Statue in Kingston to recall internment of Ukrainians (06/10/01)

Statue in Kingston to recall internment of Ukrainians

KINGSTON, Ontario - During Canada's first national internment operations of 1914-1920, thousands of Ukrainians and other Europeans were needlessly imprisoned as "enemy aliens" in 24 concentration camps and forced to do heavy labor, suffering the confiscation of their wealth, disenfranchisement and other state-sanctioned censures.

Since 1994 the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCCLA) has placed 18 trilingual plaques and two statues across Canada recalling this unhappy episode in Canadian history.

On Saturday, June 16, a third statue, by Kingston sculptor John Boxtel, titled "Interned Madonna," will be unveiled at the site of the Spirit Lake internment camp, near Amos, Quebec. The statue depicts a Ukrainian woman internee with two of her children, a swaddled infant boy and a young girl clinging to her mother's dress. Spirit Lake and the camp in Vernon, British Columbia, were the two places where women and children were confined along with their menfolk. Two of the last known survivors, both supporters of the UCCLA's campaign to secure an acknowledgment of this injustice and a restitution of the internees' confiscated wealth, both Canadian-born women, were just children when they were transported with their parents into the Quebec wilderness and interned at Spirit Lake.

Commenting on the statue's unveiling, Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk, director of research for UCCLA, said: "This statue represents a powerful reminder of the tragedy that befell these innocent women and children and their menfolk, interned not because of anything they did but only because of where they came from. John Boxtel's statue portrays a young mother who is caring for and protecting her children as best she can in the circumstances. Yet while she is defiant she is also troubled at what is being done to her family."

He continued: "By placing this statue here, to complement the plaque the UCCLA unveiled on August 4, 1999, we have completed our work here. We now anticipate that the Spirit Lake Camp Committee, a local group intent on developing a Spirit Lake internment camp interpretive center, will ensure that the historical experience of all of the people brought here against their will is recalled. And we hope that Mr. Inky Mark's proposed legislation, Bill C 331, The Ukrainian Canadian Restitution Act, will be given further impetus in the House of Commons by our ongoing efforts to remind all Canadians of an episode in our nation's history that some have tried to bury."

Funding for this statue was provided by the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko, the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, the UCCLA and the Ukrainian Canadian community of Quebec.

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