Abstract
After the introduction of official multiculturalism in 1971, Canadian public space has seen the erection of monuments by various ethno-national groups, including the Ukrainian community, particularly prominent in the prairie provinces and in the larger Toronto area. Aided by Canadian multicultural funding, émigré Ukrainian nationalists set up several memorials dedicated to Ukrainian armed groups, active during World War II. In 2017, some of these monuments became the centre of a political and diplomatic controversy following vocal complaints from the Russian embassy in Ottawa that there be ‘monuments to Nazi collaborators in Canada and nobody is doing anything about it’. Against the background of this diplomatic conflict, this chapter sets out to analyse these monuments, placing them in a historical context of displacement, long-distance nationalism, and official multiculturalism.
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Notes
- 1.
A dominant force in Ukrainian émigré politics, the OUN split, in the 1940s and 1950s, into three rivalling wings, as the radical wing under Stepan Bandera, known as OUN(b), broke with the more conservative leadership of Andrii Mel’nyk, which became known as the OUN(m). In the 1950s, a smaller, CIA-funded group OUN(z), or ‘OUN abroad’ split off from the Banderites. [redacted] (1977) On the OUN émigré groups, see Markus (1992). In order to make a distinction between nationalists—that is, adherents of the idea of Ukrainian statehood, among whom all sorts of political orientations were represented—and the OUN, which subscribed to a particular, totalitarian ideology, this chapter uses capital N when referring to the ideological postulates and followers of the various wings of that organization.
- 2.
On descriptive and normative multiculturalism, see Bauhn (1995).
- 3.
In 2008, Canada officially adopted the diaspora’s version of the famine, recognizing, through Bill C-459, the Holodomor as a genocide. On the glorification of the OUN(b) and UPA by senior Tory politicians, such as Jason Kenney, formerly Minister of Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism under Stephen Harper, and currently Premier of Alberta, see Himka (2015, p. 157).
- 4.
Volodymyr Kubijovych Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, (henceforth: LAC), MG 31, D 203, Vol. 10, folder 41 “Petro Savaryn.”
- 5.
The UNR stands for Ukrains’ka Narodna Respublika, the Ukrainian People’s Republic, a short-lived republic declared in early 1918.
- 6.
The Carpathian Sich (Karpats’ka Sich) was a paramilitary organization set up in late 1938, and which sought independence for Capatho-Ukraine.
- 7.
See also LAC, MG 31, D 203, Vol. 10, folders 40 “Petro Savaryn – Edmonton (1968, 1970, 1972–75)”; Peter and Olga Savaryn Family Fonds, Provincial Archives of Alberta (henceforth PAA), accession no. PR2014.0451/0003, PR0671.0005, “Information and biographies,” Box 1.
- 8.
The list of donors read as a who-is-who of radical émigré Ukrainian Nationalism. The list of donors includes prominent OUN names such as Halamai, Stets’ko, Luciuk, Plaviuk, Kashuba, and many others (Vakar 1988, pp. 9, 14, 22, 61, 104).
- 9.
- 10.
On the campaign, launched on Russian Insider, Consortiumnews.com, and The New Cold War: Ukraine and Beyond, see (Fife 2017)
- 11.
In a separate UCC communique to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Ihor Michalchyshyn (2018) stated explicitly his claim that ‘[t]he veterans of the 14th Division Galicia/Halychyna joined not to fight for Germany, but to fight against Soviet Communist tyranny and for a free Ukraine’.
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Rudling, P.A. (2020). Long-Distance Nationalism: Ukrainian Monuments and Historical Memory in Multicultural Canada. In: Marschall, S. (eds) Public Memory in the Context of Transnational Migration and Displacement. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41329-3_4
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