Whose Canada?

It is Canada Day and as usual the Dominion Institute (named after the British colonial designation; the Dominion of Canada) issues another poll and press release on how Canadians do not know their Canadian history. That Canadian history needs to be taught in schools, Canadians should have to take a national citizenship tests. Etc. etc. etc ad naseum.

This should be expected when we are taught a safe and sanitized history of the founding of Canada and its gradualist evolution towards parliamentary democracy of Peace, Order and Good Government.

Overlooking the fact that there were rebellions and uprisings, calls for a different kind of Canada, one that so scared the British lords that they kept us under martial law, and British Parliaments thumb until the turn of last century. The POGG ideal makes history booooring. Of course Canada has another history, one not written by the Masters. A Peoples History not a Dominion History.

Some contributions I have made to this social history of Canada I offer here;

I Am Canadien

Edward Gibbon Wakefield

Happy Canada Day/Jour heureux du Canada

A History of Canadian Wealth, 1914

Historical Memory on the Eve of the Election

Calgary Herald Remembers RB Bennet

Socialized Medicine Began in Alberta

Canada's First Internment Camps

Social Credit And Western Canadian Radicalism

Rebel Yell

Populism and Producerism

Cooperative Commonwealth=Free Market

Origins of the Captialist State In Canada

Return of the City State

White Multiculturalism

Paranoia and the Security State

State Security Is A Secure State

Canada’s Long History of Criminalizing Dissent

CIA Spies In Canada

Psychedelic Saskatchewan

Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out

Rochdale Deja Vu

Stanway's Sombre Reflection on Somme

The Vimy Myth

Suffield Base Canada's Area 51

LABOUR HISTORY

The Edmonton General Strike Of 1919

Also references in the article: A greater union,

Calgary 1919-The Birth Of The OBU And The General Strike

The CCF:The Original Reform Movement

The Edmonton District Labour Council and Municipal Politics 1903-1906

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
capitalism, imperialism, Canada, CPR, Railways, industrialization, working, class, proletariat, labour, labor, unions, Canada, equalization, Quebec, economy, state-capitalism, monopoly-capitalism, Rebellion, 1837, Mackenzie, Papineau, Peterloo, UK, Quebec, Confederation, CanadaDay, history, politics, refromers, whigs, tories, mercantilist,

Early Canadian Environmental History Series: Introduction & Essential Reading


Sean Kheraj and Denis McKim

Welcome to a series on early Canadian environmental history, jointly hosted by Borealia and The Otter ~ La Loutre, the blog of The Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE).

This joint series provides environmental historians of Canada the opportunity to reflect upon the state of so-called “pre-Confederation” history in the field. As was evident from the discussion at a panel on the subject of pre-Confederation Canadian history at the 2015 annual meeting of the Canadian Historical Association, the field has not vanished. It goes by other names and it no longer focuses on the framework of the nation-state. Many historians of Indigenous peoples of North America, for instance, focus on chronologies that pre-date 1867. Historians of the Atlantic World examine aspects of what might have once been called “pre-Confederation Canadian history,” but now fall within a transnational framework.

Environmental historians of Canada often examine the deep past, but do not necessarily adopt pre- and post-Confederation as a rubric for periodization. Instead, environmental history spans broad periods of time marked by different kinds of transitions:
pre-industrial/industrial
organic energy regime/mineral energy regime
conservation movement/environmental movement
age of miasmas/bacteriological revolution/new ecology
pedestrian era/equestrian era/ automobile era
holocene/anthropocene

The field of pre-Confederation environmental history is varied and vibrant, as the essays featured in the NiCHE-Borealia collaboration demonstrate. Anya Zilberstein’s contribution, “Jamaican Maroons in Nova Scotia: The Politics of Climate and Race,” will appear on May 18th. It discusses the experiences of the Maroons, ex-slaves who were expelled from Jamaica and migrated to Nova Scotia in the 1790s. Zilbertstein reveals that while certain figures welcomed them – John Wentworth, the colony’s Lieutenant-Governor, felt the Maroons could accelerate Nova Scotia’s sluggish growth – other figures objected to their migration due, in large part, to the belief that peoples of African descent were ill equipped to thrive amid northern environmental circumstances.

Appearing on May 20th, Jason Hall’s essay, “The Environmental and Cultural History of the St. John River,” is a distillation of his doctoral dissertation on the relationships among three groups of people – the Maliseet (Wolastoqiyik), the French, and the British – and one of northeastern North America’s principal bodies of water from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Among other things, Hall’s essay highlights similarities and differences between the groups’ interactions with the river, and concludes with a heartening message for readers interested in securing its long-term conservation.

Colin M. Coates’s essay will appear on May 23rd. Entitled “Who Was the King of the Beasts in New France?,” it examines a “natural history” of New France written in the seventeenth century by the Jesuit priest, Louis Nicolas, and dedicated to Louis XIV. Given the dedication, readers may not be surprised to learn that Nicolas’s work devoted considerable attention to North American species that were thought to possess majestic characteristics. Yet readers might be surprised by at least one of the species that supposedly displayed such traits … although they will need to read Coates’s essay to find out what the species was! Additionally, as Coates shows, the species included in Nicolas’s natural history and the way in which they are described arguably tell us as much about the work’s author and its audience as they do about the species themselves.

On May 25th, the series will conclude with a dialogue between all three authors – Zilberstein, Hall, and Coates – who will have the opportunity to reflect on their own and each other’s scholarship, and comment on the varied, vibrant field to which they have contributed.

Scholarship on early North America is critical for understanding Canadian environmental history. These are a few of the primary works in early North American environmental history that stand out as essential readings for Canadian historians (please add further suggestions below):
Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

This is, in fact, a global history of European imperialism, but one that is fundamental to understanding the environmental history of Canada. Canada is one of Crosby’s so-called Neo-Europes or “Lands of demographic takeover,” the places where Europeans, their plants, their animals, and their microbes thrived at the expense of Indigenous peoples and other indigenous organisms. As Liza Piper and John Sandlos argue, however, Subarctic and Arctic Canada do not entirely fit within Crosby’s framework. Nevertheless, ecological imperialism is a powerful explanatory framework for understanding European colonial expansion and therefore essential for understanding societies, such as Canada, that were born from colonialism. [1]
Binnema, Theodore. Common and Contested Ground: A Human and Environmental History of the Northwestern Plains. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001.

Spanning an enormous geographic area that straddles what would become the international border between Canada and the United States, this expansive history of the Northwestern Plains traces numerous transformations of this region: environmental, economic, political, diplomatic, technological. Binnema explores the history of the plains looking from the continent outward rather than from the coasts inward. In doing so, he situates Indigenous peoples at the centre of this narrative and shows the ways in which their histories intersected with European colonial expansion, but were not necessarily dominated by the interests of Europeans.
Coates, Colin M. The Metamorphoses of Landscape and Community in Early Quebec. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000.

Much like Jason Hall’s article in this series, Coates’s book traces landscape change over time in a single place as different human communities engaged with the natural environment. In this case, the settling is two seigneuries, one along the Batiscan River and the other along the Sainte-Anne River. The book follows changes in the landscape over the course of changes in human regimes: Aboriginal, French, English. It confronts both material transformations to the environment and the evolution of human perceptions of nature.
Hackett, Paul. “A Very Remarkable Sickness”: Epidemics in the Petit Nord, 1670-1846. Winnipeg, MB: University of Manitoba Press, 2002.

