BOOK REVIEW: New book for children tells of internment (11/03/96)

BOOK REVIEW: New book for children tells of internment

by Lubomyr Luciuk

KINGSTON - For an author, having one's work appreciated is always a pleasure. More satisfying is the feeling a writer gets upon discovering that an even-more creative person has built upon one's labors, crafting a tale meriting - indeed already receiving - national praise. So it was with relish that I delved into Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch's first children's book, "Silver Threads." For there's a thread that binds her to me. To Kingston. To work that I have done here and to people I have met over the past decade as I studied an episode of Canadian history that, in a way, began right here in our city, at Fort Henry.

It was not at all hard for me to become enthralled, immediately, with "Silver Threads." The same will be true for just about anyone. Striking, full-color graphics by renowned illustrator Michael Martchenko transport readers - child and adult alike - through the trying yet ultimately triumphant story of a young Ukrainian immigrant couple's first years in Canada.

Effortlessly, one enters the world of Anna and Ivan, prairie sod-busters, the salt of the earth, strangers within our gates, who have come to this New World searching for freedom and free land, escaping the tyranny of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's domination of their Old World homeland. We see them cross the mighty Atlantic, tears in their eyes as they leave their country. We watch as they cross Canada's steppes and build themselves a one-room, sod-roofed house in the wilderness. Then comes the hard work of clearing the bush and planting their first small crop of wheat. Anna pushes and Ivan pulls their plow. But when they shed tears, now they cry out of pride, not sorrow.

These are good people, we learn, generous with what little they have, sharing their meager supplies even with a small, black spider, a creature we saw before in their Bukovynian village. It joined them in their migration to these new lands, nestling down in their home, there to spin its threads of silver.

Then comes the war: the first world war, the "great war for civilization." Ivan insists that he will fight for his adopted homeland - "Canada is my country now!" Like hundreds of other Ukrainian Canadians he tries to enlist. He is not welcomed. Instead, wrists shackled, Ivan is dragged away, one of thousands of "enemy aliens" soon to become a slave laborer in a Canadian concentration camp, Anna weeps in fear and anguish. Ivan's tears are of humiliation and betrayal.

Will he ever return? Anna does not know. But she heeds her husband's final plea and returns home to protect their land against all the odds. Keeping her company during a long and lonely vigil is the spider, its silvery web sparkling in the light, a few bread crumbs always spread before it, even as Anna goes hungry. Ultimately, happily, Anna's pluck, and her magical spider, prevail over injustice - and do so on the very day when mankind celebrates the birth of new hope and liberation from evil, Christmas.

Eight years ago Ms. Skrypuch opened The Globe and Mail and read "And who says time heals all?" - an article in which I described the indignities done to thousands of Ukrainians and other East Europeans imprisoned during Canada's first national internment operations. They had done nothing wrong. They were not disloyal. Their only fault was that they had emigrated from lands then under Austro-Hungarian occupation. Mislabeled as "Austrians," these men, women and children - some Canadian-born, others naturalized British subjects - lost their freedom, had valuables and properties confiscated (some of that wealth has never been returned), were disenfranchised, censured and exposed to state-sanctioned repression.

Some went mad. Others died of injuries, exposure and disease. Some killed themselves. All suffered what an editorialist in The Daily British Whig (today's Whig-Standard) described as a "national humiliation." He sensed that "the 'alleged' foreigners and hitherto 'naturalized' Canadians" who probably bear their reproach meekly but claimed that "they will have sown in their hearts the seeds of a bitterness that can never be extirpated." Presciently he added, "the man whose honor has been mistrusted" will remember it and, sooner or later, "it will have to be atoned for."

Ms. Skrypuch's grandfather was one of those men. When she discovered that, she began striving to recover his tale. She began to write. That is how and why we have "Silver Threads" today.

Another woman read her newspaper that day eight years ago and remembered what was done to her. Mary Manko Haskett, Montreal-born, was 8 years old when they came and took her and her parents and locked them up in the Spirit Lake camp, near today's Amos, Quebec. Her younger sister, Nellie, perished there. Mary contacted me. No one else had ever believed her story. Even her own children had doubted their mother's tale about being interned in Canada. Why, they asked, was there nothing about that in any of their history books? And where was Spirit Lake anyway? It no longer appears in any Canadian atlas. My article changed her children's minds. Now they know. And Mary's grandchildren will know, too. Thanks to Ms. Skrypuch.

Someone else also was paying attention. In September 1991, Peter Milliken, our local member of Parliament, petitioned for an official acknowledgment of this injustice, asked that Parks Canada place historical plaques at all 24 internment camp sites, and called upon the government of Canada to negotiate redress with the Ukrainian Canadian community. His motion was passed, unanimously, in the House of Commons. In October 1993, Jean Chrétien even promised that the Ukrainian Canadian community's requests would receive favorable consideration, after - the Liberals were elected, of course.

