Ukrainian Canadians
Ukrainian Canadians are Canadian citizens of Ukrainian descent or Ukrainian-born people who immigrated to Canada.
In the late 19th century, the first Ukrainian immigrants arrived in the east coast of Canada. They were primarily farmers and labourers who were looking for a better life and economic opportunities. Most settled in the western provinces of Canada, particularly in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. These provinces offered fertile land and economic opportunities for farming, which was a familiar occupation for most Ukrainians. Ukrainian immigrants were able to establish a strong community in Canada. They built churches, community centres, and cultural organizations to preserve their language and traditions. After 1920 many moved to urban Ontario and Quebec.
During the early years of Ukrainian immigration to Canada, many immigrants faced discrimination and prejudice. Ukrainian immigrants were interned during World War I as a part of the confinement of those deemed to be "enemy aliens." Between 1914 and 1920, thousands of Ukrainian-Canadians were interned in camps.
Today, Ukrainian-Canadians continue to be an important part of Canada's cultural mosaic. They have made significant contributions to Canadian society and continue to preserve and celebrate their rich cultural heritage. In 2021, there were an estimated 1,258,635 persons of full or partial Ukrainian origin residing in Canada, making them Canada's eleventh largest ethnic group and giving Canada the world's third-largest Ukrainian population behind Ukraine itself and Russia. Self-identified Ukrainians are the plurality in several rural areas of Western Canada. According to the 2011 census, of the 1,251,170 who identified as Ukrainian, only 144,260 could speak the Ukrainian language.
Despite Canada's total population being only about one-tenth that of the United States, Ukrainian Canadians outnumber their American counterparts in absolute numbers. They are one of the few, if not the only, ethnic groups for which this is the case. In contrast, other groups—such as Indian, Chinese, Filipino, or Indigenous peoples—constitute a larger proportion of the population in Canada but are still numerically greater in the United States due to its much larger overall population.
History
Unconfirmed settlement before 1891
Minority opinions among historians of Ukrainians in Canada surround theories that a small number of Ukrainians settled in Canada before 1891. Most controversial is the claim that Ukrainians may have been infantrymen alongside Poles in the Swiss French “De Watteville's Regiment” who fought for the British on the Niagara Peninsula during the War of 1812 – it has been theorized that Ukrainians were among those soldiers who decided to stay in Upper Canada. Other Ukrainians supposedly arrived as part of other immigrant groups; it has been claimed that individual Ukrainian families may have settled in southern Manitoba in the mid- to late 1870s alongside block settlements of Mennonites and other Germans from the Russian Empire. "Galicians" are noted as being among the miners of the British Columbia gold rushes and figure prominently in some towns in that new province's first census in 1871. Because there is so little definitive documentary evidence of individual Ukrainians among these three groups, they are not generally regarded as among the first Ukrainians in Canada.First wave: Settlers, 1891–1914
During the nineteenth century the territory inhabited by Ukrainians in Europe was divided between the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires. The Austrian crownlands of Galicia and Bukovina were home to many Ukrainian speakers. Austrian Galicia was one of the poorest and most overpopulated regions in Europe, and had experienced a series of blights and famines. Emigration on a large scale from Galicia to the Balkans and even to Brazil was already underway by 1891.The first wave of Ukrainian immigration to Canada began with Iwan Pylypow and Wasyl Eleniak, who arrived in 1891, and brought several families to settle in 1892. Pylypow helped found the Edna-Star Settlement east of Edmonton, the first and largest Ukrainian block settlement. However, it is Dr Josef Oleskow, along with Cyril Genik, who are considered responsible for the large Ukrainian Canadian population through their promotion of Canada as a destination for immigrants from western Ukraine in the late 1890s. Ukrainians from Central Ukraine, which was ruled by the Russian monarchy, also came to Canada – but in smaller numbers than those from Galicia and Bukovina. Approximately 170,000 Ukrainians from the Austro-Hungarian Empire arrived in Canada from September 1891 to August 1914.
Clifford Sifton, Canada's Minister of the Interior from 1896 to 1905, also encouraged Ukrainians from Austria-Hungary to immigrate to Canada since he wanted new agricultural immigrants to populate Canada's prairies. After retirement, Sifton defended the new Ukrainian and East European immigrants to Canada – who were not from the United Kingdom, the United States, Scandinavia, Iceland, France or Germany – by stating:
This Ukrainian immigration to Canada was largely agrarian, and at first Ukrainian Canadians concentrated in distinct block settlements in the parkland belt of the prairie provinces: Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. While the Canadian Prairies are often compared to the steppes of Ukraine, the settlers came largely from Galicia and Bukovina – which are not steppe lands, but are semi-wooded areas in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. This is why Ukrainians coming to Canada settled in the wooded aspen parklands – in an arch from Winnipeg and Stuartburn, Manitoba to Edmonton and Leduc, Alberta – rather than the open prairies further south. Furthermore, the semi-feudal nature of land ownership in the Austrian Empire meant that in the "Old Country" people had to pay the pan for all their firewood and lumber for building. Upon arriving in Canada, the settlers often demanded wooded land from federal Dominion Lands Act registry officials so that they would be able to supply their own needs, even if this meant taking land that was less productive for crops. They also attached deep importance to settling near to family, people from nearby villages or other culturally similar groups, furthering the growth of the block settlements.
