Remembering

By Walter Kish

This past weekend I attended the 80^th Anniversary of the Striletska Hromada, or the Ukrainian War Veterans Association of Canada as it is known in English.  The organization is one of the oldest Ukrainian organizations in Canada, and the progenitor of the whole UNF system. 

The UWVA was formed in 1928 by Ukrainian veterans who had fought in the liberation struggles that ensued subsequent to the Bolshevik Revolution and the collapse of the Tsarist Russian Empire.  Many of them had been conscripts in the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First World War, who subsequently joined the armed forces of either the newly formed Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) or the Ukrainian Galician Army that fought against the Poles in Western Ukraine, and who were commonly known as the Sichovi striltsi or “Forest Riflemen”. 

Unfortunately, Ukraine was quickly carved up between the Poles on the one side and the Bolshevik Soviets on the other, and many of these veterans fled to the West, settling in the distant land of Canada.  There they formed the Striletska Hromada.  Following the Second World War, they were joined by a new wave of veterans and partisans from the ranks of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the Ukrainian Division “Halychyna”. 

In many ways, their raison d’tre and activities are quite similar to the Royal Canadian Legion to which my father belonged for many years when he was still alive.  He too had at one time been a soldier, but in the Canadian Army, serving on many of the battlegrounds of Europe during World War II.  Like many veterans he was conflicted by the warrior experience. On the one hand, he was fiercely proud of having done his duty and fought for what he believed was right; on the other hand, the brutality and inhumanity of war leaves deep scars that seldom truly heal.  Though he was never at a loss for stories of his time in the army, they always stopped short of the serious and painful details of the death and destruction that he had witnessed.  Despite my youthful prodding, he would sigh and tell me that there were things that he had seen that he wished I would never know, never mind experience.

I still recall as young boy, how every November 11 he would put on his Legion blazer and beret and march in the Remembrance Day Parade.  Once the speeches and services were done and the crowds had dispersed, these former warriors would congregate at the Legion Hall and share their stories and experiences from a time when they as ordinary men had been asked to accomplish extraordinary things.  For many days afterwards he would be quieter and more reflective than usual, his thoughts lost in a world that I would never know.

In retrospect, I suspect that my father would probably have considered his sacrifices on the battlefield a success, since my generation was likely the first in history to never have had to fight in a war.  There was never a time in Ukrainian history when men did not have to go to war.  Even in the shorter lifespan of Canada’s history, virtually every generation of Canadians had been called at one time or another to the field of battle. 

For my generation born in the Fifties, war was something that happened elsewhere.  I have never had to bear arms or serve in the armed forces.  While the Canadian Army has been involved in various peacekeeping operations over the past fifty years, Canada has managed to avoid the major conflicts that have beset many of our neighbours and allies. I have been truly blessed to have been able to live all of my life in peace and relative prosperity.  I have never had to fire a gun in anger at my fellow man.

For that I am immensely grateful to all those generations of warriors who did not have that same good fortune, who had to put their lives on the line to try and ensure a better future for their descendants.  It is because of them that Canada is one of the finest countries in the world to live in.  It is because of them that Ukraine is now free and Ukrainian, and despite its current troubles, now has a real future to look forward to.

I salute them all – the Canadian heroes of Vimy Ridge, the Third Canadian Infantry Division that stormed Juno Beach on D-Day, the Striltsi who fought the Bolsheviks after the Revolution, the thousands of volunteers of the Halychyna Divisions who died at the Battle of Brody, the partisans that battled the NKVD well into the 1950s despite impossible odds, and the young Canadians who are currently fighting in Afghanistan. So long as there is evil in the world, we will always have need of such heroes. You have my deep respect and gratitude.