Turning the pages back... December 12, 1895 (12/17/95)

Turning the pages back...

December 12, 1895

The ongoing efforts of Dr. Josef Oleskow (Osyp Oleskiv), a professor of agronomy from Lviv, to redirect the flow of Galician Ukrainian emigration from Brazil to Canada were noted on December 12, 1895, in the Ukrainian American newspaper Svoboda. The article was a reprint of an account Oleskow had submitted to the Lviv daily Dilo. It noted that on November 14, 1895, a public meeting was held in Lviv to discuss the vexing emigration problem. The meeting succeeded in establishing an emigrant aid committee. More importantly, it brought to the fore how bad matters had become and helped to focus public debate about how to deal with the mass of humanity blindly setting off "into the unknown world."

"Emigration fever" ("emigratsiyna hariachka") had gripped Galicia in the early 1890s. The most prominent destination for those abandoning their meager plots was Brazil, which at that time was experiencing a labor shortage in the wake of its abolition of slavery in 1888. Unscrupulous steamship agents had whipped up interest in this South American destination with promises of cheap land and inflated accounts of the comfortable life to be led there. The reality was considerably grimmer.

This state of affairs troubled the idealistic Oleskow. In March 1895, he wrote to the Canadian Department of the Interior requesting information about that country's suitability for mass agricultural emigration and indicating his willingness to go there to survey potential settlement sites. His request was greeted with enthusiasm, for Canada had long been seeking to populate its prairie provinces. Oleskow obtained an endorsement from the Prosvita Society for his fact-finding mission and prepared a brochure, "Pro Vil'ni Zemli" (About Free Lands, published by Prosvita), which provided a detailed account of the suitability of Canada for emigration.

On August 12, Oleskow, accompanied by Ivan Dorundiak (a well-known peasant that the Prosvita Society had recommended join in the tour so that a separate opinion could be offered), arrived in Montreal. He toured mainly in the prairie provinces, but managed also to visit several sites in British Columbia. He was favorably impressed with what he saw and heard. On October 5, 1895, he set sail back to Ukraine from Montreal.

Upon his return Oleskow organized the public meeting mentioned earlier. He also prepared an account of his journey, "O Emigratsiyi" (About Emigration), which he had published in December 1896 by the M. Kachkovsky Society (Prosvita's Russophile rival) in a bid to get his message out to the broadest public. It was a sensation, in effect the "book of the year" in Galicia. The results of Oleskow's efforts soon became clear. On April 30, 1896, the first group of emigrants following his advice arrived in Quebec. They would be followed by thousands upon thousands more in the years to come.

Sources: Kaye, Vladimir J., "Early Ukrainian Settlements in Canada, 1895-1900: Dr. Josef Oleskow's Role in the Settlement of the Canadian Northwest" (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964); Swyripa, Frances and Makuch, Andrij, "Ukrainian Canadian Content in the Newspaper Svoboda, 1893-1904," (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Research Report No. 7, (1985); and Martynowych, Orest, "Ukrainians in Canada: The Formative Period. 1891-1924" (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1991).

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