Building upon Crosby’s analysis of the role of microbes in European colonial expansion, Hackett’s research provides a precise examination of the spread and impact of European diseases on Indigenous North Americans from the late decades of the seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. This book is not only significant for Canadian environmental history, but it is critical for understanding Canadian history more broadly. “Given its impact on the Aboriginal population and the fur trade,” writes Hackett, “the smallpox epidemic of 1779-1783 can arguably be called one of the most significant events in pre-confederation, western Canadian history.” (pg. 94)
Forkey, Neil. Shaping the Upper Canadian Frontier: Environment, Society, and Culture in the Trent Valley. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2003.

Here we have another case study that examines environmental change in a single place over the course of a long period of time with a focus on the impact of European colonization and the displacement of Indigenous people. Forkey chronicles the environmental history of the Trent Valley from the late eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. Sharing common themes from William Cronon’s groundbreaking work Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, this book similarly seeks to explain how European imperialism transformed North American environments. [2] Forkey sees the Trent Valley as “a microcosm for much wider human and environmental changes that were occurring throughout North America as the transplantation of European peoples sparked new relationships between humans and the new environments that they encounters.” (pgs. 1-2)
Trigger, Bruce G. The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660. Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1976.

While this book was not written as environmental history, it is of tremendous importance for understanding the environmental history of Canada. Trigger’s history of the Wendat (Huron) confederacy has recently been updated by the work of Kathryn Magee Labelle, but its detailed evidence concerning the impact of introduced diseases on the subsequent breakdown of the confederacy is a critical component of the environmental history of European imperial expansion into what would subsequently become southern Ontario. [3]
Harris, R. C. The Reluctant Land: Society, Space, and Environment in Canada Before Confederation. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009.

Written by one of the leading historical geographers of Canada, The Reluctant Land is a broad, synthetic work suitable as a textbook for specialized courses in early Canadian environmental history but also a critical overview of historical transformations in space and environment in northern North America. This lengthy analysis focuses mainly on the period after the arrival of Europeans with an interest in how European colonists settled the land and transformed the environment. Harris concludes with observations of patterns in European settlement. He articulates some of this argument in a provocative and insightful 2010 article in Canadian Historical Review that is also worth reading. [4]

This reading list is, of course, not exhaustive. It is, however, indicative of the breadth of scholarship in early Canadian environmental history. Certainly much of the scholarship in Canadian environmental history focuses on the modern period or “post-Confederation” but there is a strong early modern field and there is much more to be explored. We hope this series shows some of the possibilities.

[Editor’s note: As this is a jointly-hosted series, some of the conversation about this post is taking place in the comments at The Otter ~ La Loutre. There you will find an important comment by Sean Kheraj on gender and authorship, and some additional titles on environmental history written by women.]

Sean Kheraj is an associate professor of Canadian and environmental history in the Department of History at York University in Toronto, Ontario. He is also director and editor-in-chief of the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE) where he hosts and produces Nature’s Past: Canadian Environmental History Podcast.

Denis McKim teaches Canadian and American history at Douglas College, BC. His research explores the intellectual, political, and religious history of British North America. He is also a founding co-editor, with Keith Grant, of Borealia.



[1] Piper, Liza and John Sandlos. “A Broken Frontier: Ecological Imperialism in the Canadian North.” Environmental History 12, no. 4 (2007): 759–95.

[2] William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983).

[3] Kathryn Magee Labelle, Dispersed but not Destroyed: A History of the Seventeenth Century Wendat People (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013).

[4] R. Cole Harris, “The Spaces of Early Canada.” Canadian Historical Review 91, no. 4 (December 2010): 725–59.

Featured image: “Head of the Lake, Lake Ontario,” Elizabeth Simcoe, 1796. Archives of Ontario.

For the record: Re-contextualizing Canada's history


The ways in which the general public understands the historical record are transforming. Canadians are increasingly engaging in conversations about new historical perspectives that are changing how the nation’s past is understood and remembered.

It is often said of history that it’s written by the victors, but there has been a growing push to interpret significant figures in their historical context using multiple perspectives. Manitoba offers unique examples of this phenomenon in how communities can talk about the past positively and productively.

In the public sphere, people are investigating and trying to learn more about different aspects of their community and country, said Max Hamon, associate professor in the department of history at Brandon University.

Their curiosity can be piqued by the mundane things they encounter in their community, such as a historical plaque or street sign they walk by each day.

As the public re-discovers and re-contextualizes what were once commonly accepted historical narratives, he said, they are starting to push back against what was once accepted academic "truths."

He described this process of learning as "public history." The National Council on Public History describes this concept as a movement promoting collaborative study and engagement with history. The goal of the practice is to make unique insights accessible and useful to the public, helping them better understand their past.

As people learn more about Canada’s history using multiple perspectives, the traditional focus on French and English settlements in the country can often leave people feeling like other narratives are missing from the past.

"The national narrative it’s simply not satisfactory," Hamon said. "Canada is not just French and English. Canada is so much more than those things and, in many ways, Canada is insufficient to explain the complexity of all these things. It’s a good thing to start recognizing the work that goes into this."

Hamon cited Louis Riel as an example of a trans-national history. Historians continue to expand the narrative surrounding the Métis icon to better establish his place in Canadian history.

As a historical figure, Riel exemplifies the deep divide that can exist when people are interpreting historical records, Hamon said. While he is now widely accepted and celebrated by Canadians as the father of Manitoba and a critical figure in Canadian Confederation, this interpretation is relatively new.

"It’s hard to understand how people saw it differently in the past," Hamon said. "If we’re thinking about the evolution of Riel, I do think that it’s simplified and I am always shocked to hear a historian try to say Riel is ‘such a controversial figure’ — it’s no longer controversial to recognize Riel’s significance, but that has changed through work. People have worked to better understand who he was."

Born in St. Boniface in the Red River Settlement in October 1844, Riel played a pivotal role in bringing Manitoba into Confederation. His direction of the Red River Rebellion led to the Canadian government at the time labelling him an "outlaw." In 1884, Riel was asked by Saskatchewan Valley settlers to lead them in protest against the Canadian government resulting in the North-West Rebellion in 1885.

Following the rebellion’s defeat, Riel was tried for treason and hung in Regina in November 1885.

The example of Riel demonstrates how history can be seen in a different light by embracing additional historical perspectives. Studying the historical icon over the years has helped Hamon understand Canada and its history in new ways.

"We often say history is told by the victors, by those who were able to grab and hold onto power. All the other voices and perspectives, the views of the other side … are drowned out — whether it’s women, whether it’s poor, whether it’s marginalized communities," said Kelly Saunders, Brandon University political science professor. "We only see one story and that is the story that our government institutions choose to tell us."

In Canada, there has been a carefully crafted historical and cultural narrative largely based on the country being more diverse, peaceful, respectful and civil compared to other jurisdictions such as the United States.

Using multiple viewpoints to examine Canadian history shows that it can be viewed as a country "built on genocide," she said.

"This is what history tells us, and historians, the experts who are studying what actually happened in this country and the story of how we came to be from multiple perspectives and not just what the British Crown or what the Canadian government wanted us to know, but the true history told by the voices that have been shut out — that is our story."

These nuanced conversations that take into account various historical experiences are becoming increasingly difficult to participate in and facilitate in the public sphere, because there has been a loss of trust in and respect for authority — political experts, senior experts, elected officials, historians, scientists, among others — and the insights they can provide to the historical record.

"We just dig our heels in and come at it from a very emotional point of view and that everybody is a ‘self-styled’ expert. When you add those two things together, it ends up where we are today — it’s just butting heads and there’s no sense of talking our way through and reaching consensus anymore."

Saunders saw a break from this trend after children’s bodies were rediscovered in unmarked graves at former residential schools across the country. She said these histories were known by Indigenous communities for generations and documented by the government. However, the facts about residential schools had not significantly entered the sphere of public history and discourse prior to the 215 unmarked graves located near the Kamloops Residential School in 2021, which gained international attention.

