EXHIBITS

My DP Stories

Displaced persons after World War II

Internment

The Barbed Wire Solution

Ukrainians and Canada's First Internment Operations 1914-1920
(travelling exhibit)

The travelling exhibit – The Barbed Wire Solution: Ukrainians and Canada's First Internment Operations 1914-1920 – explores the social, economic and political circumstances that led to Canada's first use of the War Measures Act. It also looks at the conditions of daily life in the camps for the prisoners and their guards and leaves the viewer with a striking reminder of a dark and relatively unknown moment in Canadian history.

Launched in 1995, the exhibit was produced, sponsored and is owned by the UCRDC whose Exhibition Director is Svitliana Medwidsky. Bojak Creative Strategies – an Ottawa-based firm of museum professionals –– was responsible for the research, writing, curatorship and design of the exhibit. Support for the project was provided by the Government of Ontario, Ministry of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation.

Efforts are being made to provide a permanent home for the exhibit.

The following 24 topics dealing with Canada’s First Internment comprise the text of the Barbed Wire Solution exhibit. For an historical essay on the Internment, go to the Education section: Internment of  Ukrainians in Canada 1914 – 1920.

01. Origins

In the late 1800’s, Canada’s frontier moved farther west. The country needed more people to clear and cultivate the land. The government saw the peasants of Eastern Europe as well suited for this task. These people were accustomed to working hard and they were desperate to leave their hopeless conditions. Ukrainians responded to Canada’s promise of free land with many eager immigrants.

At the time, the Russian empire owned four fifths of Ukraine’s territory. The Austro-Hungarian Empire claimed the remaining one fifth. At the turn of the century several thousand Ukrainians immigrated to Canada from provinces under Russian rule. However, most of the more than 100,000 Ukrainian immigrants to Canada came from the regions of Galicia (Halychyna) and Bukovyna in the Austrian Empire.

Formally, Austria abolished serfdom in 1848. However, its legacy of poverty, exploitation by landed and moneyed classes and lack of opportunity for improvement lingered in its wake. For the most part, the peasant classes were illiterate. They occupied small plots of land off which they tried to make a living and looked to the clergy and religion for guidance. Many of them immigrated to Canada for an opportunity to improve life for themselves and their children.

Some members of a new educated class also immigrated to Canada. For these, mostly young people, the major influences were social and political theories and ideals of the day. They included a rising national consciousness, Ukrainian national populism and liberalism.

Canadian immigration officials labelled the immigrants in one of three ways. They called them Austrian or Russian, depending on their passport. Sometimes, they used a regional definition such as Galician or Bukovynian. Sometimes, they simply called them Ruthernian. This is an old term first used int the 11th century to refer to people who lived in the area that is now Ukraine.

02. Farming

They arrived in Canada with little money. Sometimes, they were in debt having borrowed money for their journey.

The long arduous travel exhausted them. They did not speak English and were foreign to the English way of life. To draw physical and cultural comfort and strength from one another, they settled in communities of their own kind. Thus, large bloc settlements of Ukrainians developed in the prairies. Usually, these were in the regions designated for them by the government and on the wooded lands which they preferred. Like other homesteaders, the Ukrainian immigrants brought their religion, style of living, farming and housing, cultural norms and values with them.

From the first dugout home to the later farmhouse, the pioneer families worked hard for every minor improvement of life. Three years after claiming the homeseads they could own them. To do so, they had to clear and cultivate a prescribed amount of land and become British subjects.

At the turn of the century in Canada, farming was an expensive business. Often the men found temporary and seasonal work in railroad construction, mining, harvesting or lumbering to earn money for supplies, animals and seed and to repay debts. Meanwhile the women and children cleared the land and planted crops.

03. Labour

From 1905 to 1914 the type of Ukrainian immigrant changed. There were more Ukrainians coming to Canada to work in industry as opposed to farming. They were also more likely to settle in towns and cities than those who had come earlier.

As Canada’s primary and manufacturing industries developed, the need for cheap labour increased. Business and government solicited the working poor of Central and Eastern Europe for this work.

