DISCUSSION PAPER
The Ukrainian Canadian community on the eve of the new millennium
by John Boyd
PART I
Prior to and during the 1991 centennial of Ukrainian immigration in Canada, much was written about the history of the Ukrainian Canadian community in articles, memoranda and books. Not very much attention, however, has been given to how assimilation has affected the community over the years, especially in the latter part of this century, and what that portends for it in the new millennium.
All the ethnic groups that came to Canada after the French, English, Scottish and Irish, have been subjected to the assimilation process. That process has taken on different forms at different times. For the first wave of Ukrainian immigrants, who came to Canada between 1891 and the start of World War I, that process was anything but normal or tranquil. From the very start they were the victims of bigotry, prejudice and outright discrimination by a substantial part of the Canadian population.
There was a period, too, just prior to the war, when government officials, educators and church leaders sought to impose a policy of forced assimilation and Canadianization on them, and during the war thousands of them were wrongly interned as "enemy aliens." The new immigrants resisted and fought back against these policies, unfortunately with little success.
All of these experiences have been well documented and recorded by writers among those early immigrants, as well as by later historians.
While the new immigrants tried from the very beginning to adapt to life in the new land, they also sought ways to resist assimilation and counteract the discrimination. Very soon after their arrival they founded churches and reading clubs where they could be together "with their own," speak their own language, read (or have read to them) the works of Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko and other Ukrainian writers, and generally socialize, relax after their days of hard labor and have fun. They organized choirs and drama groups. They subscribed to papers from the old country to find out what was happening "back home" and later founded their own Ukrainian newspapers and published their own books.
Speakers at meetings, concerts and banquets informed their audiences, and the newspapers informed their readers, about what was happening in the Ukrainian community, as well as in Canada and the world.
They also set up a network of Ukrainian children's schools, where their offspring were taught how to read and write Ukrainian and were introduced to Ukrainian music, songs and folk dances, and in some cases Ukrainian literature and history. At weddings and banquets children joined with their parents in singing the traditional songs.
Continuation of prejudice
Although the earlier policy of "Canadianization" was eventually abandoned, the bigotry, prejudice and discrimination, both within the government bureaucracy and among the general public, continued throughout the 1920s and 1930s; though more subtle in form they were even more intensive and pervasive. This had a particularly negative effect in those earlier decades on the first generation of the Canadian-born. Although the immigrant parents resented the prejudice and discrimination they encountered, most of them "learned to live with it," to accept it reluctantly as "their lot in life" in this country.
Their Canadian-born children, however, did not. After all, they went to the same schools as the other children, learned the English language, and many even excelled in their studies. But they were made to feel uncomfortable with their "foreign" names, and the customs and lifestyles of their parents. Therefore, they were not fully accepted in society. They were made to feel like second-class citizens, much as the children of visible minorities are often made to feel today. For many it left a mark that lasted for the rest of their lives.
[Author's Note: I am of that generation. I was born in Edmonton on January 26, 1913. My maternal grandfather, Todor Popowich, came to Canada in 1900, when my mother was 6 years old. He settled on a 160-acre homestead, near what is now the town of Willingdon, and lived there all his life. My father, Ivan Boychuk, came in 1908 at the age of 23; he worked for the first four years as a coal-miner in Hosmer, British Columbia.]
It was during those earlier decades that many Canadians of Ukrainian origin changed their names; some for business or professional reasons, but most of them hoped it would be easier to find a job.
[Author's note: I changed mine in 1933, at the age of 20.]
Thus a Vasyl Andrusyshyn became Bill Andrews, or an Ivan Chorney took the name John Black, while some went for a total change, and so a Stepan Zradowsky became Steve Hill, a Mykhailo Pesklyvec became James Larkin, and so on. Young women of Ukrainian origin who married husbands with names that sounded less "foreign" found a more serendipitous "solution" to this problem.
Some had their first experience with prejudice while still in elementary school, as a result of which they changed their good Ukrainian first names to spare themselves the taunting of their classmates, and in some cases of their teachers. Boys with names like Myroslav, Volodymyr, Ihor or Taras, and girls with names like Vasylyna, Nastasia or Oksana, took on names that were more acceptable by the general community. The irony is that today's generation, especially girls and young women, love to have some of these "different" and "exotic" names.
This blatant prejudice and discrimination lasted through the first four decades of the century, until World War II, after which it subsided a great deal, at least toward the older, more established ethnic groups. It continued, however, against people of the visible minorities, the Chinese, Japanese, Pakistanis, Filipinos, Jamaicans, Arabs, etc. While, on the whole, fewer Canadians are showing bigotry and prejudice against minorities than in the past, ironically and sadly, these include not a few young Canadians of Ukrainian origin, who ignore or are unaware of the fact that the same attitude was once shown towards their immigrant grandparents - 75 and 100 years ago.
