Human Rights A Day

Ottawa acknowledges its unjust treatment of Ukrainian Canadians during World War I. When World War I started, the Canadian government worried about the allegiance of Canadian citizens who had come from regions around the Austro-Hungarian empire. So the government interned 8,579 “enemy aliens” in 26 camps across Canada under the War Measures Act. More than 5,000 of these were Ukrainians. Another 80,000 – mostly Ukrainians – had to register as enemy aliens and report regularly to local authorities. Inmates of these internment camps were forced to work on infrastructure in mining and logging camps, and on government terrain such as Banff National Park. Even when the war ended, the government maintained the camps for another two years, until 1920. They justified this by referring to their free labour source as “Bolsheviks” rather than “enemy aliens,” and indicating concern about these Canadians’ allegiance to the new Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Ukrainian Canadians who were not interned faced discrimination and publi