Fraternal and benevolent organizations established by these settlers include the Ukrainian Labour Farmer Temple Association, the Ukrainian Catholic Brotherhood, and the Ukrainian Self- League. The ULFTA transformed itself into the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians in 1946, the UCB and USRL are member organizations of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress today.
By 1914, there were also growing communities of Ukrainian immigrants in eastern Canadian cities, such as Toronto, Montreal, Hamilton, and Windsor. Many of them arrived from the provinces of Podillia, Volhynia, Kyiv and Bessarabia in Russian-ruled Ukraine. In the early years of settlement, Ukrainian immigrants faced considerable amounts of discrimination at the hands of Northern European Canadians, an example of which was the internment.
Internment (1914–1920)
From 1914 to 1920, the political climate of the First World War allowed the Canadian government to classify immigrants with Austro-Hungarian citizenship as "aliens of enemy nationality". This classification, authorized by the August 1914 War Measures Act, permitted the government to legally compel thousands of Ukrainians in Canada to register with federal authorities. About 5,000 Ukrainian men, and some women and children, were interned at government camps and work sites. Although many Ukrainians were "paroled" into jobs for private companies by 1917, the internment continued until June 20, 1920 – almost a year after the Treaty of Versailles was signed by Canada on June 28, 1919.There are some two dozen Ukrainian-specific plaques and memorials in Canada commemorating Canada's first national internment operations, including several statues – on the fairgrounds of Canada's National Ukrainian Festival south of Dauphin, Manitoba, the grounds of the Manitoba Legislative Building in Winnipeg; and at the locations of the former internment camps in Banff National Park, Alberta, Spirit Lake, Quebec, and Kapuskasing, Ontario. Most were placed by the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association and its supporters. On August 24, 2005, Prime Minister Paul Martin recognized the Ukrainian Canadian internment as a "dark chapter" in Canadian history, and pledged $2.5 million to fund memorials and educational exhibits although that funding was never provided.
On May 9, 2008, following the 2005 passage of Inky Mark's Bill C-331, the Government of Canada, under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, established a $10 million fund following several months of negotiation with the Ukrainian Canadian community's representatives, including the UCCLA, Ukrainian Canadian Congress and Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko, establishing the Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund. The Endowment Council of the CFWWIRF uses the interest earned on that amount to fund projects that commemorate the experience of Ukrainians and other Europeans interned between 1914 and 1920. The funds are held in trust by the Shevchenko Foundation. Amongst the commemorative projects funded by the Endowment Council was the unveiling, simultaneously across Canada, of 115 bilingual plaques on August 24, 2014, recalling the 100th anniversary of the first implementation of the War Measures Act. This was known as Project "Сто", and organized by the UCCLA.
Second wave: Settlers, workers and professionals, 1923–1939
In 1923, the Canadian government modified the Immigration Act to allow former subjects of the Austrian Empire to once again enter Canada – and Ukrainian immigration started anew. Ukrainians from western Volhynia – the Polesie and Wołyń Voivodeships, and southern Bessarabia – also known as the Budjak, joined a new wave of emigrants from Polish-governed Galicia and Romanian-governed Bukovina. Around 70,000 Ukrainians from Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia arrived in Canada from 1923 to September 1939, although the flow decreased severely after 1930 due to the Great Depression.Relatively little farmland remained unclaimed – the majority in the Peace River region of northwestern Alberta – and less than half of this group settled as farmers in the Prairie provinces. The majority became workers in the growing industrial centres of southern Ontario, the Montreal region and the Eastern Townships of Quebec; the mines, smelters and forests of northern Ontario; and the small heavy industries of urban western Canada. A few Ukrainian professionals and intellectuals were accepted into Canada at this time; they later became leaders in the Ukrainian Canadian community.
The second wave was heavily influenced by the struggle for Ukrainian independence during the Russian Civil War, and established two competing fraternal / benevolent organizations in Canada: the United Hetman Organization in 1934 – which supported the idea of a Ukrainian "Cossack kingdom" led by Pavlo Skoropadskyi; and the rival Ukrainian National Federation in 1932 – which supported the idea of an independent Ukrainian republic and politically supported the armed Ukrainian nationalist insurgency in Polish-occupied Western Ukraine. The UHO ceased to exist by 1960, while the UNF continued to expand and became the largest and most influential Ukrainian organization in Canada, spearheading the creation of the coordinating Ukrainian Canadian Committee during World War II.