Between 1910 and 1914, the prospect of wages for work attracted some 70,000 Ukrainians to Canada. Most of them were single migrant workers. They worked almost exclusively in low paying jobs on railway and road construction, in mines, mills, foundries and meat packing plants. Many were supporting families in Galicia and Bukovyna.

Some unattached women immigrated for the opportunity to work in Canada. However, most of the young Ukrainian women who lived in the cities, came from the rural settlements  in Canada, to work as domestic or hotel maids.

The unskilled immigrant worker had but one basic commodity to exchange – “physical strength, his brute force, to carry, pull, push, turn, as a horse would do, or a piston or a wheel”*. He exchanged it from sector to sector as demand for ‘human machines’ shifted to a rhytm he could not but obey.

*Donald Avery, ‘Dangerous Foreigners’: European Immigrant Workers and Labour Radicalism in Canada, 1896-1932

04. Cities

By the start of World War I, most major cities across Canada had a Ukrainian population. It was concentrated in cheap tenement houses and substandard boarding establishments.

Ukrainian urban settlers organized their own communities with churches, reading and drama clubs, choirs and orchestras. In the “old country” education had been a very rare commodity for them. Therefore, they emphasized it for their children in Canada.

The young migratory workers were always on the move following job opportunities. As a result, their incomes fluctuated. They tended to bring the frontier influence into the cities. This may have influenced how mainstream society defined and saw all Ukrainians.

Some perceived Ukrainians as a financial drain on society. Archival records show that some Ukrainians received relief, some Ukrainian children received government support and some Ukrainians were imprisoned for criminal activity. However, it does not appear that they had been on social aid or jailed in larger numbers than the general population.

05. Unemployment

The depression of 1913 hit the immigrant labourers the hardest. When the Canadian economy slackened, business needed fewer workers. Jobs became scarce and Canadian citizens were prepared to take the types of work that previously they did not want. They pressured employers to dismiss “foreigners” and “hire Canadian”.

Large scale unemployment among Ukrainian workers threw them into extreme poverty. Those Ukrainian communities, who were better off, aided them with donations of money and farm produce. Some cities set up relief schemes. However, the growing number of hungry and desperate men did not seek charity. They demanded fair wages for good work and roamed the country to find them.

The unemployed protested their condition and lobbied various levels of government for action. In May 1914, for example, the Ukrainian Socialist Democratic Party organized a rally of thousands of men in Winnipeg. They marched to the Manitoba Legislature and demanded “work or bread”. Some marched on toward the United States hoping to find work there.

06. Societal Views

Canadian citizens did not agree on the choice of Eastern Europe as the source for immigrants to Canada. The distinctive and colourful lifestyle of these immigrants were at odds with the sobriety of Canadian society. British Canadians saw them as resisting the British way of life.

For ages, Ukrainians had searched for a national identity. In a modern sense of the term, they were only beginning to develop one at the turn of the century. The immigrants brought this awakening and confusion with them. In their Canadian communities they showed a variety of religious, ideological and regional identities.

If the Ukrainian immigrants could not articulate who they were, they knew who they were not. They were not Western Europeans of Anglo-Celtic background whom the Canadians would have preferred to have as pioneers. They did not fit into the mould that the Presbyterian and Methodist missionaries prepared for them. Neither could they flourish in the Roman Catholic environment structured by the French Canadian clergy.

Since British Canadians were convinced of the superiority of their ways, they could not understand the immigrants’ reluctance to give up their own culture. They did not try to understand the difference. Instead they blamed the problems of the day on the difference and the people who bore it.

07. World War I

War broke out in the summer of 1914. As part of the British Empire, Canada fought alongside Britain and her allies, France, Russia and Italy (Allied Powers). Their enemies were Germany, Austria and Turkey (Central Powers). Austria called all her citizens, who were living abroad, to return for military duty. In Canada, those Ukrainian immigrants who had not yet become British subjects, were in a vulnerable position.

Ukrainians in Canada worried about family and friends “back home” whom Russia and Austria enmeshed in their conflict. Tsarist Russia oppressed the Ukrainian people more than did Austro-Hungary. Therefore, Ukrainian leaders, in general, saw the war as an opportunity to gain independence for Ukraine, even if it meant accepting help from the Central Powers. They solicited support for this idea from the immigrants in North America. In Canada, the Ukrainian Catholic bishop had agreed to include Austria’s call toarms in his first pastoral letter on July 27. He retracted it on August 6, when Britain entered the war

As soon as Britain went to war, most Ukrainian Canadians joined in the Canadian war effort behind the Empire. By the beginning of September 1914, the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) had more men than the 30,000 which Canada had promised to Great Britain. Among them were many volunteers from the Ukrainian community.

As Russia was an ally of Great Britain, Canada readily accepted Ukrainians from Tsarist Russia into the CEF. It rejected Ukrainian immigrants born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire even if they were British subjects. To get into the army, many young men anglicized their names. Others added “Russia”, “Poland” and “Rumania” to their place of birth on their applications. Canadian officials, not versed in European geography, often accepted them. However, Canadian authorities sometimes arrested unnaturalized immigrants who were trying to enlist. Once they discovered a soldier’s true origin, they would return him from the front to be interned until the war was over.

08. War Measures

From August 1914 Canada issued a string of Orders in Council which restricted the activities of unnaturalized immigrants who had come from enemy states.(“Unnaturalized” means that they were not British subjects. At the time, a separate Canadian citizenship did not exist.) There were over 393,000 German and over 129,000 Austrian citizens in Canada. Most of the Austrians were Ukrainians from Galicia and Bukovyna.

Britain had passed its Deference of the Realm Act for the same purpose. However, Canada’s War Measures Act was much tougher than Britain’s. Britain restricted the subjects of hostile states only in those activities that affected military operations. Canada passed restrictive regulations on almost every aspect of Canadian life, including communications, travel and transport, trade, manufacture and production. The British Act was in force “during the continuance of the present war”. Canada let Cabinet decide when the Act was to lapse.

In Canada, civilian registrars, local police and the Royal North West Mounted Police identified, registered and arrested the “enemy aliens”. The accused was guilty until he proved himself not an enemy. Only the Minister of Justice could judge “enemy alien”cases.

During the war 88,000 “enemy aliens” were registered. They had to report to authorities at least monthly, disclosing travel plans and showing proof of employment. The law forbade them to work with explosives or leave the country. These rules hampered the immigrants’ dwindling opportunities to make a living for three reasons: general unemployment was rising, unskilled labour depended on seasonal jobs and one needed to travel  to them, explosives were commonly used in mining and road construction.

Many immigrants were afraid to register and report. Some tried to escape their troubles by crossing the border. Others looked for escape in assumed identities. Not registering for any reason, however, was cause for arrest and internment. The state interned them in labour camps for not have a job as well as competing for a job with British subjects.

In implementing the War Measures Act, Canada cut important civil liberties. The Cabinet further did not tak sufficient precautions to prevent abuse of power through ignorance or malice by the registrars and the police.

09. Internment

On October 28, 1914, the federal Cabinet set up the Internment Operations Branch. It empowered civilian registrars to judge whether an “enemy alien” was a threat to public safety or should remain free. The Dominion Police, the Royal North West Mounted Police and their agents made the arrests. The military enforced the internment in prison camps that they had created for this purpose. Prisoners had to bring any appeal or proof of innocence to the Minister of Justice.

The Minister recalled from retirement Major-General Sir W.D.Otter to command the internment operations. By the time of his appointment, over 10,000 arrested sailors, visitors, reservists and other unnaturalized immigrants from the Central Powers countries waited in cramped detention centres.

First, Otter divided the prisoners into two classes. Officers and civilian “equivalents” were the first class. They did not need to work and they received better quarters and food. Other civilians and rank and file soldiers were second class, receiving rations of regular soldiers. These people were forced to work on various manual labour projects. German officers, captured in the war, comprised most of the first class. Austrians (mostly Ukrainians) arresed on the streets of Canadian cities or at the Canadian/United States border, were second class.

Next Otter organized for these two classes of prisoners, 24 camps across Canada. Some camps existed for only a short period while others remained open for some time after the end of the war. Living conditions also varied from camp to camp.

All told, Canada had interned 8,579 people between 1914-20. Of these, 7,762 were civilian residents of Canada. Most of them were Ukrainian.

10. Living Conditions

General Otter had decided to separate the German and Austrian prisoners. He felt that the Germans posed more of a threat to the country’s security than the majority of the Austrians. Unemployment or destitution was the major cause of arrest of the latter group. Therefore, he kept the German prisoners in urban centres where the military could guard them more diligently. He sent the Austrians, mostly Ukrainians, to remote locations where they were forced to work on government and corporate projects.

For the Austrian prisoners, the isolation and wilderness conditions of the locations chosen for them, added mental hardships to the physical ones. The camps were hemmed in by impenetrable widerness. Inside, swamp, mud and huge piles of snow worsened the overcrowding of the men.

On their arrival to Canada, the same immigrants had often submitted to the dismal conditions of railway and lumber work camps. However, in the internment camps, many factors made these conditions harsher. The internees had lost their free choice and the incentive of reasonable pay. They worried about family and felt frustrated at being unable to help. The fact of being arrested embarrassed them. They feared deportation to Austria where they believed they would be shot for avoiding military duty. Most of all, they felt betrayed by Canada.

11. Prisoners

The practice of interning thousands of civilians laster five years. In the end, the Director of the operations admitted that one could correctly class only one third of the inmates as prisoners of war. He suspected “that the tendency of municipalities to ‘unload’ their indigent was the cause of the confinement of not a few”. (Otter Report)

Official records substantiate Otter’s suspicion that poverty and ethnicity were often the only reasons for arrest. Some British Colonial Office authorities suggested that it was quite proper to make the “enemy aliens” labour at public works in return for food and shelter. This was one way to remove destitute hungry men off the city streets. Many municipalities supported internment of “enemy aliens” for other reasons as well. During a depressed economy, they could have cheap prisoner labour for city works. In addition, internment camps spawned lucrative supply contracts for local business.

When released from camps, the youngest prisoner was sixteen years old, the oldest was seventy-six. The prisoners were of various ethnic, religious, educational and occupational status. Most were civilians without the concentrated military training that usually helps soldiers bear the experience of prisoner of war camp. In the temporary camps boredom bred fights. In the permanent camps, it was fatigue and desperation that often ignited disagreements.

12. Guards

The Department of Justice employed militia officers and men for the camp staff. However, it was the Department of Militia and Defence who provided the camp guards. The deep-seated friction between these two groups was most obvious in their attitudes toward camp discipline.

More than 2,000 men who enlisted during World War I served as internment guards. The Militia recruited the guards from the thousands of the unemployed. Before the war, these men may have competed for job and shelter with the internees over whom they held bayonets in the camps.

The guards also suffered from the isolation, cold and fatigue which camp life produced. The lack of combat opportunity frustrated them. They also worried about their wive and children. The troops seemed to find it difficult to treat the inmates as civilians and to refrain from using force to make them work. In his report at the end of internment operations, General Otter gave credit to “all concerned that very little friction occurred between troops and prisoner”. However, considerable friction is evident in records and correspondence unearthed by researchers.

13. Discipline

Discipline in the camps was not as “humane” as the Otter Report suggests.

Officially, the internment operations allowed the guards to punish prisoners in two ways. Food could be held back (down to bread and water) and prisoners could be confined in small and solitary “klinks”. Records show, however, that guards prodded prisoners with bayonets, suspended them by their wrists, and otherwise degraded them. Authorities dismissed the prisoners’ complaints as trivial and toleated their further punishment for insolence.

Most often guards punished prisoners for refusing to work. Other documented reasons include “destruction of boots’, “insolence”, “attempted escape”.

