Ukrainian Canadian internment

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Ukrainian internees at the Spirit Lake Internment Camp, Abitibi, Quebec

The Ukrainian Canadian internment was part of the confinement of "enemy aliens" in Canada during and for 2 years after the end of World War I, lasting from 1914 to 1920. About 5,000 Ukrainian men of Austro-Hungarian citizenship were kept in twenty-four internment camps and related work sites, also known, at the time, as concentration camps. Another 80,000 were registered as "enemy aliens" and obliged to regularly report to the police. Those interned had whatever little wealth they had confiscated.

Under the 1914 War Measures Act, "aliens of enemy nationality" were compelled to register with authorities. About 70,000 Ukrainians from Austro-Hungary fell under this description. 8,579 males were interned by the Canadian Government, including 5,954 Austro-Hungarians, most of whom were probably ethnic Ukrainians. Most of the interned were poor or unemployed single men, although 81 women and 156 children (mainly Germans in Vernon and Ukrainians at Spirit Lake) had no choice but to accompany their menfolk to two of the camps, in Spirit Lake, near Amos, Quebec, and Vernon, British Columbia. Some of the internees were Canadian-born and others were naturalized British subjects, although most were recent immigrants. Citizens of the Tsarist Russian Empire were not interned and so could enlist in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. One of them, Filip Konowal, would win the Victora Cross for his valour during the Battle of Hill 70, just beyond Vimy Ridge, in August 1917. The last known survivor of the internment is Mary Manko, a child when she was interned with her family at Spirit Lake (see photograph above).

Many of these internees were used for labour in internment camps. This was contrary to the Geneva Conventions, as the studies of Professors Kordan and Mahovsky have demonstrated. Conditions at the camps varied, and the Banff/Castle Mountain camp, where labour contributed to the creation of Banff National Park, was considered exceptionally harsh and abusive. The internment continued for two more years after the war had ended, although most Ukrainians were paroled into jobs for private companies by 1917. Even as parolees, they were still required to report regularly to the police authorities. Some scholars have argued that the government and private concerns benefitted from the internee's labour and from the confiscation of what little wealth they had, a portion of which was left in the Bank of Canada at the end of the internment operations, 20 June 1920. A small number of internees, including men considered to be "dangerous foreigners," labour radicals, or particularly troublesome internees, were deported to Europe after the war, largely from the Kapuskasing camp, which was the last to be shut down.

Of those interned 109 died of various diseases and injuries sustained in the camp, six were killed while trying to escape, and some, according to Sir William D Otter's final report, went insane or committed suicide as a result of their confinement.

Currently there are nineteen plaques and memorials across Canada commemorating the internment, including one at the location of a former internment camp in Banff National Park. These have been placed by the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association and its supporters. On November 25, 2005, Conservative MP Inky Mark's Private Member's Bill C-331, Internment of Persons of Ukrainian Origin Recognition Act, received Royal Assent. This act acknowledges that persons of Ukrainian origin were interned in Canada during the First World War and it legally obliges the Government of Canada to negotiate "an agreement concerning measures that may be taken to recognize the internment" for educational and commemorative projects.

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Kordan, Bohdan & Mahovsky, Craig, A Bare and Impolitic Right: Internment and Ukrainian Canadian Redress, Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004
Luhovy, Yurij (1994) "Freedom Had a Price: 1914-1920 Canada's First Internment Operation," VHS/DVD, 55 min.
Luciuk, Lubomyr (2001). In Fear of the Barbed Wire Fence: Canada's First National Internment Operations and the Ukrainian Canadians, 1914-1920. Kingston: Kashtan Press.
Luciuk, Lubomyr (2006). "Without Just Cause," Kingston: Kashtan Press.
Martynowych, Orest (1991), "Registration, Internment and Censorship", in Ukrainians in Canada: The formative period, 1891–1924, pp. 323–334. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. ISBN 0-920862-76-4.
Bill C-331, "An act to acknowledge that persons of Ukrainian origin were interned in Canada during the First World War and to provide for recognition of this event", full text