The post-war years
The postwar generation of Canadian-born Ukrainians, who became part of the so-called "baby boom" generation, found a totally different atmosphere from the one in which their parents and grandparents lived. Many Ukrainian Canadians have since made a name for themselves, as scientists, writers, teachers, physicians, lawyers or leaders in business. Many have been elected to federal, political and municipal offices; several became cabinet ministers in both federal and provincial governments, one was for many years a provincial ombudsman, one became a provincial premier and one a governor general.
In the more recent decades, ethnic names have become totally acceptable among most Canadians, especially the very young. So reading or hearing about a governor-general named Ramon Hnatyshyn, a TV producer named Slawko Klymkiw, or a soprano named Joanne Kolomyjec doesn't even raise an eyebrow among young Canadians today, as it most certainly would have in generations past. In sports, "foreign" names have been accepted since as far back as the mid-1920s.
Further changes in the attitude of many Canadians toward ethnic groups took place after 1971, when the federal and provincial governments adopted specific policies on multiculturalism. While these policies have not been totally successful, in that they have not met the needs of all immigrants - especially the more recent immigrants and those of the "visible minorities" - they have helped some of the older and more established ethnic groups, like the Ukrainians, to win greater recognition and acceptance as integral members of Canadian society.
They have not, however, done much to help these groups pass on their heritage to the very young. In this respect, these ethnic groups are strictly on their own.
The left vs. the right
One of the tragedies of history is that the Ukrainian community in Canada has been divided through all the past 100 years into two hostile camps: the "left" and the "right."
When the first new immigrants came to Canada at the turn of the century, they were divided in their outlook from the very beginning. Those who were religious founded their own churches and secular clubs and societies, which at first were not very political, but in time became distinctly right-wing. Those who were non-believers formed socialist and radical societies and secular cultural societies and clubs with decidedly left-wing views and policies.
This right-left split in the new community became even deeper after the 1917 revolution in the Russian tsarist empire, especially after 1922, with the establishment of a Soviet regime in Ukraine. It resulted in an even deeper division in the Ukrainian Canadian community, a division that continued through all the decades and persists, especially with the older, immigrant sector of the community, to this day.
Those in the "right-wing" sector of the community founded a variety of organizations with different policies, programs and objectives over which they often had sharp disagreements, but they were always united in their opposition to the Soviet regime in Ukraine and to any communist, socialist or small "l" liberal policies or ideas.
Those in the "left-wing" sector of the community, who in the first two decades belonged to various socialist groups and parties, in 1918 founded a secular cultural organization, called the Ukrainian Labor-Farmer Temple Association (ULFTA), and in 1922 a benefit organization, the Workers Benevolent Association (WBA).
In 1921, when the Communist Party of Canada was born, the leaders of these Ukrainian organizations were among the most active in launching it and encouraged a substantial number of their members to join. In time, this made it possible for the party to influence and eventually control and direct the policies of these organizations, which it did for most of their history.
Through all the decades, both the right and left sectors of the community have been served by their own newspapers.
The late 1920s and early 1930s saw a new wave of some 70,000 Ukrainian immigrants arrive in Canada. They came largely from the same regions as did the first wave: from Halychyna and Bukovyna. Whereas the immigrants who came at the turn of the century fled chiefly from economic and national oppression by the Austro-Hungarian regime, these new immigrants fled from similar, if not harsher, oppression by the Polish and Romanian occupiers of their lands.
However many of them were also political refugees, having taken part in bitter struggles against that oppression. Many of these immigrants joined various existing organizations and gave them an added impetus. Those who were anti-Soviet joined the right-wing organizations, but many joined the left. Indeed, the latter helped form a new organization, the Association to Aid the Liberation Movement in Western Ukraine, which existed up to 1939, when, under the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the western Ukrainian regions became part of Soviet Ukraine.
After the ULFTA was banned by the federal organization as a "subversive" organization, it was succeeded by the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians (AUUC).
John Boyd is a resident of Toronto.
His surname was Boychuk, but, as he notes in his paper, he changed it in 1933, at the age of 20, to Boyd. In his earlier years, he was a Communist and an active member in Ukrainian pro-Communist organizations - most of those years as an editor.
He left the Communist Party in 1968, immediately after the Soviet armed forces invaded Czecho-Slovakia, where he lived briefly at the time as a correspondent. For him, he explains, this was the last straw after a long period of disappointment and disillusionment in the policies and practices of the Soviet regime and the Communist movement. He adds that he finally realized (somewhat late, he admits) that "these were an utter distortion and betrayal of the ideals of a just and compassionate world to which I had naively dedicated myself in my youth."
A few years later, in the early 1970s, he became persona non grata with the leaders of the left-wing Ukrainian organizations for critical remarks he made about them. He has not been a member of these organizations since, but he did agree, at the personal request of Peter Krawchuk, to edit the latter's book, "Our History: The Ukrainian Labour-Farmer Movement 1907-1991."
Now, in what he calls his "vintage years" (he is 85), he is very concerned that young people of Ukrainian origin are rapidly losing touch with their cultural heritage. That prompted him to produce this paper, in the hope that it will stimulate some discussion on the subject.
PART I
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, July 19, 1998, No. 29, Vol. LXVI
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