14. Resistance

The prisoners resisted their fate by stubborn defiance. As usual for prisoners of war, they worked as slowly as they could. In some camps they went on mass strikes, refusing work that was not necessary for their own upkeep. Camp authorities tried to break the strikes by withholding food and heat or to break the solidarity with bribes of extra pay and rations.

The neutral countries such as the USA (until it entered the war), Sweden and Switzerland inspected the camps to check for compliance with international conventions.

When the German Officer class complained to their own government of their treatment, Germany threated to retaliate on Allied prisoners of war. Once the Canadian Minister of Justice assured Germany that only about 100 Germans were in work camps, engaged mostly as cooks etc., Germany dropped the issue. No one took up the cause of the interned civilians in the second class camps.

“The idea, therefore of treatment of such men as quasi-criminals seems contrary to the very best interest of the Dominion, and the temporary saving, which may be affected by the payment, or rather allowance, of such pittance as 25 cents per day for a full day’s work, not even payable to them or their families in full, seems to be as inexpedient and unjust...” (G.Willrich, American Consul, Report on Conditions of German, Austro-Hungarian, Turkish and Bulgarian Subjects in Quebec Consular District and in Detention Camp at Spirit Lake, Quebec)

15. Work

The second class prisoners in permanent camps worked on government and private projects for 10 hours a day. For clearing land, cutting trees and construction they received 25 cents a day, well below the going rate of 20 cents an hour. They could not collect this pay or use it to support their families, until after the war. By June 1926, the federal government still held more than $32,000 in unpaid earnings owed to prisoners of war.

The men worked under armed guard. The ratio of guards to workers varied from one to ten to one to two. Only under the most extreme weather conditions, and then mostly due to the lack of proper clothing, did camp authorities cancel work detail. Otherwise, prisoners started their day at 5:30 a.m. and finished at 9:00 p.m. They worked for ten hours a day.

The Government also arranged for private companies to “buy” prisoner labour. For this work the companies were to pay the government 20 cents an hour with 50 cents a day or 25% taken off for food allowance. The businesses also absorbed the cost of accommodating and feeding the guards. Railway companies and the Department of Interior, which was developing a national parks system, were the biggest users of prisoner labour.

“Looking back at my short time I was here, and I was only a boy, I realized all the time what marvels you can do if you just had the labour... We had plenty of labour. Anybody who asked us to do anything, we provided the slaves.” (Colonel Anderson-Whyte, former guard at Castle Mountain and Banff Internment Camp. Interview, 4 May, 1973, Whyte Museum of the Rockies)

16. Food

he Otter Report states that the prisoners of war received the same amount and quality of food as did the Canadian soldiers. Modern research, however, shows that the diet given to the second class prisoners was not suitable for men cutting and hauling trees in the Canadian winter climate.

Full rations called for 12 ounces of meat a day, with an allowed substitution of lentils, dried cod or cheese. However, the meat was weighed before the removal of bone and other waste material. Considering the cheaper cuts of meat purchased, the meat portion per individual was much less than twelve ounces. Furthermore, the meat was often spoiled or frozen, making it almost inedible.

Fresh vegetables were mostly root vegetables such as potatoes, turnips and carrots. Without proper storage they were often too rotten to eat. Although there were baking ovens for bread at camp, often the yeast was of poor quality resulting in insufficiently leavened bread.

Dinner served at work sites often froze before the workers got it; dinner time was too short to allow for proper cooking. Therefore, the men ate raw or smoked fat that could withstand the freezing temperatures.

Had the food been in good condition, full rations would have had just enough calories to be sufficient for the men. As it was, the bad state of the food and the prolonged dietary punishments of the prisoners cut the overall caloric intake. Modern analyses also show that the diet was lacking in vitamins.

In 1917 there was a call for food rationing in Canada. The rations in camp were also reduced. Although the Otter Report claims that “those engaged in heavy manual labour such as clearing land, cutting wood, etc.” continued to receive the full daily rations, Otter’s account to the Imperial War Cabinet in 1918 showed that Internment Operations cut the meat rations to 8 ounces across the board. In Kapuskasing, in answer to guards’ complaints, their meat rations were restored. There is no evidence that the prisoners received equal treatment.

