A Different Wave

By Volodymyr Kish

Next year marks the 120^th anniversary of the coming of the first Ukrainian immigrants to Canada.  Over that time, there have been four major immigration waves of Ukrainians that have settled in this fair land, and it would be fair to say that they were all distinctive in terms of their makeup, their motivations for coming here and the impact that they have had on the existing Ukrainian communities as well as the broader Canadian society.

To summarize and provide the historical context, the first and largest wave which came between 1891 and the outbreak of World War I, consisted mostly of minimally educated peasantry that sought to escape the poverty and limited opportunities that existed in the western regions of Ukraine, then under the dominations of the Poles and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

The second wave that came during the 1920’s, were escaping the turmoil that followed the Bolshevik Revolution, the collapse of the Russian Tsarist Empire and the failed attempt by Ukrainian nationalists to establish an independent Ukraine.  These immigrants were generally better educated and more politically motivated, many of them having taken part in the various armed struggles to liberate Ukraine between 1917 and 1922. 

The third wave that came in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s had two elements – the largest being young Ukrainians who had been taken into forced labour into Germany during World War II and who found themselves refugees in the DP (Displaced Persons) camps after the war, and a smaller group that had formed the core of the radicalized political and military underground that had fought both the Germans and the Communists during the war. 

The fourth and latest wave consists of Ukrainians that have come to Canada since 1991 when Ukraine became independent.  The majority of this last wave tend to be highly educated professionals seeking better job opportunities and a “Western” life-style and are probably the least “politically” involved or interested of all the waves of Ukrainian immigration.

Each wave had its own distinctive impact on Ukrainian organizational life in Canada.  The first was primarily concerned with setting up churches and schools to promote Ukrainian community life in their new found homes.  The second wave was the first to organize political organizations as well as develop initiatives and groups such as Prosvita societies for promoting Ukrainian arts and culture.  The third wave was highly politicized and was responsible for a dramatic spurt in organizational expansion, primarily centred around the two dominant and competing nationalist ideologies spawned by the Melnykivtsi and the Banderivtsi movements that arose during the liberation struggles of the 1940’s in Ukraine.  The last wave, with a few exceptions, has generally had little impact on the established Ukrainian community in Canada.  In fact, a large number of these have come from Central or Eastern Ukraine, speak more Russian than Ukrainian, and many in fact have no strong motivation to maintain or preserve a Ukrainian identity.

There are now very few if any people left from the first two waves, and the remnants of the third are shrinking rapidly with each passing year.  This trend, combined with the fact that the latest fourth wave is not likely to have anywhere near the impact the first three waves had on the existing Ukrainian community in Canada, creates a major challenge for the future of Ukrainian organizational life in this country.  In effect, if there is to be a future, it must depend on the involvement of the six generations of Ukrainians that have now been born here since those first immigrants came to these shores. 

What has become clear over the past several decades is that the vast majority of these million plus Canadian-born Ukrainians have assimilated comfortably into the Canadian mainstream and have but a passing acquaintance or interest in their cultural or ethnic heritage.  Those Ukrainian organizations that are still alive and wish to remain so for the long-term future must find ways of targeting this large mass of “prodigal” sons and daughters and reawaken their interest in their roots. 

Though the task may appear to be daunting, they have a number of advantages our predecessors didn’t have.  Ukraine is now independent and accessible, not only from a travel perspective, but also in the vast mass of information that is now available over the Internet and the various electronic media.  Since independence, a vast torrent of interesting historical, geographic and cultural material has become available that we never had before.  With instant and universal multi-media electronic communications channels now widely available, the mechanisms are also now in place to easily reach out to all these people.  The real challenge is developing the right message and the right programs that will tweak the interest and involvement of these younger generations of Ukrainian Canadians.  That is what the focus of the Ukrainian organizational community should be.