NEWS AND VIEWS: La Ferme's ignominious history

by Lubomyr Luciuk

They call it La Ferme - the Farm. It's an innocuous name for a place that appears innocent enough, largely a flat field.

Admittedly, its northern perimeter is a little more intriguing, a terraced hill mounted by the Residence des Clercs Saint-Viateur du Canada, a place of retreat for that Catholic order's members. And there is a church just to the west, the Eglise Saint-Viateur de La Ferme, built in 1940. It sees little use now. At night the only lights piercing the darkness come from a few pleasant-looking homes, edging a compound that was once also called an experimental farm.

Actually two such farms were created, one here at Spirit Lake, in the Abitibi region of northwestern Quebec, another further west, at Kapuskasing, then MacPherson Station. Before World War I many wondered if the Clay Belt's soils could produce crops sufficient to feed enough people to colonize the Canadian Shield, so that they could, in turn, exploit the region's mineral and timber resources. Before that could be tried, however, somebody had to do the back-breaking work of clearing away the boreal forest and tilling the land. Who would want such a job?

But then the war broke out and the needed workers became available. The first contingent of 109 men arrived on January 13, 1915.

The Farm was set up to receive them. It was placed near Amos, where the Transcontinental railway crosses the Harricana River. Originally, the camp was supposed to be built 75 kilometers further east, at Belcourt. But the Amos elders and their Chamber of Commerce were astute. They lobbied Ottawa's men and somehow secured a change in plans. The Farm was relocated and local merchants did well by that, earning over a quarter of a million dollars in government contracts - a fortune.

Before the end of 1915 over 1,200 more people arrived. For a time La Ferme's population was larger than the town's. Most were single men, who lived in the camp's 10 bunkhouses, 104 per barrack. A smaller village, 1.5 kilometers away, was for families, including 67 women and 114 children. Their religious needs were met, sporadically, by Montreal priests, including Fathers Ivan Perepelytsia and Amvrozii Redkevych. In June 1915 the latter brought Bishop Nykyta Budka's blessings, and heard 1,099 confessions at Spirit Lake and in similar centers near Brandon and Kapuskasing. The good father also made a point of blessing La Ferme's chapel and cemetery.

The Farm remained even after its original inhabitants left in the winter of 1917. They departed as they had come, by rail. You can still walk those tracks. I did. But 19 of their original number stayed behind, in the La Ferme cemetery - the only Ukrainian Canadians still there. As I went to see them, I thought of how no one sent to Spirit Lake had ever wanted to be there. They were all prisoners under guard, dispatched into an archipelago of 24 Canadian concentration camps spread across the Dominion, from Banff to Beauport and beyond.

They were also all civilians, not really prisoners of war, just simple people branded "enemy aliens." Stripped of what little wealth they had, they were forced to work, for others' profits. At La Ferme they cleared, drained and cultivated several hundred acres, and cut thousands of cords of pulpwood. When the internment operations ended on June 20, 1920, unpaid earnings of $9,510.17 were owed them, the equivalent of thousands of man-months of labor. Deposited with the Bank of Canada that booty still enriches their gaolers.

Among those held at La Ferme was a 6-year-old, Canadian-born girl, Mary Manko. Today 98, she is the last known survivor of Canada's first national internment operations. Mary's sister Nellie died at The Farm. I would have prayed over that grave if I could. But we do not know where she lies.

The Spirit Lake internment camp was closed on January 28, 1917. Its "Ruthenian" chapel burned in 1920. Yet the internees' cemetery survived; it is unique in all of Canada. As late as 1999 its cedar crosses mostly stood, its perimeter was well-delineated with a white picket fence. Now this once sacred space is nearly expunged, hidden by the encroaching bush, buried even deeper by bureaucratic ignorance and political indifference.

Standing in this ruined boneyard all I could do was cry "J'accuse!" - an imprecation of the federal power that commanded the transport of these unfortunates into the wilderness, to hold them behind Canadian barbed wire, then batten off their forced labor.

Those who can never leave La Ferme should at least rest in peace. Ottawa should acquire, restore and preserve the internees' cemetery. And if we honor the last Canadian veteran of the "Great War" with a state funeral, we should also so dignify the last internee when her time comes, recalling the innocence betrayed on the day this country carted children off into the woods - not because of anything they had done, but only because of who they were, where they had come from.

Lubomyr Luciuk, Ph.D., recently paid his respects to the dead of La Ferme. He is research director of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Union.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, December 24, 2006, No. 52, Vol. LXXIV

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