This year marks the 100th anniversary of the War Measures Act — adopted on August 22, 1914 during the First World War. It was used to imprison Ukrainian-Canadians and other ethnic groups into one ofCanada’s 24 internment camps.
Today we are marking 100 years sinceCanada’s first national internment operations began with a "wave" of plaque unveilings. Starting in Amherst, Nova Scotia, and ending in Nanaimo, British Columbia, two of the 24 sites where Ukrainians and other Europeans were imprisoned as "enemy aliens" during Canada's first national internment operations of 1914-1920, this is the first-ever time in Canadian history that 100 plaques have been unveiled on the same date and time across the country.
To hallow the memory of all of the internees of the Great War period in Canada, the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, supported by the Ukrainian Cultural Centre Toronto, the League of Ukrainian Canadians, the League of Ukrainian Canadian Women, the Ukrainian Youth Association of Canada, the Society of Veterans of UPA, and the Homin Ukrainy/Ukrainian Echo newspaper, came up with the idea of unveiling 100 plaques across Canada, literally from coast to coast.
These plaques are being unveiled on the 100th anniversary of the passage of the War Measures Act, which provided the legal framework for the needless internment of thousands of innocent men, women, and children, and the registration of many tens of thousands more as "enemy aliens," not because of any wrong they had done but only because of who they were, and where they had come from.
This national commemorative exercise should bring to mind not only what happened during the First World War but also how the very same War Measures Act would be used against our fellow Japanese, German, and Italian Canadians in the Second World War. We should all be reminded of the need to remain ever-vigilant in defence of our civil liberties and human rights, particularly in periods of domestic and international crisis.
