Internment of Ukrainians

More than 170,000 Ukrainians, primarily from the Austro-Hungarian empire, came to Canada prior to the First World War as agricultural settlers and industrial labourers. Of these, 5,954 immigrants from Austria-Hungary were confined in Canadian receiving stations and internment camps during the war. There they built roads, erected and repaired buildings, and cleared and drained land. Although intended to house unnaturalized “enemy aliens” who had contravened regulations or were security threats, the camps in practice held the destitute and unemployed. Nativist pressure and prejudice were also factors through which individuals, some of them naturalized British subjects, ended up in the camps. As the majority of internees posed no threat to security, by 1916 most had been paroled back into the labour force.