17. Clothing

Had the camps issued the prisoners’ clothing as regulated by Internment Operations, the internees would have been sufficiently dressed for the conditions under which they lived. However, camp supplies were insufficient most of the time. The quality of the clothing did not stand up well to the hard frontier labour. Therefore, the prisoners often faced cold and wet working conditions with soaked feet, freezing hands and insufficient underclothing.

Clothing was purchased locally from area suppliers. Low price seemed to be the deciding factor for supply contracts. The material and workmanship do not seem to have been of the quality of military supplies. For example, where the army had spent approximately $7 on a pair of army boots issued to soldiers, the boot purchased for prisoners were $3.10.

“In the face of this lack of clothing and boots, there is 5 inches of snow on the ground, wet and slush in the middle of the day; some prisoners have boots with their soles half off. Their feet are soaking wet every night, and nearly half of them are in rags. I am ashamed to meet them.” (Major Stuart, Commandant of Castle Mountain Camp, Letter to Colonel Cruikshank)

18. Families

“Many of the prisoners had wives and families dependent upon them for support; consequently when the breadwinners were interned, their women and children had to be cared for.” (Otter Report)

The government issued monthly sums for food, fuel and rent for 40 women and 81 children. Internment Operations also made room for 81 women and 156 children in the Spirit Lake and Vernon camps. Thus, directly or indirectly, the Canadian government took care of 121 wives and 237 children of prisoners.

Although the prisoners made 25 cents a day for their work at camp, the wages were not to be paid until after the war. Therefore, many could not support their families. Government support to families outside the camps consisted of $1.50 to $2.00 per week and some coal in the winter months.

Associated Charities and the provincial Departments of Neglected Children issued government support to families. These agencies had the power to remove children from their parents. The women had little reason to trust them to provide aid without taking away their children.

In the Vernon camp, housing was provided only to families of first class prisoners. Records show that, aside from the wives and children of the first class prisoners, government also supported their nannies and governesses. For families of the second class prisoners, only Spirit Lake provided accommodations. These were only for immediate families.

19. Recreation

Time that prisoners spent on recreation and education varied from camp to camp. In the permanent camps, such as Castle Mountain and Kapuskasing, the prisoners were hard at work for ten to twelve hours a day. Therefore, there was less amusement than in detention camps such as Brandon and Fort Henry. As a group, the Ukrainians seem to have favoured crafts, reading, courses, card games and music over sports and gymnastics.

20. Parole

By 1916 Canada was again short of labour. The war stimulated the economy and demanded more production from companies. At the same time, the men that would have had jobs were in the army. The federal government decided that the men in internment camps could be used to do the work and paroled many Austrian internees to individuals and corporations. This meant that it freed the prisoners on the condition that they work for the particular company or individual for at least six months.

In those days, the working conditions in the primary industries such as mining. railway and lumbering companies were very harsh. That is why regular workers did not stay in the isolated work camps for long periods. To make sure that the paroled internees stayed, the company supervisors often kept their registration cards. Since “enemy aliens” could not travel or get another job without the registration card, they stayed and put up with any conditions that the “boss” meted out to them.

The work was usually far from home and family. The companies agreed on a normal wage before getting the parolees from the internment camps. However, many did not stick to this agreement and either paid the men much less or overcharged them for supplies, lodging and food. Once they paroled the workers, Internment Operations had no control over them or their work conditions.

21. Disenfranchisement

The Wartimes Elections Act was passed in September 1917. This act stripped of their rights as citizens those British subjects who had been born in enemy countries and naturalized after March 1902. Thus, most Ukrainian Canadians lost their right to vote until the act lapsed in August 1919.

Canadians were tired of the war and discouraged with the mounting casualties. Their readiness to join the army fell. By the summer of 1916, Canada could not supply the soldiers that it had promised to Great Britain. It was short by more than 100,000 men. The Conservative government, under Borden, considered conscription. Enlisted men, veterans, their families, and generally the urban middle class British Canadians, supported compulsory military service. French Canadians, farmers, unions and immigrants in western Canada opposed it.

