(UCCLA) At 10am on Tuesday, November 5, the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCCLA) will launch the Roll Call Project at the House of Commons in the Charles Lynch Room (Centre Block) in Ottawa.
Over 35,000 postcards will be mailed out to Canadian households identified as having the same or similar surnames to those of over 8,000 European immigrants interned needlessly during Canada’s first national internment operations of 1914-1920.
The project, co-sponsored by the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko, aims to inform Canadians of UCCLA’s ongoing efforts to secure the federal government’s acknowledgment of this injustice and restitution in the form of various educational and commemorative projects.
The Roll Call Project is intended to engage the imagination of Canadians and remind them, whether or not they are descendants of internees, of the importance of safeguarding the civil liberties and human rights of ethnic, religious and racial minorities, particularly in times of domestic and international crisis, said Dr Lubomyr Luciuk, UCCLA’s director of research. The postcard urges Canadians whose family members were (or may have been) interned to contact UCCLA toll free to confirm or add any information they may have to Roll Call, a list of all known internees. It also urges all Canadians to support Bill C-331, the Ukrainian Canadian Restitution Act.
UCCLA has undertaken this project in order to bring to the attention of Canadians a chapter of their countrys history which many still know little or nothing about, said Dr Luciuk. To that end, we encourage all Canadians to contact us if they have any information about their interned relatives and to write to the Right Honourable Prime Minister Jean Chretien, reminding him of his 1993 promise to support redress to the Ukrainian Canadian community. Doing so now would enable him to forge a very positive part of his legacy, much as Prime Minister Brian Mulroney did at the end of his tenure in office, by offering our fellow Japanese Canadians a redress settlement, thus establishing the precedent for our efforts.
Former internees or descendants of internees can call 1-877-344-4434 toll free and add their information to Roll Call. To review the Roll Call list and Bill C-331 or other information about Canada’s first national internment operations visit www.uccla.ca