Canada's Ukrainian community has reacted with dismay at the recent Canada Post decision to, yet again, refuse to recall Canada's first national internment operations of 1914-20 with a series of commemorative stamps. For the second year in a row, the Stamp Advisory Committee, chaired by the Honourable Andre Ouellet, has not recommended the adoption of the community's proposal that stamps be issued recalling this little-known episode in our national history.

Commenting, Dr Lubomyr Luciuk, director of research for the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, a non-profit, non-partisan educational organization, noted:

" Every year Canada Post issues stamps that are intended to recognize the Canadian experience. We expected that, aside from producing stamps that show birds or landscapes or rural mailboxes or trees in blossom, Canada

Post would respond favourably to the hundreds of letters and postcards it received in support of a series of six stamps recalling the 6 years of Canada's first national internment operations. Innocent Canadians of Ukrainian and other European heritages were unjustly imprisoned in 24 concentration camps across the country and some survivors are still alive today. Given the fact that on June 20, 2000 we will be recalling the 80^th anniversary of the end of the internment measures, and given Canada Post's willingness to issue a stamp recalling a European tragedy, the Holocaust, we are very surprised that no attention is given to remembering a tragedy that befell innocent men, women and children in Canada.

We will, of course, continue to insist that such a series of stamps be produced as part of the reconciliation process that we believe is integral to resolving our community's long-standing campaign for an acknowledgment of this injustice and a restitution of that portion of the internees' looted wealth that remains in the Bank of Canada to this day."

Commenting on behalf of the Ontario Provincial Council of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, its president, Mr. Walter Halchuk, said: " We were very upset to learn of the apparent indifference of Canada Post

and its Stamp Advisory Committee to our request for recognition of a Canadian tragedy. At a time when increasing numbers of Canadians are turning to electronic mail and courier services for their communications needs we would have thought Canada Post would have been more sensitive to the request of one of Canada's major ethnocultural communities. Ukrainian Canadians are deeply disappointed with this state of affairs especially given that this is probably one of the last few chances we would have to recall this unhappy episode while survivors are still with us. How symbolic it would have been to get this done in this Millennium, putting an unfortunate incident in the 20th century behind us in a timely and honourable fashion. That opportunity has now been lost due to the short-sightedness of Canada Post."

For more information please contact:

Dr Lubomyr Luciuk, Director of Research, UCCLA, (613) 546-8364; Mr. Walter Halchuk, President, UCC Ontario Provincial Council, (705)

675-1166