Stephen Harper on Ukrainian internment
I suppose the fact that thousands of Ukrainian-Canadians were interned in labour camps during WWI should not surprise me, but I have to admit that it does. I’m not surprised from a historical perspective, the early 20th century was certainly a far more brutal and rascist period than we live in now.
I am surprised that the Canadian government hasn’t yet officially recognized this act of injustice. Especially after the efforts made to redress Japanese internment in WWII during the nineties, it’s almost impossible to me that this has not also been addressed. Here’s an excerpt from Stephen Harper’s statement on the issue.
Between 1914 and 1920, Canada witnessed its first internment operations under the war measures act. Thousands of loyal Canadians were systematically arrested and interned in 24 camps throughout our country, Simply because of their national origin nearly 9000 Canadians were interned, the vast majority of Ukrainian origin. At the outset of the First World War, western Ukraine was occupied by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Canada was at war with Austria-Hungary. In the midst of wartime hysteria, everyone with a connection to Austria-Hungary was wrongly deemed a threat to our country.
Ironically, in this case, many thousands of Ukrainian Canadians had actually fled the occupying power in their homeland. A knowledgeable assessment of the situation could have only led to one conclusion: These refugees of Canada’s wartime enemy were not enemies of Canada. They were new, loyal, British subjects, and allies of our wartime cause.
In fact, in 1915, the British foreign office twice instructed Ottawa to grant Ukrainians “preferential treatment”, arguing that they were to be considered “friendly aliens” rather than “enemy aliens”, yet the dominion government would not change its course. Moreover, many of those interned were not just naturalized British subjects, but were Canadian citizens, born in Canada, but bearing the wrong last name or the wrong parentage even children were interned.
Reading about this bill in the year 2005 is shocking; am I missing something?
March 31st, 2005 at 17:06
It is pretty shocking, and there’s really no escuse for a lack of apology. Governments have probably feared having to pay some kind of reparations and would rather sweep the problem under the rug. That said, the Japanese internment has recieved much more attention probably because it was descpicable on a much grander scale. More people were interned (including women, children and the elderly), they were interned for longer, and their property and business assets were sold and auctioned off with basically no compensation to the victims.
March 31st, 2005 at 23:54
Yeah, there’s no doubt that the internment of Japanese-Canadians during WWII was one of the most egregious acts committed by a Canadian government. I’m not disputing that it should have recieved a great deal of attention, and I completely understand why it would recieve comparably more attention. To clarify, I was merely opining that with so much attention on the issue of wrongful internment during that period, it would have been an excellent opportunity for our government and us as a society to deal with other embarassments. It just seems like other internments should have bubbled up to the public conciousness as a matter of course.
Then again, the Canadian government has still also refused numerous attempts in parliament to acknowledge the historical existence of the Armenian genocide for fear of upsetting Turkey. Turkey of course steadfastly refuses to acknowledge its systematic murder of 1.5M people and the deportation of a million more duirng WWI.
Now the government can rightfully say, “Hey, we aren’t as bad as Turkey… whatever it was that they did!” Blah, politics.
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