— B.
Historical Note
World War I Breaks Out in August 1914
When World War I started, Anna’s village of Horoshova was stuck between two battling countries. While Austria-Hungary saw the crownlands of Galicia (which included Horoshova) and Bukovyna as their property, Russia considered these lands as “little Russia.” Soon after the war began, Russia invaded these provinces.
As the Austro-Hungarian army was pushed back, Hungarian soldiers terrorized the local Ukrainian-speaking population, whom they assumed were Russian spies. One of the reasons for this was because people in Anya’s region called themselves “rus’ki” which means “Rusyn,” or “Ruthenian,” old terms used to refer to the inhabitants of the area, but the troops thought they were saying “Russian.” Thousands of Ukrainians were shot, hanged or herded off to internment camps in the west.
Meanwhile, Ukrainians were considered enemies by the tsarist government, and so Ukrainian cultural institutions were closed. Russian was taught in schools instead of Ukrainian, and the Ukrainian Catholic Church was to be dismantled. Many priests, bishops, intellectuals and patriots were being executed, but then in June 1915, this abruptly stopped. The reason is that the Austro-Hungarian army, with the help of Germany, pushed back the Russians. Anya’s village of Horoshova, however, was in a small strip of territory still controlled by the Russians. They continued to hold this area for almost the whole war. Several Ukrainians somehow managed to thread their way into the local tsarist administration so that the Ukrainian population in the area did not suffer as much as they otherwise would have. However, there were Ukrainians in both Russian and Austrian internment camps.
Nationally conscious Ukrainians in Galicia and Bukovyna wanted autonomy. They also wanted to separate the Polish part of Galicia from the Ukrainian part. Unfortunately, Austria and Germany were more interested in meeting Polish interests, so in November 1916, they announced that they were going to create a Polish state from the territories they had captured back from tsarist Russia. They said that they would deal with Ukrainian interests once the war was over. But everything changed in March 1917 when the Russian Revolution toppled the tsarist Russian empire.
At almost the same time as the Russian Revolution, Ukraine had a brief period of independence, between March 1917 and October 1920, during which time they went through a number of revolutionary governments. After 1920, Ukrainians found themselves divided up between four different countries (Soviet Ukraine, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania). By October 1920, the Soviet government had firmly established itself throughout central and eastern Ukraine, but Galicia came under Polish control, Bukovyna under Romanian control, and Transcarpathia became Czechoslovakian. The country would not become free until 1991.
Ukrainians, Canada and the First World War
Approximately 170,000 Ukrainians immigrated to Canada between 1891 and 1914.
Most of them came to Canada from the Austro-Hungarian provinces of Bukovyna and Galicia. Some came to avoid being conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army. Others came to get out of debt or to make a better life for themselves in a new country. The portion of land that most of these farmers owned was too small in which to eke out a living, so they needed to supplement their earnings by such methods as renting additional land. However, most of the land in Bukovyna and Galicia was owned by Polish aristocrats. These wealthy landowners did rent land to poor families, but charged unreasonably high prices.
Through the years 1896–1905 the Canadian government had encouraged East European peasants to immigrate because they had a reputation for being good hard-working farmers, and the Canadian government in Ottawa wanted to open up Canada’s West. The vast majority of Ukrainians did settle in the prairie provinces, but some, like Anya’s family, settled in Montreal and other big cities. In 1914–1915, Montreal’s Ukrainian community numbered only about five hundred people, in a city of more than half a million. While the majority of Ukrainian immigrants came from Austria-Hungary, there were some who came from areas of Ukraine that were controlled by tsarist Russia.
Ukrainian immigrants who settled in Montreal tended to become more politically aware than those who settled in the prairies, since these urban immigrants had different adjustments to make. Ukrainians who settled in the prairies struggled for daily survival on blocks of land that were close to each other and often far from other Canadians. In contrast, the small group of Ukrainian immigrants who came to Montreal worked as labourers, so their struggle was not for physical survival but to find a way out of their social isolation. Because they spoke neither French nor English and lived in the poorest of neighbourhoods, Montreal’s Ukrainians had a compelling reason to quickly establish several mutual-aid organizations. These first organizations were not church oriented, an element that is in stark contrast to the first organizations in the prairies. These Montreal groups all shared the ideology of the Drahomanov Society, which had an anti-church bias and advocated socialism and independence for Ukraine. Ukrainian immigrants in Montreal usually thought of themselves as “Ukrainian” years before an independent Ukraine existed.
When World War I broke out, many Ukrainian immigrants didn’t know whether they should go back to the old country to defend their homeland, or whether they should fight for Canada, their new country. Many Ukrainians enlisted in the Canadian armed forces and fought for their adopted home. Ukrainians who had immigrated with Russian passports were allowed to enlist in the Canadian armed forces. Others changed their names to Smith or Jones or lied about their origins in order to fight for Canada. One corporal, Filip Konowal, was awarded the Victoria Cross for his bravery.
In 1914 the Canadian government implemented the War Measures Act. One result of the Act was that 8,579 immigrants were labelled “enemy aliens” and interned in 24 camps across the country. Approximately 6,000 of those interned were Ukrainians, but some Poles, Bulgarians, Turks, Rumanians, Jews, Croatians and Serbs were also interned. When these people were brought to internment camps, they were forced to give up their wallets, pocket watches and other items of sentiment and value. Another 80,000 individuals (mostly Ukrainians) were required to register with the authorities as “enemy aliens” and to report in on a regular basis. Immigrants who had already become naturalized British subjects were not slated for internment; however, in some cases, naturalized subjects were interned, contrary to what the Act indicated. In fact, even some children who were born in Canada were interned. Carolka Manko, who was born in Montreal, died at Spirit Lake internment camp when she was two years old.
It is still not known exactly why the government decided that there was a need to intern thousands of Ukrainian immigrants. The British government had assured the Canadian government that Ukrainians were not “Austrians” and thus were not the enemy. But as the war went on there was mounting hysteria against foreigners, resulting in some employers firing them for “patriotic” reasons, particularly in Canada’s West. This, in addition to a recent recession that had left many people jobless, meant that there were many Ukrainians out of work and homeless.
It is even more difficult to understand why Canada decided to use these people — who had done no wrong — as forced labourers. Some municipalities simply wanted to take advantage of the forced labour that these people could supply, and to be spared the expense of providing relief for them. Several hundred men were still being held in internment camps nearly two years after the war ended.