Chinese Canadian member of Parliament is staunch supporter of redress for internment (11/11/01)

Chinese Canadian member of Parliament is staunch supporter of redress for internment

by Roman Zakaluzny

OTTAWA - His breath visible in the autumn chill of the Canadian Rockies, Inky Mark walks straight into the bush as 87 years before hundreds of Ukrainian prisoners of the government would have done.

Except Mr. Mark is wearing a suit and leather shoes, and he isn't going in to clear trees or build a highway.

"When one sees the faces in the pictures, and the harsh climate the men and women lived in - and children on top of that - it's still astounding that this happened in Canada," comments the 54-year-old Member of Parliament from Manitoba.

Mr. Mark is referring to Canada's first national internment operations. From 1914 to 1920, the Canadian government enacted the War Measures Act at the outbreak of the first world war. Reacting to public hysteria and their own feelings of xenophobia, over 5,000 Ukrainians and other Europeans were interned (plus another 3,500 POWs), in 24 camps across the country. Over 80,000 were registered as "enemy aliens" and forced to report regularly to the police or other public officials.

"I, like most other Canadians, was ignorant of the internment issue, until I went to the UCCLA internment plaque unveiling in November 1997, in Brandon, Manitoba," says Mr. Mark. "But this is my first site visit."

The MP spent the weekend of October 26-28 as a guest at the fourth summit of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCCLA) in Canmore, Alberta.

Mr. Mark spent two hectic days in strategy sessions with the UCCLA, listening to its issues and providing input when necessary. "Hopefully I'll have been helpful in strategizing with [the UCCLA]. My perspective can provide a different understanding of how government works and of how the Ukrainian Canadian community needs to organize its efforts in order to see justice done."

The weekend included side trips to three internment camp locations: Castle Mountain, Alberta; Cave and Basin, Alberta; and Field, British Columbia. While there, Mr. Mark and his wife, Linda, paid their respects.

"It almost gave me the shivers," relates Mr. Mark after seeing the leftover barbed wire at the Castle Mountain camp. "I'm sure there were internees who were my age here, locked up like animals in a corral, far from their families and friends."

"These same people paid their way into the country that invited them, and the government profited from them coming here," he adds.

The UCCLA has been trying to close this chapter in Canada's past for the last decade. After the 1997 general election, the lobby group gained an important ally in Parliament. Surprisingly, it was a Chinese Canadian who brought one of the Ukrainian community's most important bills to the House.

Born in Toison Province, China, Mr. Mark represents a riding (district) with one of the highest concentrations of Ukrainians in Canada. He moved to Western Canada while a young boy, where, while growing up in Canada's Borscht Belt, he was never far from a Ukrainian home.

"I grew up in a mixed community of Ukrainians and Anglo-Saxons," remembers Mr. Mark. "I was welcomed in to Ukrainian homes, and taught the culture."

"Ukrainians played no small role in my growing up to better understand what makes Canada the country it is, one which has, generally, been a place of tolerance," he says.

But why is a Chinese Canadian the most vocal advocate of the internment issue?

"Being a Canadian by choice, perhaps I feel more empathy for people who have adopted this country," replies a man who carries a trilingual (English-French-Ukrainian) business card. "But all wrongs need to be fixed, especially if it's a wrong committed by a government."

The East-European prisoners who were locked up for the innocent crime of holding an Austro-Hungarian passport were forced to work well below Hague Convention wages, earning less than 25 cents per day, when the average salary outside was $1. In addition, much of the prisoners' assests were confiscated upon arrest. This loot, estimated to be worth more than of $20 million, is sitting in federal government accounts to this day.

Since he was elected under the Reform banner in 1997, and to this day, sitting in the House as a member of the Progressive Conservative Democratic Representative Association from Manitoba, the parliamentarian has made it his mission to bring closure to this episode in Canada's past.

"The current Liberal government has avoided all the issues that deal with the past, even though the previous government has negotiated with the Japanese-Canadians," observes Mr. Mark. "This government wants Ukrainians to vote for them, but doesn't want to resolve the outstanding issues."

Mr. Mark's Private Members Bill, Bill C-331, has passed first reading in the House, and is now waiting to be drawn for second reading.

"Since September 11, you'd have to be naive to think that events like these couldn't happen again - especially when a country doesn't own up to its past," says Mr. Mark, in explaining his motivations for the bill.

Bill C-331 asks the government to acknowledge the internment that occurred, and to sit down with the Ukrainian community and return the assets seized earlier this century in the form of educational projects. And it also asks the government to take another look at the War Measures Act (today, the Emergency Measures Act), to evaluate whether its powers go too far in limiting the freedoms of Canadians.

Mark has one suggestion for Canadians, who like him, want the internment issue resolved once and for all.

"It is incumbent upon the government of Canada that it honestly sit down to negotiate a resolution of the Ukrainian Canadian community's modest claims. Doing so by supporting the passage of Bill C-331 would do just that. I urge all Canadians to speak with or write to their MP, regardless of Party, to get them to support the Ukrainian Canadian Restitution Act."

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Readers are advised to visit the website www.parl.gc.ca to find contact information for their MPs.

Roman Zakaluzny is a master's degree student in journalism at Carleton University in Ottawa.

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