The unearthed bodies of these children broke through Canadians’ mental discomfort when it came to viewing the country’s past atrocities. Difficult conversations have forced Canadians to engage with the traumatic legacy of residential schools and the disenfranchisement of Indigenous communities and people for decades.

"We could no longer deny it because it was in front of us," Saunders said. "I noticed the conversations that started happening. People that just went about their lives, not very knowledgeable or very caring about these issues, were now texting me and saying, ‘I want to talk about this … I want to learn more.’"

Growing up, Louis Riel was spoken of with admiration in his family home and was a celebrated figure for his impact in Manitoba, said John Fleury, Minnedosa-based Manitoba Métis Federation (MMF) minister of the Indigenous skills and employment training strategy.

"But, then, of course, we heard the English version that he was a traitor and everything else. But, from our own people, he was always doing something good," Fleury said. "They [would] talk about Louis Riel and he was a traitor in the war against Canada, but they didn’t talk about how he secured the Métis’ future; he tried to protect their language, and not only the Métis language but the French language and English. He was protecting all peoples."

The new understanding of Riel as a crucial figure in Canada’s history slowly began to shift in the mid-1960s, he said, aided by the formation of the MMF. The organization was able to share views from all areas of the province with the common thread of speaking to Riel as a hero and protector of people, a father of Confederation and the father of Manitoba.

Non-Métis were not always open to this historical perspective but over time, minds slowly began to change, he said. It has been powerful and uplifting to see the monumental place Riel holds in Canadian history gain acceptance by the general public.

"It was a big shift, and I think that’s when society began becoming more open to another person’s point of view. They allowed us our point of view whether they liked it or not, and then they began accepting another point of view."

Regardless of how it is presented, people will formulate opinions based on what they have been told by their families, teachers and others in society. He said when up against these experiences, changing opinions is a slow process — but they can be transformed.

The MMF remains committed to promoting truth and education to open minds. Fleury encouraged people to push boundaries and learn as much as they can, because reconciliation cannot take place without truth.

"That’s what we need more of — more educated opinions. We all need to do our part," Fleury said. "We are now living in a new era, and education and communication is the key."

The namesake of Rosser Avenue came under scrutiny after John Simpson appeared before Brandon City Council in September 2020, requesting the name of the thoroughfare be changed. Simpson said a rechristening of the street was essential given the tainted history of its namesake.

The avenue bears the name of former late-19th-century Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) chief engineer and Confederate General Thomas Lafayette Rosser. According to the Manitoba Historical Society, Rosser worked for the railway for less than a year before departing the company "amid accusations, recriminations and scandal."

Rosser served as a Confederate general during the American Civil War and his family engaged in slavery.

"I’m not so sure that this is such a glorious, glorious past that we are looking for, particularly as I began to learn more and more about him," Simpson told the Sun. " I’m not sure that he’s someone who is really worthy of our attention and our honour here in Brandon."

The Manitoba Historical Society described Rosser as a complex figure who was "almost ruthless, action-oriented approach to getting a job done, and his ever-present eye on the possibilities for profit, are amply demonstrated through his actions during his short time with the CPR."

Simpson pushed for the Rosser Avenue name change out of a sense of indignation.

He expects these discussions around how historical figures are honoured will only broaden as the public has been forced to reckon with truth and reconciliation since the rediscovery of hundreds of unmarked graves in former residential school sites across Canada. These graves are prompting a re-examination of Canadian history.

Simpson proposed alternative names for Rosser Avenue that could honour Westman’s Indigenous history, including Tommy Captain, the first child who died at the Brandon Indian Residential School in 1896.

"Tommy and all those children who died represent lost potential, potential never realized," Simpson said. "I really hope for the sake of inclusivity, for the sake of reconciliation, for the sake of all people who don’t fit the traditional mould that Brandon has grown from, I really hope that we change and we continue to change. We can do that one way through the symbols that we proclaim within our boundaries."

It can be challenging for people to learn and accept new historical facts that challenge what was once widely accepted views. It is a positive case when it comes to Riel, Fleury said, but Rosser’s legacy stands in stark contrast.

Rosser’s motivation for coming to Canada was, in Fleury’s opinion, centred on "greed."

"He wanted to make a name for himself and he didn’t care how he did it," Fleury said. "After all of his manipulations on the railroad and elsewhere, he went out of here to the States because he was found out to be a bit of a shyster."

History shows Rosser departed Brandon with a "stain on his name."

There is a stark contrast between Riel and Rosser’s experiences in Canada. It was at a time when Indigenous people were being chased off their lands and facing the expansion of the settlers across the prairies, Fleury said.

Rosser profited during this era of Canada, while Riel fought for the future of his people.

It can be hard for people to reassess and adjust perspectives as they learn new historical facts, Fleury said, but it is even worse when people do not take the time to learn the true history of their nation.

These debates about history come down to education, especially because stories like the history of Rosser are not taught, he said.

Debates over the historical legacy or shame should be treated with care, because they can distract from more urgent and contemporary community issues. Indigenous people in Canada have experienced cultural genocide, land disposition, residential schools and other acts of trauma for the past 150 years.

The discussions around Rosser Avenue’s name need to be discussed carefully with civility and understanding, said Kris Desjarlais, Brandon Urban Aboriginal Peoples’ Council vice-chair. The name "Rosser" has largely been decoupled from the individual, and most people are unaware of the Confederate General’s controversial legacy.

It can be difficult to make a definitive decision when it comes to sites, streets or statues named after historical figures. Desjarlais cautioned there is a need to be careful in how far these conversations are pushed when looking at historical figures from a modern-day perspective.

"Where do we draw the line?" Desjarlais said. "I think in order for us to wrap our heads around these issues collectively, we need to have the dialogue. I don’t think we can just say [it’s] ‘because it’s the right thing to do.’ We need to bring people along with us to get to that place."

Seemingly trivial conversations like Rosser Avenue’s name can only increase divisions in the community. Desjarlais said there are more important things to do to support marginalized populations.

Support for First Nation, Métis and Inuit peoples needs to be centred on systemic changes that directly help and provide equity and equality for contemporary populations. This can include improving outcomes around education, health and employment, reforming child and family welfare and returning power and control to Indigenous communities.

"You end up risking fighting [for these changes] over window dressing," Desjarlais said. "I’m more interested in important things, because changing Rosser Avenue to an Indigenous name is not going to employ anybody, it’s not going to reduce the anxiety of a single mom in Brandon who is Indigenous and struggling to make ends meet."

Desjarlais is hopeful for the future of Canada. He cited how Brandon’s inaugural Truth and Reconciliation week saw around 1,000 people participate in the Orange Shirt Day walk. It was an amazing experience, he added, because it included meaningful conversations around truth and reconciliation.

"This could be a turning point in Canada … You start and you plant the seed, it creates slow and incremental gains. It’s not going to be a sea of change," Desjarlais said. "It is different than it was 25 years ago — we are making inroads, but we have a long way to go."

Rosser is not the first figure to have newly recognized historical records transform their legacy, Prof. Hamon said. Riel has been a fluid figure throughout Canadian history, with his significance and legacy gaining a positive light as he became better understood outside the traditional Western historical narrative.

"If we’re going to tell the story of Rosser and make it meaningful, it’s going to be a lot more complicated than just a road sign," Hamon said. "These local histories which focus on specific communities, they’re so rich and they’re so filled with detail, the problem is they don’t connect it to the broader context always."

The presence or lack thereof, of a statue or street name, does not change history, he said. Instead, it impacts the types of conversations being initiated based on what is in the world around you.

People need to understand the constructed nature of their worldview and how it is influenced by their life experiences, he said.

