Ukrainian Immigration
Ukrainian immigration commenced in 1891 when Ivan Pylypow of Nebyliv, Kalush
district, Galicia, learned about the "free lands" available on the
Prairies from Galician German acquaintances who had emigrated some years
earlier. After investigating settlement possibilities in Manitoba and
Alberta with Wasyl Eleniak, a fellow villager, Pylypow returned to Galicia to
bring back both men's families and as many friends and relatives as could be
persuaded to accompany them. Although he was arrested and tried for
sedition by the Austrian authorities, and prevented from making his way back to
Canada until 1893, the publicity generated by his trial advertised Canada more effectively than he himself could have done. By 1894, a
Ukrainian settlement had emerged in the vicinity of Star, Alberta.
Ukrainian immigration assumed mass proportions in 1896. It was
accelerated by Dr. Joseph Oleskiv, a young agronomist of populist
sympathies. Oleskiv collected data on Western Canada, visited the region,
met with representatives of the Department of the Interior, lectured widely
about Canada, and penned two popular pamphlets that were published and
distributed to their reading clubs by the Prosvita and Kachkovsky
societies. He envisaged an orderly and controlled immigration of
hand-picked and well-capitalized peasant farmers who would be assisted by the
Canadian government. Their poor countrymen would follow a few years later
when the former group would be in a position to help them.
Clifford Sifton, however, the new Liberal Minister of the Interior, was determined to bring the Prairies with Britons,
Americans and
northern Europeans; he was a pragmatist who was indifferent to the ethnic
background of the settlers, provided they were thrifty and industrious
agriculturalists. Consequently, agreements were concluded with European agents
to recruit eastern European immigrants, including Ukrainians. As a result,
Ukrainian immigration to Canada was not the orderly and controlled process
envisaged by Oleskiv (who, in any case, had died by 1903). The majority of
Ukrainian immigrants who came to Canada were illiterate and without
capital. Even after Sifton's successors, Frank Oliver and Robert Rogers,
curtailed efforts to recruit east European agriculturalists, Ukrainian
immigration continued to increase, sustained by a momentum of its own.
Moreover, after 1905, the demand of industry for cheap labour, primarily by the railroad companies
and mining interests, stimulated the influx of single men
seeking work rather than land. The majority of Ukrainian immigrants who
entered Canada between 1905 and 1914 fell into this category. By 1914,
about 170,000 Ukrainians had entered Canada, and about 20-25% of the
Ukrainian-Canadian population was in Alberta.
The outbreak of war in 1914 terminated Ukrainian immigration. In 1919,
confronted with a labour surplus, the federal government bowed to nativist
pressure and barred most east central Europeans from entering Canada.
Within five years however, a massive exodus of unemployed Canadian labourers and
the inability to find suitable replacements in Britain caused the ban to be
lifted.
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