Ukrainian Canadian Foundation

WHAT ARE SOME CANADIAN STORIES THAT HAVE NOT BEEN TOLD OR POTENTIALLY COULD BE TOLD?

Picture yourself as a young teenage boy in Canada who is brought as a baby to Canada by his Ukrainian parents. With the outbreak of World War I, as a teenager you are suspected of being an enemy alien notwithstanding that you are only a year away as a 17 year old from being a naturalized British subject. You are arrested and sent to an internment camp in Banff National Park at the foot of Majestic Castle Mountain where you are joined by hundreds of others. Your father, friends, neighbours begin a campaign to have you released but the bureaucratic machinery moves slowly. In the dead of winter you and a group of your fellow inmates make a desperate break for the dark Canadian forests while a hail of bullets rips into the trees around you from the armed soldiers that are preventing your escape. In the dark expanse of the Canadian wilderness the search parties never find you and you disappear never to be seen or heard from again. Sounds like a romantic novel, except that it isn't. It is non-fiction and the story of John Kondro.
How about a World War I group of war stories. Two men have signed up for the Canadian Expeditionary Force ready to fight for Canada overseas in World War I. As the party is shipping out, one of them then is brought back from his battalion, stripped of his rank and sent off to the internment camps. In a dark cell in downtown Calgary the morning watch discovers the lifeless body of this Canadian patriot. Fiction? - not really. It is only the story of Private William Perthaliuk. A small representative of about 9,000 men, women and children imprisoned against their will or the 70,000 given identity cards and having their civil liberties forcibly curtailed.
But what about the other fellow, he goes on to be shipped overseas, and fights valiantly for the cause of Canada. In fact, at the Battle of Ypres and in a series of other battles his distinguished and fierce fighting for his country earns him the Victoria Cross. He is honoured by King and country. But upon his return home a different reality faces him. After descending through discrimination and disgrace, he is involved in a scandalous homicide and ultimately is pressed into service in the Canadian parliament as a janitor where he is later by happenstance, discovered by Prime Minister McKenzie King. Fiction, hardly, for I have described to you part of the details of the amazing life of Ukrainian-Canadian Philip Konowal. Another story that Canadians don't seem to know, understand or celebrate. [In French: the same can be said of the men, women and children, as young as two years of age, that were shipped to Spirit Lake in Northern Quebec under the similar program who came in contact with the Quebecois of the region and some who were shot to death trying to escape back to their loved ones. A remote cemetery still exists bearing testament to those internees who did not return home still buried in the wilderness in unmarked graves, alone and forgotten.]
Or perhaps there is a non-fiction novel here somewhere. The establishment by communities of the first unemployment insurance program, the first town on the prairies that hired a doctor under a rudimentary medicare system, the bringing of spring wheat and its subsequent genetic manipulation into one of the world's most bountiful crops transforming rural Canada into an agricultural powerhouse in the world.
How about the story of a young prairie farm boy from Wynnyard, Saskatchewan who goes on in World War II to serve his country as a Canadian pilot only to be shot down over France. After evading German capture and traveling some 400 kilometres, he proceeds to work with the French underground in the fierce resistance movement against the Nazis. Ultimately in an effort to save a small French town, he is killed by his German occupiers but the French town of "Marten-et-Veyre" remembers him as "Pierre le Canadien" at an annual ceremony that has now spanned over six decades in unbroken remembrance of his fight for freedom. Non-fiction, once again simply describing the story of Peter Dmytruck who fought bravely for his country and freedom.
Of the one and a half million Canadians who claim Ukrainian ancestry, there are thousands upon thousands of untold stories of Canadians who fought for freedom, fought for democratic ideals, and lived exciting, romantic and sometimes chaotic lives that the Shevchenko Foundation would like gloriously explored.
Since sports stories are also part of Canadian culture, is it any wonder that Canadians feel pride in names like Bossy, Hawerchuk, Federko, Bucyk, Andreychuk, Sydor or even Billy Mosienko who scored the NHL's three fastest goals while playing for the Chicago Blackhawks. These are really the story of rural boys of Ukrainian heritage that seized a dream on a pond of ice. Could you imagine a story where one of these boys grew up in poverty, only to find that his hockey talents were recognized and that it would find him playing in the NHL playing with one of his idols in a Stanley Cup final game. In this game he is destined to be on the ice at the moment in time when the puck leaves his stick and scores an overtime goal that wins the Stanley Cup on home ice. He is treated as a hero by his fellow Canadians and later disappears into the Ontario wilderness as a result of a plane that has gone astray and his remains are not found for many decades. Fiction? - hardly. I've just described to you the Bill Barilko Toronto Maple Leaf story.
Or how about a lesser talented Ukrainian-Canadian like Bill Shvetz who regularly slammed his knuckles into the face of Donald S. Cherry in the minor leagues of hockey. Cherry himself described this Ukaranian as one of the toughest men he ever met in hockey. Perhaps there is a great Canadian story of riotously, hilarious proportions describing the goings on of this collection of hockey misfits who helped define the character of Canadian life.