One of the most important steps is moving away from the binaries and to stop thinking in terms of settler versus Indigenous, he added. Canadians need to understand how to talk about the countless different cultures, including Indigenous, as a whole and their unique experiences in the country.

Some members of the public may choose to portray symbols like Rosser Avenue as extremes, Saunders said, but most controversies are not as polarized as presented.

"To say that we have to keep the name to honour our history — well, what history do we want to honour?" Saunders said. "What history do we really want to privilege and whose history do we want to privilege and what does that say about who we are as Canadians?"

Conversations are taking place across Canada that unpack colonialism’s ongoing role in society and how it reproduces itself in new, more nuanced and indirect ways. Saunders said a key aspect of breaking this cycle is talking and working with Indigenous communities involving them in the decision-making process and allowing them to exert power.

People are learning history is an intersectional experience, and she can see people are changing, giving her hope for the future.

"Just by having conversations, you can really change one person at a time. We just have to be open-minded and be willing to look at the world a little bit differently than what we have done before [and] ask the big questions that have to be asked."


Chelsea Kemp, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Brandon Sun

SEE 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for RIEL 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for INTERNMENT 

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/04/history-of-canadian-wealth-1914.html

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Social Credit And Western Canadian Radicalism 

Canada urged to open its eyes to systemic racism in wake of police violence

Amid the anger over brutality and injustice, a number of prominent Canadians have cast doubt on the idea that racism is entrenched

Leyland Cecco in Toronto
Sun 14 Jun 2020

Protesters in Calgary rally against police violence and racism. Activists and historians argue that before change can come, Canadians must first accept a tarnished history. Photograph: Jeff McIntosh/AP
After a string of violent incidents involving police officers, activists and ordinary people across Canada have joined the global chorus calling for a reckoning with racism, policing, inequality and the long reach of history.

In recent weeks, a Black woman fell to her death after police were called to her flat in Toronto; an Indigenous woman suffering a mental health crisis was shot dead by an officer in New Brunswick and footage emerged showing Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers in Alberta forcing a First Nations chief to the ground and punching him in the head. On Friday evening, an Indigenous man was shot dead by the RCMP in New Brunswick.

Justin Trudeau takes a knee but is silent on reforms to policing

But amid the growing anger, a number of prominent Canadians – premiers, columnists and the head of the RCMP – have cast doubt on the idea that racism is entrenched in the country’s institutions.

“Thank God we’re different than the United States and we don’t have the systemic, deep roots they’ve had for years,” said Ontario premier Doug Ford, a view echoed by neighbouring Quebec premier François Legault.

RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki told the Globe and Mail on Wednesday: “I think that if systemic racism is meaning that racism is entrenched in our policies and procedures, I would say that we don’t have systemic racism.” On Friday, Lucki clarified her position in a statement. “I did acknowledge that we, like others, have racism in our organization, but I did not say definitively that systemic racism exists in the RCMP. I should have.” Hours later, Rodney Levi of the Metepenagiag Mi’kmaq Nation was shot dead by RCMP officers.

Activists and historians argue that before change can come, Canadians must first accept a tarnished history and the persistent structural inequities that it has bequeathed the nation.

The numbers are clear: Black and Indigenous peoples in Canada are disproportionately over-represented in prisons and jails across the country. As students, they face harsher discipline in schools and are suspended at a higher rate than white students. In Toronto, the country’s largest city, Black residents are 20 times more likely to be shot by police.

On Thursday, Justin Trudeau contradicted the RCMP chief’s comments, saying it was clear systemic racism was present in the country’s federal police force.

“As much as we admire and support the RCMP, we know we need to do better. It is not just the individual examples we have seen, it’s the issues faced by Canadians of diverse backgrounds over years, decades and generations,” the prime minister said.

On Friday, Lucki clarified her position, saying: “I did acknowledge that we, like others, have racism in our organization, but I did not say definitively that systemic racism exists in the RCMP. I should have.”

Some argue that Canada’s national police force is itself emblematic of racism.

“The RCMP was not created to protect Indigenous people. It was created to protect white settlers from Indigenous folks – while suppressing our ceremonies and implementing laws that sought to decimate us,” said Brooks Arcand-Paul, a Cree lawyer and executive on the Indigenous Bar Association.

“Even today, the police will always look at Indigenous people and Black folks in our territories as potentially requiring some kind of suppression.”

Protesters have highlighted the case of Chantel Moore, 26, who was fatally shot last month by officers during a mental health “wellness check” and Regis Korchinski-Paquet, who fell to her death after police responded to a mental health emergency. But Arcand-Paul said her death was only the latest in a litany of cases where Indigenous lives are lost and families denied justice. He points to the case of Gerald Stanley, a white farmer who shot Colten Boushie, an indigenous man, in the head – but was acquitted by an all-white jury.

“When we talk about systemic racism, we’re not just trying to lay the blame on the RCMP. It’s the entire structure that is causing continued violence against Black and Indigenous bodies in this country,” said Arcand-Paul.

Some police forces, including in Canada’s largest city, have acknowledged systemic racism exists and pledged to make change. Last week, Toronto police chief Mark Saunders knelt with protesters.

But such actions have also raised skepticism among activists.

“Police in Canada are trying to escape this moment of criticism by casting themselves compassionate forces that care about these issues. However, once you actually dig into the data, it shows this is not necessarily the case,” said Bashir Mohamed, a researcher and amateur historian whose work has highlighted the often-forgotten racist history of western Canada.

“I think it’s by design that police forces want this information hidden, because then it makes them less responsible for actually acknowledging this is a problem.”

 Allan Adam, who was injured by police forcing him to the ground in March. Photograph: Allan Adam/Reuters
Mohamed points to the practice of “carding” – Canada’s version of stop-and-frisk – in which police conduct street checks of residents with little or no cause. While agencies have defended the practice in the past, the limited available data shows the policy disproportionately impacts racialized communities.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/06/canada-overdue-reckoning-anti-black-racism

Canada is overdue for a reckoning with its anti-black racism
Tayo Bero

Ford, the Ontario premier, quickly walked back his remarks, suggesting his comments had been taken out of context. “Of course there’s systemic racism in Ontario, there’s systemic racism across this country,” Ford said the next day.

Quebec premier François Legault also suggested there was “no system in place that discriminate” in the province – and said the province had not experienced slavery.

But political leaders’ resistance to the idea that systemic racism exists within state institutions often comes from a poor understanding of the country’s past, says educator and historian Natasha Henry, president of the Ontario Black History Society.

“It’s part of the Canadian national narrative of positioning ourselves in juxtaposition to the United States. That’s how we get this ‘exceptional Canada’ of being welcoming and warm – and not paying attention to our own parallel history of racial exclusion and the dispossession.”

In addition to being factually inaccurate, this popular view speaks to a “refusal to take responsibility” for two centuries of slavery within the country’s history, says Henry.

For generations, Canadian history has concentrated on the country’s position as the last stop on the Underground Railroad – a place which meant freedom for those who escaped slavery in the US. But the same narrative omits the experiences of thousands of enslaved people within Canada, says Henry.

According to Henry’s research, the earliest record of African enslavement in colonial Canada was the sale of a young boy, named Olivier LeJeune in 1629.

Slavery was formally ended in the British empire in 1834, including British North America, but legislation was repeatedly passed that would weaken anti-slavery laws in the years leading up to abolition.
After emancipation, Black people in Canada still faced segregation, and the looming threat of hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

“You have to decide – are you going to accept all of Canada or none of Canada?” said Henry. “Because you can’t parcel out you want. That’s not how history works.”