To win the federal election of December 1917, Borden had to overcome the Liberal opposition to conscription. The Wartime Elections Act took the vote away from the Liberals’ main support in the West – the naturalized immigrants. Many of these citizens had been British subjects for as long as 15 years. At the same time, Borden ensured support for conscription and for the Conservatives, by giving the vote to women who were close relatives of servicemen. Only women with sons or husbands overseas were eligible for this first women’s suffrage (right to vote) in Canada.

22. Scapegoats

“It was not the mass armies of 1914-18 that were new, or even the horrifying death tolls. Relatively, the wars of Napoleon a century before had taken as many lives. What was new was the remarkable proportion of sick and wounded who survived.” (Desmond Morton, Winning the Second Battle)

Only a few months into the war, the wounded soldiers started to return home. They found a nation not prepared to cope with their disabilities and not ready to compensate them for their losses. Instead of a hero’s welcome, they found unemployment and poverty. The disillusioned men turned their frustrations on their favourite scapegoat – the “enemy alien”.

From 1916, returned soldiers often harassed “foreigners” or “aliens”. They would drag them out of their work places, demand to see their registration cards and take them to the registrars insisting on internment of all “enemy aliens”. They would also pressure employers to fire all “aliens” and give the jobs to the former soldiers. Sometimes veterans vandalized businesses owned by immigrants from hostile countries.

In l917, the veterans successfully pressured the government to disenfranchise all British citizens born in enemy countries. They also called for confiscating their property and withholding from them patents for homesteads.

Sometimes their anger was directed at Canadian veterans of a non-British background as “enemy aliens”. If one looked “foreign”, one was the enemy.

23. Labour Activists

By 1918 Canada included radicals and socialists in the definition of “enemy aliens”. Although the war was ending, the arrests of those active in the labour movements were increasing. Among them were many members of the Ukrainian Socialist Democratic Party. The internment camps at Vernon and Kapuskasing were still operating sixteen months after the declaration of peace. They were not closed until February 1920.

Throughout Europe and North America, workers and farm labourers had asserted their rights since the turn of the century. These included fair wages, security and decent living standards. This budding assertiveness of the worker had been one reason that Canadian industry had turned to the Eastern European worker for labour in 1915. Canadian business leaders had not wanted to import the organized worker from Great Britain. The peasant from Galicia and the Mediterranean, they had reasoned, would work for low wages and in the worst conditions.

No one could continue to shield Canada from organized labour and liberalism. Solidarity of workers was coalescing. They even grudgingly accepted the “foreigners”, mostly because of their great numbers.

The Bolshevik Revolution, which took place in Russia in 1917, encouraged world labour leaders in their demands for recognition and fair play. In Canada, rapid growth in the cost of living and low wages resulted in labour mounted strikes. The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 was the largest.

The organizers of the Winnipeg General Strike, who were of British and American origin, were arrested and tried. In addition, member of other ethnocultural groups, such as Ukrainians, Finns and Jews, were also arrested. They were interned without trial. This action taken by the government was supported by business leaders, industrialists, veterans and other “patriots”.

Canadians had to deal with significant social issues that changing industry and postwar economy brought. The majority population felt justified in focusing its fear and hate on the “foreigner”. This was now a second internment wave and a different group of internees was identified as “radical aliens” and “dangerous foreigners”.

24. Impact

For Ukrainian immigrants, who had been caught in Canada’s first internment operations, the immediate loss was emotional, financial, medical and social. For the Ukrainian Canadians as a community, it took generations to get over the feeling of deep injustice, humiliation, denial and fear. As for Canada, the episode has been buried in obscure records. For decades, it received, at best, a cursory mention in history books and courses. Even today most Canadians are not aware of this part of their own history.

As an episode in Canadian history, Canada’s first internment operations and their social context needs to be recorded, admitted and communicated to the new generations of Canadians. It is only by studying the past that we can guide the future.