From the Globe and Mail:
Beginning today, Prof. Luciuk and the descendants of some of the people who were prisoners there are hoping to fill in that missing chapter with a new fund that will support research and commemorative projects on the period. The fund was started with a $10-million endowment from the federal government and is designed to support a wide range of work, from scholarly papers to works of art or literature.
"It’s all about remembering," Prof. Luciuk said. "When I first started doing this research, I had people telling me this never happened. "
It’s been nearly a century since Canadian authorities rounded up thousands of immigrant families they considered enemy aliens and sent them to labour camps during the First World War. More than 8,500 people, mostly from what is now Ukraine, were sent to 24 internment camps across Canada between 1914 and 1920, because of their homeland’s links to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Many men were used for forced labour, and 81 women and 156 children lived in the camps. Despite the scale of the internment, little evidence remains. No known survivors are still alive and many of the official records were destroyed.
This sad chapter in Canadian history is finally getting the recognition it deserves thanks to Prof. Luciuk and others with the Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund.
Ottawa – Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj (Etobicoke Centre) is part of an official Canadian Parliamentary Delegation to Ukraine led by the Honourable Peter Milliken, M.P., Speaker of the House of Commons.