Indigenous peoples were also enslaved by colonial powers – a reality often forgotten in the country’s school textbooks. And by the end of the 1700s, as many as 2,000 Black people were enslaved in the Maritimes region. About 300 more people were enslaved in the area known as Lower Canada (what is now the province of Quebec) and as many as 700 in Upper Canada (Ontario).

Others argue that Canada needs a more comprehensive history.

“It’s important to incorporate anti-black racism into curricula, but also black history. Not just civil rights heroes, but also black artists,” said Mohamed. “This shows that my people existed in Canada. It shows that we have a long history of slavery over 200 years, but also have a long history of black arts and black culture.”


Canada police under scrutiny after two women die after encounters with officers
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/05/canada-police-under-scrutiny-after-two-women-die-after-encounters-with-officers

Only in recent years has Canada grappled with the legacy of its residential schools – where many Indigenous students were sent against their will and experienced verbal, physical and sexual abuse – a period which schools have now started to teach.

“At the end of the day, there’s going to be some difficult conversations. Because it’s important to acknowledge that our experiences aren’t just a fabricated story. They are lived realities,” said Arcand-Paul, who has been pulled over and questioned on multiple occasions by police.

“And we’re not going to be able to achieve true understanding until, at last, we’re able to share our stories – frankly and candidly – to a receptive audience.”

CANADA

Ukrainians reckoning with 'complexity of history' after Hunka affair

CBC
Sun, October 1, 2023 

Juliia Baranova stands on Parliament Hill the day of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's visit last week. Baranova says the warm welcome given to a Ukrainian veteran who fought for the Nazis has opened her eyes to the complicated history of many eastern European nations. (Avanthika Anand/CBC - image credit)

Some members of the local Ukrainian community say there's "broken trust" after a former Ukrainian solder who fought in a Nazi division was honoured in Parliament during President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's visit to Ottawa — and want an apology of their own.

"This is just so, so disappointing," said Jane Kolbe, an active member of the community in Ottawa.

Now-former House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota invited veteran Yaroslav Hunka, one of his constituents from North Bay, Ont., to sit in the gallery during Zelenskyy's address on Sept. 22.

Hunka received a standing ovation from MPs, the prime minister and Zelenskyy himself.

Days later, it was revealed that Hunka was part of the First Ukrainian Division, also known as the Waffen-SS Galicia Division or the SS 14th Waffen Division — a voluntary unit under the command of the Nazis during the Second World War.

Members of Canada's Jewish community have called it a "humiliating debacle."

Rota resigned as Speaker last week, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly apologized to the Jewish community for what he called a "deeply embarrassing" moment in Canadian history.

Yaroslav Hunka, right, waits for the arrival of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the House of Commons in Ottawa, Onatario, Friday, Sept. 22, 2023. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized Wednesday, Sept. 27, for Parliament’s recognition of Hunka, who fought alongside the Nazis during last week’s address by Ukraine President Zelenskyy. “All of us who were in the House on Friday regret deeply having stood and clapped, even though we did so unaware of the context,” Trudeau said before entering the House of Commons.

 (Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press via AP, File)

Ukrainian-Canadian Yaroslav Hunka, 98, was a former soldier fought who fought alongside the Nazis. He was invited by former Speaker Anthony Rota to the House of Commons last week and received a standing ovation during Zelenskyy's visit. (Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press)

As the incident made international headlines, some members of the Ottawa region's Ukrainian community said it's been "difficult" to watch it overshadow Zelenskyy's important visit.

Many are "still trying to absorb and understand" what happened, Kolbe said.

"It is baffling because [in] the diaspora, there's so many heroes to recognize," she said. "But this really wasn't the time to recognize heroes. This was the time to honour and reflect on President Zelenskyy's speech."

Kolbe said it was important that Trudeau apologized to the Jewish community, and believes the resulting "broken trust" with the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada means they deserve one, too.

Supporters of the Ukraine stand in front of Parliament Hill as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attend a joint press conference in Ottawa on Friday, Sept. 22, 2023.

Supporters of the Ukraine stand in front of Parliament Hill during Zelenskyy's visit. (Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press)

'History has a lot of complexity'

Juliia Baranova was among the hundreds of Ukrainians on Parliament Hill the day of Zelenskyy's visit and said she was "very concerned" about the Hunka incident.

"For me personally, it also shows that history lessons are not learned," Baranova said. "And eastern European countries' history has a lot of complexity."

Reports suggest as many as 2,000 Ukrainian members of Adolf Hitler's Waffen-SS were admitted to Canada after the war.

Historians have documented how soldiers like Hunka were trained at SS facilities in Germany, swore an oath to Hitler and received an education in Nazi doctrine.

But many young Ukrainian soldiers at that time were fighting not for Germany, but to expel the Russians occupying their country, said Dominique Arel, chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa.

The incident in the House of Commons has been made even worse, Arel added, by false Russian claims that the current invasion of Ukraine is a war against Nazism.

"No matter how you try to explain the complexity of history, the symbol is awful. It's shocking," he said.

Speaker of the House of Commons Anthony Rota rises to speak in a December 2022 file photo. Rota invited Yaroslav Hunka, a 98-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian who now lives in North Bay, Ont., to witness Ukrainian President Zelenskyy's address to Parliament on Friday.

Rota resigned from his position as speaker last week following the incident. (Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press)

Baranova, who was unaware of this history before last week, said despite its complexity, "we have to learn it."

Marina Lavow, who lives in Gatineau, Que., and moved to Canada from Ukraine nearly 30 years ago, called it a "really sad and unfortunate event" but noted that not everyone in the diaspora agrees.

"The community is not homogeneous," she said.

"There are different ways [of thinking], different generations. And to some people it means one thing, while to other people who have less knowledge of what happened, why that division was created, it means less."

Rota debacle renews calls to examine history, including war crime records



OTTAWA — Canada could revisit calls to declassify documents about the presence of Nazi war criminals in the country, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Wednesday, as the fallout continued over Parliament's recognition last week of a man who fought for the Nazis.

"Canada has a really dark history with Nazis in Canada," Miller said, heading into the weekly Liberal caucus meeting.

"There was a point in our history where it was easier to get (into Canada) as a Nazi than it was as a Jewish person. I think that's a history we have to reconcile."

Many Jewish organizations in Canada say doing that requires a public airing of information, and that means all the records Canada has about the presence of war criminals must be opened up.

"I think part of the problem here is that the records are closed," said B'nai Brith senior lawyer David Matas in an interview.

"You can't remember the past unless you know the past, and you can't know the past unless you get the records."

B'nai Brith Canada and the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center both reiterated their long-standing calls this week for the government to make public all records about the admittance of former Nazi soldiers.

That includes the entirety of a 1986 report from a public commission on war criminals, which is often referred to as the Deschênes Commission for the judge who led it.

The report has never been fully released, including an appendix with the names of 240 alleged Nazi war criminals who might be living in Canada that the report recommended Canada investigate.

"It's now time for Ottawa to not only release the unredacted files related to the Deschênes Commission, but to also address the stark reality that there are still former Nazis with blood on their hands living in Canada," said Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center President Michael Levitt.

Matas noted that in June, a House of Commons committee studying Canada's access-to-information system recommended all historical documents be released in full after 25 years.

He said implementing that recommendation would fulfil the desire to see Canada's war criminal records.

Currently, records can be released 20 years after someone's death. But Matas said that rule doesn't apply in this case, because information about people who died can't be accessed unless their names are available.

He said it's not that every person named in the records is guilty, but that a justice system relies on openness, and you can't have justice without transparency, whether you're guilty or innocent.

There is also little to no information publicly available about what follow-up was done to investigate alleged war criminals named in the Deschênes report, or bring any of them to justice.