Like the internment operations, those commitments are now history (that is, forgotten). This government, like the one before it, has not kept its promises. The trilingual historical plaques and statues placed at some internment camp sites have been put up largely at the expense of the Ukrainian Canadian community and its friends. The first were consecrated on August 4, 1994, here in Kingston, at Fort Henry, Canada's first permanent internment camp. Other markers stand in Kapuskasing, at Castle Mountain and Cave and Basin in Banff, in Jasper National Park and soon, we hope, in Winnipeg, Brandon, Vernon, Spirit Lake and perhaps elsewhere.

When Ottawa was asked for a modest grant to pay for a commemorative plaque at Spirit Lake, the minister responsible for the Status of Women and Multiculturalism, Sheila Finestone, prevaricated. Even though the last two known survivors of these internment operations, both ethnic women, both Montreal-born, were needlessly incarcerated at Spirit Lake, a minister presumably charged with advancing women's rights and promoting a better understanding of our national heritage was not at all interested in Mary Haskett and Stefania Mielniczuk, or their story. Not that the current minister, Dr. Hedy Fry, is any better. It seems Ukrainian Canadian women can't be victims of racism and state repression.

As for Dr. Fry's boss, minister of Canadian Heritage Sheila Copps has never even bothered to take a few minutes to meet with the Hamilton-based Mrs. Haskett. Doing something more glamorous, like spending the taxpayers' millions handing out Canadian flags to promote national unity, is far more appealing. Remembering what some Canadians were forced to pay to become Canadians is troubling, inconvenient, unhappy.

Now in a seniors' home, Mrs. Haskett may never get her chance to speak directly to those who have so adroitly if ignobly ignored her cry for justice. She knows that. But she is not cowed by their antics. In 1994 she wrote that, even if those who ignore her message manage to outlive her, they will not outlast the testament she has left about what was done to the Manko family. Her children now know the truth. They are becoming "second-generation survivors" of the Canadian concentration camps. And their children's children will know. We've put her testimony on the World Wide Web. It can't be erased. And, as the government has learned, the campaign for acknowledgment and restitution won't be ignored.

Although I am sad that men like Mykola Sakaliuk, who was interned in Fort Henry, later in Petawawa and Kapuskasing, and who was the first internee I met, did not live to hold "Silver Threads" in his own hands, at least Mrs. Haskett and Mrs. Mielniczuk have. We made sure of that. And, at the same time, we sent this book to the forked-tongue politicians whose cunning indifference, ignorance and prejudices have now been laid low by a children's book. How appropriate - defeated by wisdom from the mouths of babes.

"Silver Threads" is, first and foremost, a children's book. Anyone can read it and take inspiration from its message of hope, perseverance and faith. But it is much more than just entertainment, a fable. It embodies memory. Its prose and its illustrations intentionally remind. I am quite certain that it will be read nationwide, and will take a rightfully important place on the bookshelves of families and in libraries across the land. Its elegantly simple prose recalls an indignity done to thousands of innocents and yet manages to do so not with bitterness but gently, challenging each of us, regardless of age or heritage, to ask many, seemingly childlike questions.

After the first of the several readings she requested, my young daughter asked: "Daddy, why were those men so bad to people like us?" I had to tell her honestly that I still don't really know. But if "Silver Threads" gets the read that it deserves, by Canadians of many different creeds and colors, many will recommit themselves to ensuring that the calamities which crippled Ukrainian Canadian society so long ago are never suffered by any other Canadian ethnic, religious or racial minority.

That achievement is thanks to women of creative talent like Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch and to women of grit, like Mary Manko Haskett and Stefania Mielniczuk. Their spirit should shame those politicians whose lip service pronouncements on multiculturalism pale before the true-lie brutalities that befell these Canadian pioneers.

Thankfully, Marsha's grandfather survived and quietly told his tale. He planted a seed in the heart and soul of a remarkable new Canadian author, ensuring that someday "Silver Threads" would germinate. I am proud that something I did helped fertilize this growth. For this is a book that every Canadian grade school library should own. It tells a tale which all of us, and our children, and our grandchildren should hear, about a disgraceful chapter in our nation's history that we should never forget. For it must never happen again.

"Silver Threads" (1996, Penguin Canada, ISBN 0-670-86677-6) is in stock in bookstores across Canada. It may be ordered from any book dealer in North America. A limited Ukrainian-language edition (ISBN 1-895380-88-X) may be purchased directly from the Ukrainian Language Education Center, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2E8.

Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk is the author of several books on Canada's Ukrainians and a professor of political geography at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario.