In the 1950s, government archives related to Canada’s World War I internment were ordered to be incinerated.  For this reason, accurate data is hard to obtain, and many specific details are missing.

The internment was assisted by popular sentiment.  At the turn of the century it was uncontroversial to dehumanize Ukrainians (an 1899 Calgary Daily Herald editorialist wrote that Ukrainians “resemble animals”) and war hysteria made them a convenient target. 

During World War II, war hysteria again made it convenient to target groups who were unpopular, or whose ideas did not conform to received wisdom.  Early in World War II, Vancouver’s Ukrainian Hall was confiscated and its leaders jailed due to the AUUC’s support for the Soviet Union.  (The Hall was confiscated from 1940 to 1945. With the help of the Civil Liberties Association it was returned to the AUUC in January of 1945).   Japanese Canadians were targeted to a catastrophic degree, their internment also supported by the public at large, with mainstream community leaders (the Greater Victoria Teachers’ Association as one notable example) openly expressing support.

The lesson to be learned is that when passions are inflamed and society finds itself moving dominantly in one direction, those with nonconforming identities and ideas invariably end up as “collateral damage” and are stripped of basic human rights such as freedom of movement and expression.  At such times we need to be self-critical and ensure that we do not assist such oppression.