All of this comes after what some have called the most embarrassing international debacle in Canadian history.

On Friday, during an official visit by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the House of Commons Speaker pointed to a guest in the gallery he identified as a war hero.

Parliamentarians and dignitaries who were present gave two standing ovations to a 98-year-old Ukrainian Canadian war veteran without knowing or understanding that the unit he fought with was formed by Nazi Germany to fight against the Soviet Union.

Speaker Anthony Rota, who said he did not know about Yaroslav Hunka's background, apologized for making an egregious mistake inviting him to Parliament. He announced Tuesday that he would resign from the role.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued an apology on behalf of Canada and all parliamentarians for the debacle.

University of Alberta professor John-Paul Himka pointed out that nobody seemed to immediately understand how Hunka's military history implied he would have fought with the Germans.

That's because of a great lack of understanding of history, even among elected MPs, he said.

"I mean, this man was introduced as somebody who fought the Russians during World War II. Who was fighting the Russians during World War II? It was the Germans," he said.

Matas concurred.

"I mean if Rota didn't know about this whole issue and he was the Speaker of the House of Commons, you can imagine how widespread the ignorance is," he said.

Still, said Matas, the uproar has rejuvenated the discussion about exposing that history, including all the records.

"This is on the radar, now, I think," he said. "They're paying attention to it."

Miller said he has read the Deschênes report twice since this all happened, and encouraged all Canadians to do so.

He also said he knows there are many people demanding the release of the records, and it is something the government "could possibly examine again."

But he said because he doesn't know exactly what is contained in the documents, he doesn't yet want to say if he backs their full release.

"But again, in a country like Canada that has not only a difficult history with Nazis in Canada, but also one of the most important diaspora of Jewish people, including some of the largest proportions of Holocaust survivors, impunity is absolutely not an option," he said.

Mental Health Minister Ya'ara Saks, whose York Centre riding in Toronto has about one-fifth of its population identifying as Jewish, said Canada should look at what it can do to help provide answers and closure to Jewish Canadians.

She said opening the records is something to be looked at.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 27, 2023.

Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press

Canada Nazi row puts spotlight on Ukraine's WWII past

Nadine Yousif - BBC News, Toronto
Fri, September 29, 2023 

A photo of Heinrich Himmler meeting soldiers in the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS

When Canada's parliament praised a Ukrainian war veteran who fought with Nazi Germany, a renewed spotlight was put on a controversial part of Ukraine's history and its memorialisation in Canada.

Yaroslav Hunka, the Ukrainian veteran who was applauded in parliament this week, served with a Nazi unit called the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS - also known as the Galicia Division - that was formed in 1943.

His appearance was criticised by Jewish groups and other parliamentarians alike. MP Anthony Rota, who invited him, has since resigned as the Speaker of the House of Commons, saying he deeply regretted the mistake.

Praise for Nazi veteran 'embarrassing' - Trudeau

But this is not the first time that Ukraine's role in WWII has sparked a debate in Canada, which is home to the largest Ukrainian diaspora outside of Europe.

Several monuments dedicated to Ukrainian WWII veterans who served in the Galicia Division exist across the country. Jewish groups have long denounced these dedications, arguing soldiers in the Galicia Division swore allegiance to Adolf Hitler, and were either complicit in Nazi Germany's crimes or had committed crimes themselves.

But for some Ukrainians, these veterans are viewed as freedom fighters, who only fought alongside the Nazis to resist the Soviets in their quest for an independent Ukraine.
A contentious history

The Galicia Division was a part of the Waffen-SS, a Nazi military unit that on the whole was found to have been involved in numerous atrocities, including the massacring of Jewish civilians.

During the war, more than one million Jews in Ukraine were killed, mostly between 1941 and 1942. Most of them were shot to death near their homes by Nazi Germans and their collaborators.

The Galicia Division has been accused of committing war crimes, but its members have never been found guilty in a court of law.

Jewish groups have condemned Canadian monuments to Ukrainian veterans who fought in the Waffen-SS, saying they are "a glorification and celebration of those who actively participated in Holocaust crimes".

A controversial sculpture of Ukrainian soldier Roman Shukhevych, located near the Ukrainian Youth Association in Edmonton

One such monument sits in a private Ukrainian cemetery in Oakville, Ontario, and features the insignia of the Galicia Division. Another was put up by Ukrainian WWII veterans in Edmonton, Alberta.

A third, also in Edmonton, depicts the bust of Roman Shukhevych, a Ukrainian nationalist leader and Nazi collaborator, whose units are accused of massacring Jews and Poles.

Shukhevych's involvement, however, is a matter of debate and he was not a member of the Galicia Division.

The monuments, which date back to the 1970s and 80s, have all been vandalised in recent years, with the word "Nazi" painted across them in red.
Why is there disagreement on what the monuments stand for?

It goes back to Ukraine's history in the war, as well as the make-up of Canada's large Ukrainian diaspora, said David Marples, a professor of eastern European history at the University of Alberta.

During WWII, millions of Ukrainians served in the Soviet Red Army, but thousands of others fought on the German side under the Galicia Division.

Those who fought with Germany believed it would grant them an independent state free from Soviet rule, Prof Marples said.

At the time, Ukrainians resented the Soviets for their role in the Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33, also known as Holodomor, which killed an estimated five million Ukrainians.

Far-right ideologies were also gaining traction in most European countries in the 1930s - including the UK - and Ukraine was no exception, said Prof Marples.

Following the defeat of Germany, some of the Galicia Division soldiers were allowed entry to Canada after surrendering to the Allied forces - a move that was resisted by Jewish groups at the time.

Some Canadians of Ukrainian descent view these soldiers and the broader Galicia Division as "national heroes" who fought for the country's independence.

They also argue that their collaboration with Nazi Germany was short-lived, and that they, including Shukhevych, had eventually fought both the Soviets and the Germans for a free Ukraine.

But the Jewish community views this differently.

"The bottom line is that this unit, the 14th SS unit, were Nazis," B'nai Brith Canada leader Michael Mostyn told the BBC.

Canada has reckoned with this history in the past through a commission in 1985, which was tasked with investigating allegations that Canada had become a haven for Nazi war criminals.

A report released by the commission the following year concluded that there is no evidence tying Ukrainians who fought with Nazi Germany to specific war crimes.

And the "mere membership in the Galicia Division is insufficient to justify prosecution," the report added.

The report's findings have since been contested by Jewish groups and some historians.

Roman Shukhevych (sitting, second from left) shown in Bataillon 201 in 1942

Prof Marples said that at the time of the report, some WWII archives in Ukraine and Russia were not accessible and have since become public, prompting renewed research on the issue.

It was then revealed through this additional research that some of those who served within the Galicia Division were involved in war crimes, he said, although none were ever convicted.

Russian disinformation targets Ukraine's history

As this historical debate entered the 21st century, it was made more complicated by modern Russian propaganda, which falsely labelled the Ukrainian government as Nazis to justify its invasion of the country.

Prof Marples said that while far-right extremism still exists in Ukraine, it is much smaller than what Russian propaganda tries to make people believe.

And Ukrainian elected officials are not tied to any far-right group in the country.

"Russia has greatly simplified the narrative," Prof Marples said.

Ukrainian groups in Canada say the row over monuments and Mr Hunka's appearance in parliament is the result of this propaganda.

As far back as 2017, before the invasion but when Russia-Ukraine tensions were high, the Russian embassy in Canada criticized the existence of Ukrainian monuments in Canada, accusing them of paying tribute to "Nazi collaborators".

Taras Podilsky, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex in Edmonton that houses the bust of Shukhevych, said Mr Hunka's swift renunciation by Canadian politicians is the latest effect of Russia's disinformation campaign.

