Ukrainian Canadians: 200 Years of History – Four Waves of Immigration

By Andrew Gregorovich

The following excerpt is the continuation of a lecture delivered by Andrew Gregorovich at St. Vladimir Institute, Toronto, in October 2011 in celebration of Ukrainian settlement in Canada. The excerpt printed in Issue 23 was on the War of 1812, and the Ukrainian community’s pre-history in North America before 1891 and the start of mass immigration to Canada.

There have been four waves of Ukrainian immigration to Canada. Each succeeding wave has had a huge advantage from the achievements of the previous wave(s). The First Wave (1891-1914) of Ukrainians included mostly farmers seeking land and freedom of opportunity for their children.

In the First Wave period some 180,000 Ukrainians came to Canada, mostly from the territory of Ukraine which was then under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and some from the Russian Empire.  The First Wave was basically an economic immigration and it was a question of physical survival. The Ukrainian farmers were suffering because their farms were getting smaller with every generation dividing them for children into plots insufficient to survive on. For example, in the district of Skalat, one third of the farms were 1.5 acres when it was estimated that a family needed 14 acres to make a decent living. In 1893, the 4,493 landlords had 76.2% of the lands in average farms of 1,700 acres. The 1,623,837 Ukrainian farm families owned 23.8 % of the land or an average of 6.2 acres per family. Canada offered 160 acres for $10 which was like gold for a Ukrainian farmer with only 1.5 acres. My ancestors came to Canada in April 1899 to provide opportunity for their children. Ukrainians established a bloc settlement of 5,000 square miles centered on Vegreville, Alberta and other bloc settlements through Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, over 5,000 Ukrainian men, and some women and children (including some born in Canada), were interned by the Government of Canada as “enemy aliens” in 24 concentration camps across Canada.  This was because they came from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and had Austrian passports. In the Rockies these Ukrainians were used as forced labour to build Banff National Park.  Today, there is a monument in the Park as a memorial to these men.  In spite of this treatment about 10,000 Ukrainians joined the Canadian Armed Forces in WWI. Some of them even changed their names from Ukrainian to British in order to enlist. One of them, Canadian hero Filip Konowal was given the highest award, the Victoria Cross, by King George V at Buckingham Palace. Konowal has a prominent exhibit in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

Incidentally, every Victoria Cross medal is made from the bronze of cannons captured by the British Army in the Crimean War 1853-56 in Ukraine. In front of the Ontario Legislature there are two cannons captured in Crimea, Ukraine which were a gift from Queen Victoria. Quebec City also has two similar cannons.

The Second Wave (1919-1939) brought 70,000 people to Canada who had experienced life in an independent Ukraine (1918 to 1920). They were better educated and many were active Ukrainian patriots. In 1926, American-born Michael Luchkovich was elected the first Ukrainian Canadian in Parliament. My father Alexander Gregorovich, a fellow school teacher, was the campaign manager for Luchkovich. In Parliament Luchkovich spoke about the Holodomor Famine Genocide of 1933 and about the “Polish Pacification” attack on Ukrainians. In this wave the Ukrainian churches, both Ukrainian Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox were established and some major organizations.

During World War II 1939-45, about 40,000 Ukrainian Canadians served in the Canadian Armed Forces.  Some played a special role.  For example, Stephen Pawluk was an electronics expert who was a technician in England working on radar in 1939 before the War started.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the spread of Communism in Canada was a threat that was largely checked by patriotic Ukrainian Canadians aware of the Communist menace to democracy from events in Ukraine and Europe. The main struggle against the Communists was conducted by the Ukrainian National Federation founded July 1932 with my father Alexander Gregorovich as [its] first National President. In 6 years he established 50 UNF Branches across Canada.

In 1939, UNF Saskatoon established the first Ukrainian credit union in Canada, Nova Hromada. Today, the two largest Ukrainian credit unions are the Ukrainian Credit Union (Ltd.) [founded by UNF Toronto] and the League of Ukrainian Canadians’ Buduchnist.

The UNF has published the important newspaper The New Pathway (Novy Shliakh) since 1930. The Ukrainian Canadian Congress, a national umbrella body, representing the majority of organized Ukrainian Canadians, was founded in 1940.

World War II interrupted immigration. The German occupation of Ukraine 1941-44 led to eight million Ukrainian victims, the most of any European country or nationality. About 2.5 million Ukrainians were taken as Ostarbeiters, or slave “East Workers”, to work in the German war effort.  The result was that at the end of the War in 1945, many Ukrainians were in Germany and other countries and they were placed in Displaced Person (DP) Camps.

Communists and members of the Jewish community opposed post-war Ukrainian immigration to Canada, especially members of the [German] military Waffen SS [1^st Ukrainian] Division. However, Member of Parliament Anthony Hlynka and the Ukrainian community were able to influence Parliament and the government to welcome all Ukrainian immigration.

In 1957, Andrew Melnyk, head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, was invited to come to Canada as a speaker. A Jewish Canadian newspaper accused Melnyk of being a Nazi war criminal and opposed his visit. However, it was proven that Melnyk was in a German prison during the War and was not a Nazi. The newspaper had to retract its accusation.

The Deschesnes Commission (1985-88) was established by the Canadian government to investigate a list of 600 people, mostly Ukrainians, as Nazi war criminals. The Civil Liberties Commission of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress headed by John Gregorovich hired a brilliant lawyer, John Sopinka, and a final (and a secret ) report cleared the entire list with but a few exceptions mostly not Ukrainians. Sopinka was opposed by three Jewish lawyers, but he was successful in ending the Nazi “witch hunt” in the Ukrainian community. The Canadian Minister of Justice, Ray Hnatyshyn, later Governor General of Canada, refused to help the Ukrainian community during the Deschesnes Commission. The John Sopinka Court House in Hamilton was opened in 1999 and named in honour of this brilliant Ukrainian Canadian lawyer.

The Third Wave (1945-1959) of immigration [is comprised of] 35,000 people who came from Europe directly to Canada, or who later chose to come to Canada after [living in] the USA, Australia, the United Kingdom and South America. The Third Wave was largely a political one and included many highly educated people. It established organizations like the League of Ukrainian Canadians and Ukrainian Echo (Homin Ukrainy) newspaper.

On August 24, 1991, Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union. This led to the [subsequent] smaller Fourth Wave of Ukrainian immigration to Canada. [Today], it is mainly a group that has sought economic opportunity. Although it is highly educated, including computer programmers and engineers, it has a lesser Ukrainian patriotic spirit compared to previous waves. Many of these Ukrainians speak Russian rather than Ukrainian.

Andrew Gregorovich is a Librarian Emeritus of the University of Toronto. Currently, he is President of the Taras Shevchenko Museum in Toronto, and President of the Ukrainian Librarians Association. He is also former Executive Director of the Ukrainian Canadian Research & Documentation Centre, former Chairman of the Toronto Historical Board, and a past President of the Ontario Library Association.

The last in a series of excerpts of Andrew Gregorovich’s lecture Ukrainian Canadians: 200 Years of History … will appear later this summer as the year celebrating the 120^th Anniversary of Ukrainian Settlement in Canada (1891-2011) comes to a close.