They Dithered Until She Died

By Lubomyr Luciuk

She did not make it easy for them. The last known survivor of Canada’s first national internment operations, Mary Manko Haskett, lived to be almost 99. She passed away peacefully last week.

We met because of what she endured as a child. Mary was 6 years old when she was herded into a railway car, then transported with the rest of her family into Quebec’s Abitibi region to be interned as an “enemy alien” in the Spirit Lake concentration camp. Her younger sister, Nellie, perished there. Two Canadian kids, one dying, the other living, jailed not because of anything they did but only because their parents were lured to this Dominion with promises of freedom. Instead, when the First World War broke out, the Mankos lost nearly everything, most devastatingly their youngest child.

During the Second World War, Ottawa’s men reconsidered the loyalty of Ukrainian Canadians but, save for a few Stalinists who got what they deserved, large scale imprisonment became the rack of another minority, Japanese Canadians rounded up under the very same War Measures Act first deployed in the Great War. Until just a few years ago, most Establishment historians, politicians and journalists, if they even referred to those imprisoned between 1914 and 1920, imprecisely called them Germans, Austrians and Turks, indifferent to who the internees actually were. As for those who had their wealth confiscated, did heavy labour for the profit of their jailers and suffered other state-sanctioned indignities, including disenfranchisement, the victimized stayed silent. You would not want others to know you were once, officially, an “enemy alien,” particularly not in wartime. Ironically, the internees collaborated in the repression of the historical memory of what was done to them.

While doing graduate research in Kingston, Ontario, I interviewed Nykola Sakaliuk, who had been held at Fort Henry, then Petawawa, and, finally, at the Kapuskasing internment camp. Intrigued by this little-known episode in our nation’s history, a colleague and I penned an opinion-editorial published in The Globe and Mail, October 28, 1988, “And who says time heals all?” Soon after, Mary found me.

I learned how; when she finally dared to speak out about what happened, even her own children doubted her. They were not being mean. There were no books about Canada’s first national internment operations then. The very name, Spirit Lake, had long since vanished from Canadian atlases, renamed Lac Beauchamp. We were never taught about the internment operations in school or at home. It was a blank page in Canadian history.

But when the Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement was signed, in 1998, providing an official apology, tax-free compensation payments to Japanese Canadian internees, and many millions of dollars for a community-based endowment fund, I asked Mary what she wanted, given this welcome precedent. She said no apology was necessary, just an acknowledgement of what occurred. And she wanted plaques and interpretive panels at the 24 internment camp sites, teaching materials for high schools and universities, internee cemeteries restored and other commemorative projects initiated, all to be paid for by calculating and recovering the present-day value of the internees’ forced labour and confiscated wealth. She hoped such measures would ensure that no other Canadian ethnic, religious or racial minority ever suffers as Ukrainian Canadians once did. A devout Catholic, so very forgiving, she insisted this cause must be about memory, not money. We have, ever since, honoured her wishes.

Over the years, there were moments when we thought justice would soon be done.  On June 8, 1993, the then Leader of the Official Opposition, the Honourable Jean Chretien, wrote: “The Liberal Party…supports your efforts to secure the redress of Ukrainian-Canadians’ claims arising from their internment and loss of freedoms during the First World War ... we will continue to monitor the situation closely and seek to ensure that the government honours its promise.” Alas, after “dat little guy from Shawinigan” became Prime Minister, he broke his promise.

Another former Leader of the Opposition, the Honourable Stephen Harper, titillated also. Rising in the House on March 24, 2005, to support Bill C 331 –The Ukrainian Canadian Restitution Act, he said: “The last remaining survivor of these internment operations, Mary Haskett, is still alive. She will be turning 97 this summer. I sincerely hope that she will live to see an official reconciliation of this past injustice.” Two years have gone by but the “new government of Canada” has done nothing to fulfill Mr. Harper’s promise. He can ask his bureaucrats why. Fortunately, Royal Assent was given to Inky Mark’s Bill C 331, November 25, 2005. That law obliges the government to negotiate a settlement with the Ukrainian Canadian community’s designated representatives, as the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney, and reaffirmed February 17, 2007.The Prime Minister’s Office should take note: we are ready to begin negotiations, and today is better than tomorrow, given that we have been waiting for 20 years.

Mary prayed the injustice done to her and so many others would be addressed while she could still bear witness to an honourable reconciliation. Who denied her that solace? I don’t know. But I do know they should be ashamed of themselves.

 Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk is a director of research with the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (www.uccla.ca)