He added there is no evidence linking the veteran to war crimes.

"Without any due process, this person is a victim of a Russian narrative that has now been successful," Mr Podilsky said.

Mr Mostyn of B'nai Brith said he acknowledged the complicated nature of this history, especially to some within the Ukrainian diaspora.

But he said any ties to Nazism "is not something that we can allow future generations to celebrate or whitewash".

More broadly, Holocaust scholars have called out several eastern European countries in recent years for downplaying their role in the massacre of Jewish people during WWII.

Both Jewish groups in Canada and Canadians of Ukrainian descent behind these monuments said they have had conversations about the issue.

However, both said they were unable to agree on a path forward.

"It is on our own private property, it is not on public property, and it is for us to have a symbol of Ukrainian freedom," Mr Podilsky said of the Shukhevych bust in Edmonton. "We know there was no wrongdoing."

Mr Mostyn said that, to him, the recent episode in Canada's House of Commons shows that there are gaps when it comes to Canada's knowledge of Nazi history.

"We have a situation in Canada where we don't know our own history when it comes to Nazi perpetrators that made their way into this country," he said.

He and others within the Jewish community in Canada have called for a renewed examination of this history.

"It really is important that leadership be shown at the highest level by our prime minister, to finally open this up, because this is something that Jewish community has been demanding for decades."

‘Canada has a dark history with Nazis’: political scandal prompts reckoning

Leyland Cecco in Toronto

THE GUARDIAN
Fri, September 29, 2023

Photograph: AFP/Getty Images


Standing in the House of Commons this week, Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, apologized after a war veteran who fought alongside the Nazis was invited into the country’s parliament, called a “hero” and celebrated with two standing ovations.

Trudeau said all lawmakers “regret deeply” having stood and clapped – “even though we [did] so unaware of the context”, adding that the event was a disservice to the memory of millions “targeted by the Nazi genocide”.

Related: Canada parliament speaker resigns after calling Ukrainian Nazi veteran a ‘hero’

“Every year there are fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors to share firsthand the horrors of what they experienced,” said Trudeau. “And it is therefore incumbent upon us all to ensure that no one ever forgets what happened.”

But the momentary amnesia – a forgetfulness seemingly shared by all lawmakers who applauded that day – has transformed into a costly political scandal and prompted a broader re-examination of the legacy of Nazi-linked Ukrainian groups in Canada.

During the second world war, Ukraine was one of the main battlefields of the eastern front. About 4.5 million Ukrainians fought in the Red Army; far fewer – approximately 250,000 – aligned themselves with Nazi Germany. Some factions at different times fought both Soviet and German forces; some were involved in the mass killing of Ukrainian Jews.

Yaroslav Hunka, the 98-year-old veteran lauded in Canada’s parliament, was a member of the SS 14th Waffen Division, a volunteer unit also known as the “Galicia Division”.

Towards the end of the second world war, the group was also known as the First Ukrainian Division of the Ukrainian National Army, which in the following years had the effect of obscuring its links to the Nazi regime.

Yaroslav Hunka, the 98-year-old veteran who was lauded in Canada’s parliament. Photograph: Patrick Doyle/AP

After the war, thousands of Ukrainians moved to Canada, and many who had lived through Stalin’s terror and the ensuing mass starvation held strongly anti-Soviet views. But possible links and sympathies to the Nazis were largely overlooked as the cold war set in, said Ivan Katchanovski, a political scientist at the University of Ottawa.

Despite the Galicia Division’s links to war crimes, a cenotaph celebrating the unit was erected in Canada’s largest Ukrainian cemetery. The memorial has long been source of frustration for Polish and Jewish groups. In June 2020 the words “Nazi war monument” were spray-painted on the cenotaph.

“The group, and the memorials to the fighters, have really escaped scrutiny because so few people know the First Ukrainian Division was just a different name for the SS 14th Waffen Division. And this was one of the reasons, unfortunately, why no one raised the issue in the parliament last week,” said Katchanovski.

When he took the stage of Canada’s parliament a week ago, Zelenskiy praised the city of Edmonton for being the first place in the world to erect a commemoration of the Holodomor famine, a deliberate policy from the Soviet Union which killed millions of Ukrainians.

Five miles north, a bust of the Ukrainian military leader Roman Shukhevych atop a stone plinth has long outraged Jewish and Polish groups. Shukhevych, who fought for Ukrainian independence, served with the Nazis and is believed to have been a perpetrator of massacres in Volhynia and eastern Galicia.

Diplomats from Poland and Israel condemned a similar memorial in Ukraine recently, alleging Shukhevych was responsible for the murder of tens of thousands “by bullets, fire, rape, torture and other beastly methods – only because they prayed to God in Polish or Hebrew”.

While many Canadians may have been surprised to learn of statues venerating such figures, these monuments have long been a “painful source of tension” for the Jewish community, said Dan Panneton at the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre.

“I feel like a lot of people are only now learning truly how deep this pain goes. But the reality is, the monuments are on private property. And over the years, we’ve seen a reluctance with specific, nationalistic facets of the community to engage with negative aspects of Nazi collaboration and participation in the Holocaust.”

The row over Hunka’s invitation has also reopened debate over the hundreds of suspected war criminals who settled in the country.

“Canada has a really dark history with Nazis in Canada,” the immigration minister, Marc Miller, told reporters ahead of the prime minister’s apology. “There was a point in our history where it was easier to get [into Canada] as a Nazi than it was as a Jewish person. I think that’s a history we have to reconcile.”

Prominent Jewish groups, including the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre, have called for all records about the admittance of former Nazi soldiers to be made public, including the entirety of a landmark 1986 report on war criminals evading justice within Canada.

The 1985 Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada, colloquially known as the Deschênes Commission, probed whether the country was a haven for war criminals and Nazi sympathizers. The commission was prompted in part, by reports that the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele had attempted to immigrate to Canada in the early 1960s.

But only redacted portions of the report have been released over the years, omitting an appendix with the names of 240 alleged Nazi war criminals who might be living in Canada.

“Charges of war crimes against members of the Galicia Division have never been substantiated,” said the final report. The federal government has only prosecuted four individuals of war crimes – but none of those attempts have ended in conviction. Due to the secretive nature of the report’s contents, it remains unclear how much the government investigated other individuals suspected of war crimes.

“Remembering the Holocaust means not just remembering the victims,” David Matas of B’nai Brith Canada wrote in a recent editorial. “It means also remembering their murderers.”

The scandal over a standing ovation for a Nazi veteran is now raising questions about a cemetery monument in Canada that honors his Waffen SS unit

Matthew Loh
Fri, September 29, 2023 at 2:24 AM MDT·3 min read
107



The scandal over a standing ovation for a Nazi veteran is now raising questions about a cemetery monument in Canada that honors his Waffen SS unit


Canada's parliament accidentally applauded a 98-year-old Nazi veteran on Friday.

The gaffe rekindled calls for a monument honoring his unit to be removed from a Canadian cemetery.

Yaroslav Hunka served in the 14th Waffen SS Division, a voluntary unit of mostly Ukrainians.

The Canadian parliament's standing ovation for a Ukrainian war veteran who turned out to be a former fighter for Nazi Germany has reignited calls to take down a monument honoring his unit.

Yaroslav Hunka, 98, who served in the voluntary 14th Grenadier Division of the Waffen SS, was applauded as a war hero by Canadian leaders on Friday without them realizing he actually fought in a Nazi unit.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has since apologized for the gaffe, calling it "deeply embarrassing." Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was visiting Canada's parliament at the time of the standing ovation.

Now a monument honoring Hunka's unit in Oakville's St Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery is under fire again after his appearance made headlines.

