That same act was later used to justify the imprisonment of Japanese Canadians during World War II and of some Quebecois in 1970.)