In Fear of the Barbed Wire Fence - Ukrainian Canadian Civil ...

In Fear of the Barbed Wire Fence
and “Bukovynian,” or as “Ruthenes” or “Rusyns” or “Ruthenians,” the
nationality or ethnic identity of many of these victims of Canada’s first national
internment operations has sometimes been misunderstood. Most commonly
those interned have been referred to only as “Austrians, Germans and Turks,” or
described even more simply as prisoners of war, (POWs) if they are even
mentioned by Canadian historians writing about the First World War. [4] The
majority of those interned were neither soldiers but civilians of “Austrian” origin,
of whom many were Ukrainians.
Canadian concentration camps
Most of the estimated 170,000 Ukrainians who had been lured to Canada with
promises of free land and freedom were, by 1914, settled in western Canada’s
Prairie region, although significant communities had begun forming, after 1905,
in Ontario and Quebec, where Ukrainians worked in the timber and mining
industries, on construction, and in various factories. [5] These immigrants had
mostly come to Canada from the Habsburg Austrian crownlands of Galicia and
Bukovyna. [6] Their citizenship, but not their nationality, was officially therefore
described as “Austrian” or “Austro-Hungarian.” Those so categorized were, under
the terms of the same War Measures Act (1914) that would later be used against
Japanese Canadians (1941) and the Quebecois (1970), subject to imprisonment
Men, women and children internees at Spirit Lake
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