"It's unacceptable to have monuments dedicated to a unit affiliated with the SS because they were complicit in the Holocaust," Dan Panneton, director of allyship and community engagement from the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, told the Canadian media outlet Global News.

The monument, located around 25 miles from Toronto, is a centograph that was erected in remembrance of those who fought for the 14th SS Division, also known as the Galicia Division.

It was vandalized with graffiti in 2020, when someone spray-painted the words "Nazi war monument" on its face, reported The Ottawa Citizen.

The monument was one of several brought up by the Russian Embassy in Ottawa in 2017, which complained that the structures honored "Nazi collaborators in Canada and nobody is doing anything about it."


These monuments in Canada have been controversial. Jewish groups like B'nai Brith Canada are lobbying to have them removed, calling them "Nazi-glorifying monuments."

But some Ukrainians who moved to Canada believe those who joined the Galicia Division were doing so because they thought they were fighting to free their country from Soviet rule, David Marples, professor of Eastern European history at the University of Alberta, told the BBC.

Jewish groups in Canada disagree. "The bottom line is that this unit, the 14th SS unit, were Nazis," B'nai Brith Canada leader Michael Mostyn told the outlet.

Marples noted that modern Russia has seized upon the narrative of some Ukrainian allyship with Nazi Germany to incorrectly say that modern Ukraine is now run by Nazis. "Russia has greatly simplified the narrative," Marples said, per the BBC.

The Galicia Division, of which Hunka was a part of, has been accused of committing war crimes, including the slaughter of hundreds of Polish civilians. Its members have not been convicted in court, though records continue to surface of the slaughter.

It was a voluntary unit formed in 1943 by Nazi Germany and mainly consisted of men of Ukrainian or Slovak descent.

Meanwhile, a Polish minister said on Tuesday that he has "taken steps" to extradite Hunka from Canada and to prosecute him in Poland.

Canada’s First World War: A Centennial Series on ActiveHistory.ca

Active History’s series on the history, memory, and legacy of the First World War launched in August, 2014.  The series is intentionally broad in outlook, including subjects as diverse as the war’s political impact, life on the home front, and commemoration today. It is edited by Mary Chaktsiris, Sarah Glassford, Nathan Smith, and Jonathan Weier, with former editor Christopher Schultz in a consultative role. If you are interested in contributing to this series, please check out our “Call for Blog Posts” and contact us at: nsmith241@gmail.com

• Reflections on the First World War
• In Conversation IV: Preserving and Passing-On the Legacies of Canada’s First World War
• We need to stop talking about Vimy
• Growing Pains: The Great War Veterans’ Association, Early Poppy Day Campaigns, and the Seeds of Commemorative Tradition
• The Dark Side of Disarmament: Ocean Pollution, Peace, and the World Wars
• Remembrance Day 2018 and Canada’s First World War Centennial
• “The town’s gone wild”: Sounds of Victory in Toronto, 11 November 1918
• First World War Postscript: “Fed Up and Tired” in the Months Following the Armistice
• “Tom’s Return” — or A Girl’s Heroic Adventure? Great War Fiction by a Canadian Schoolgirl
• Embodying Anti-German Sentiment during the Great War: An Archival Moment
• Art as Prescience: Reflections on Sarah Beck’s 2001 ÖDE
• Indigenous Veterans, the Indian Act, and the Origins of National Aboriginal Veterans Day
• “The Equal and Respected Companions of Men”[1]: The Female Veteran of the Great War
• “He Will Again Be Able to Make Himself Self-Sustaining”[1]: Canadian Ex-Officers’ Return to Civilian Life
• The Difficulty in Diagnosis: Shell Shock and the Case of Private Dennis R.
• Coming Home: Veterans, Pensions and the Canadian State After the Great War
• In Conversation III: Touring the Battlefields of Canada’s First World War
• Africa’s War: Anti-colonial Movements and Repression in First World War French West Africa
• Art, Religion, & Iconography in the Vimy Memorial: An Overview
• Six Nations Soldiers and British Women’s Activism during and after the First World War
• The Bolshevik: Art, Revolution and Canada
• Canadian Red Cross Sock-Selling: ‘Fake News’ of the First World War
• In Conversation II: Archiving and Accessing Canada’s First World War
• Red Crosses and White Cotton: Memory and Meaning in First World War Quilts
• The Alderville War Memorial: A Bizarre Monument or A Community’s Search for Meaning?
• Atheists in the Trenches: Loss of Faith among Canadians in the Great War
• National Disunity and the Meaning of Vimy Ridge
• Feet of Clay? Canada’s Vimy Ridge
• Peaceable Kingdom or Emergency State?  The Legacy of Canada’s First World War for Security Regulation and Civil Rights
• “You want to put what, where?” Contesting Malpeque’s (Second) First World War Memorial
• Unfit to Fight: The History of Rejecting First World War Volunteers – An Excerpt
• Canada’s History and the First World War Centennial: A Conversation
• A View from the (Editing) Trenches: Summer 2016 and the Challenges of (Knowledge) Mobilization
• “Manna From Heaven” – A YMCA Physical Director at Valcartier and Salisbury Plain
• Vimy Ridge and Canadian Nationalism
• In Conversation: Teaching and Learning Canada’s First World War
• “Deeply regret to inform you”: War and Loss in the Trapp Family
• Performing For War, Hoping For Peace: Canadian Actresses’ Transnational Engagements with World War I
• Golgotha?: D. Y. Cameron’s Flanders from Kemmel
• Marjorie Stinson, the Flying Schoolmarm
• Bleeding Him White: How Canada Stole an Indigenous Veteran’s Identity
• Exploring the Clash of Official and Vernacular Memory: The Great War in Brantford, Brant Country, and Six Nations
• Hidden Messages and Code Words: Bill Alldritt’s Letters as a Prisoner in First World War Germany
• “If ye break faith – we shall not sleep?”
• Further Writing on War, Loss and Remembrance: Reflections on In Flanders Fields: 100 Years
• “Trustees of the Future” and the Echoes of History
• New Archives of Ontario Online Exhibit: Ontario’s WWI Hospital Overseas
• World War One: A Fight for Freedom?
• Soldier-Candidates and the 1917 Wartime Election
• Conscientious Objectors: Fitting Dissent into a Coming of Age Story
• Racist Propaganda and the Shaping of Boys’ Attitudes toward War
• Raising ‘Human Ammunition’: Motherhood, Propaganda, and the Great War
• When writing the First World War comes home: Remembering Pvt. Harold Carter
• Heritage vs. History in the Commemoration of War in Cape Breton Highlands National Park
• A Monument to the Past? The Never Forgotten National War Memorial Project
• A Father’s Grief: The Case of Captain Robert Bartholomew
• The Second Battle of Ypres and the Creation of a YMCA Hero
• “On ‘The Road to 2017’: Reflecting on Canada’s First World War Commemoration Plans”
• The Ideological Work of Commemoration
• Sexing Up Canada’s First World War
• An American Legion in the CEF? Crossing Borders during “Canada’s” First World War
• Passing the Torch: The CBC and Commemoration in 1964 and 2014
• Promises Broken, or Politics as Usual?
• Did You Know the American World War I Museum is in Kansas City?
• New paper – Victory in the Kitchen: Food Control in the Lakehead during the Great War by Beverly Soloway
• 1864 vs. 1914: A Commemorative Showdown
• Podcast – Robert Rutherdale on the Local Responses of WWI
• World War One in Winnipeg – Conscription
• Anti-War Poetry in Canadian Newspapers at the Beginning of the First World War
• Comic Art and the First World War
• A Canadian Observing the Great War Centenary in London, UK
• ‘1914-1918 In Memoriam’: A View from the Grandstand