Canada’s First National Internment Operations, 1914-1920: The Serbian experience

Across Europe and the world the 2014 remembrance of the centennial
of the commencement of the Great War focused on the tragedy that
had unfolded on the ancient continent. Commemorative books, films,
speeches and concerts all conveyed the enormous impact of the fouryear
conflict. As the winds of war gained momentum one hundred
years ago, the catastrophe that affected the Serbian nation reached
cataclysmic proportions unprecedented in our ancestral history - the
loss of 27% of the population to war, slaughter and disease and the
threat of Serbia’s total annihilation by the mighty Austro-Hungarian
Empire. Notwithstanding the enormity of the human losses and sacrifice,
the “war to end all wars” failed to end the bloodshed of nations.
Not many years passed before tensions regained momentum in the
same theatre of war, in the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats
and Slovenes – later Yugoslavia – where the ferocity intensified and
even surpassed the horrors of World War I causing even more agony
for the Serbian people.
While the old continent was groaning under the endless explosions
of guns, cannons and bombs and Serbia was lamenting the
monumental catastrophe evolving on its terrain, there were tensions
in faraway Canada where Serbs and other ethnic groups had emigrated
choosing to leave the cherished hearths and homes of generations
rather than be subjected to the oppression of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire. One aspect of the war chronicles was not marked during the
centennial, namely a tragic episode in Canadian history related to the
catastrophe overseas – Canada’s unjust treatment of many of its immigrants
from Austria-Hungary. “During Canada’s first national internment
operations of 1914-1920 thousands of men, women and children
were branded as ‘enemy aliens’. Many were imprisoned. Stripped of
what little wealth they had, forced to do heavy labour in Canada’s hinterlands,
they were also disenfranchised and subjected to other state
sanctioned censures – not because of anything they had done but only
because of where they had come from, who they were.” 1)
In fact, the internment of East Europeans during World War I and
beyond was almost lost to oblivion, but a chance discovery 37 years ago
by Ukrainian Canadian professor Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk salvaged the
painful story from the dustbin of history. Years of lobbying efforts by
Canada’s Ukrainian community to obtain government acknowledgement
of Canada’s first national internment operations yielded a posi-
tive result. “In May 2008 representatives of the Ukrainian Canadian
community reached an agreement with the Government of Canada
providing for the creation of an endowment fund to support commemorative,
educational, scholarly and cultural projects intended to
remind all Canadians of this episode in our nation’s history.” 2) Mary
Manko Haskett, the last survivor of the internment operations who
was a child in the Spirit Lake internment camp, charged us “to never
forget what was done to her and all the other internees. She did not ask
for an apology, or compensation. She asked only that we secure their
memory.” 3) The silenced voices would be remembered.

Canada then and now
Technically, Canada’s demographics have always been reflective of a
diversity of immigrants. In the 1960s, the Royal Commission on Bilingualism
and Biculturalism focused on the British and French as the
“two founding nations”, and served as the foundation for a response
from the third segment of the population – the ethnocultural communities
who had been settling and developing this land, mainly since the
19th century. As a response to the Commission’s report, the Government
of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau implemented a policy of
multiculturalism in October 1971 which recognized the third element
in Canadian society within the framework of bilingualism and biculturalism.
The development of that policy over more than four decades
confirmed what was already a reality – Canada has always been
a diverse society. “Cultural pluralism” was officially acknowledged
as the essence of our national identity, a program which encouraged
adaptation, retention of languages and cultural heritage within the
Canadian framework and reinforced equality and inclusiveness. In
other words, immigrants would be included in the national partnership.
It was a groundbreaking policy whose goal was to accommodate
the changing demographics in the interests of Canada’s harmony, cohesiveness
and prosperity. Since then, Canada’s approach toward immigrants
has been generous, especially toward refugees from war torn
regions of the world. True to its beneficence, Canada has assisted millions
of immigrants in adjusting to a new society, helping them with
official language acquisition, education, employment and social services.
Sadly, that was not the case in 1914. What happened in the past was
inconsistent with the values Canadians cherish today.
Canada’s immigration policy from 1891 to 1914 recruited East Europeans
to settle the Prairies and develop the huge expanse of empty,
fertile land. Canadian Pacific Railway posters can still be found promoting
passage for a nominal fee of fifteen dollars, affordable even by
contemporary standards. Thousands of citizens of Austria-Hungary
seized the opportunity, eager for a better life and anxious to escape
the yoke of Austro-Hungarian rule. Reaching Canada’s eastern shore
at Halifax, immigrants from many diverse ethnic backgrounds produced
Austro-Hungarian passports – and in some cases Ottoman
passports – proof of their birth and/or citizenship in the vast Empires.
Guided only by citizenship status, while unfamiliar with the foreign
names and the disparate ethnic composition of the Empires, Immigration
Officers did not register the ethnic origin of the new arrivals.
Individually, the immigrants were simply registered as “Austro-Hungarian”
or “Austrian”, or in some cases as “Ottoman” or “Turk”, an
inaccuracy which cost the new arrivals dearly only a few years later
when the Great War broke out.
Why was the precision of the name registration so vital? The Dominion
of Canada was part of the British Empire and naturally took
up the British cause when it entered the war on 4 August 1914 against
Germany and its allies, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires.
Canada’s membership in the Allied Powers meant that it was also an
ally of Serbia and Montenegro whose passports guaranteed protection
for their émigrés in the war environment. Canada directly supported
the Kingdom of Serbia by sending medical delegations to assist the
war ravaged country. English and Scottish medical personnel also offered
their assistance. On the other hand, since Canada was officially
at war with the two Empires, its many immigrants from those territories
were immediately placed under suspicion, regarded as disloyal to
Canada and labeled “enemy aliens”, an unjust stigma that led to severe
consequences.
It was a very different Canada at the turn of the 20th century. Canadians
were fearful of these immigrants who looked different, dressed
differently and spoke strange languages. Xenophobia was rampant
in the general population stoked by hostile pronouncements of some
politicians and the media. Those factors, in conjunction with the pejorative
label, set the stage for the internment tragedy which followed
between 1914 and 1920. Australia, New Zealand and South Africa also
had internment operations, but with Canada’s climate, the operations
here proved to be the harshest.

War Measures Act
On 22 August 1914 Canada implemented the War Measures Act 4) which
mandated state-sanctioned deprivation of all civil rights including:
disenfranchisement; restrictions on freedom of speech, movement and
association; confiscation of little accumulated wealth and property; internment
and deportation. This Act came into effect two more times
in Canadian history: on 3 September 1939 inducing the internment of
Japanese, Italian and German Canadians during World War II; and
on 16 October 1970, the only peacetime enforcement of the Act in response
to the Quebec Crisis. Later criticized for its severity and the removal
of rights such as “habeas corpus” which safeguards individuals
against illegal detention or imprisonment, the War Measures Act was
repealed on 21 July 1988 and replaced by the Emergencies Act which
_______________
1) Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund (CFWWIRF ).
Recognition, Restitution & Reconciliation. Poster. 2009
2) CFWWIRF . Poster.
3) Lubomyr Y. Luciuk, Without Just Cause: Canada’s first national internment
operations and the Ukrainian Canadians, 1914-1920 (Kingston: Kashtan
Press, 2007): 56.
4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Measures_Act