Peasants in the Promised Land: Canada and the UkrainiansAnnotation For many years after Confederation, Canadian governments wrestled with a sorry fact: until the West was settled, Canada was an illogical country. The great nation-building policies of John A. Macdonald's National Policy and the transcontinetal railway could not succeed without a living farm population on the prairies. On the other side of the Atlantic, the Austrian crown lands of Bukovyna and Galicia - part of present-day Ukraine - were overpopulated with "redundant" peasants. Their precarious existence triggered the forces of emigration. More than 170 000 of them sailed for Canada. Life in the promised land was hard. To begin with, Canadians seemed to think that the only good immigrants were British. Some went so far as to suggest that the Ukrainian newcomers were less than human. Editorialists wondered how "beings bearing the human form could have sunk to such a bestial level." But on the harsh and remote prairies, the Ukrainians triumphed over the toil and isolation of homesteading. Those who turned to wage work withstood the wretched conditions reserved for the labour of the emerging Canadian industrial system. As the question of education rights split the West on religious lines in the early years of the century, the Ukrainians were caught in the crossfire between French Catholics and English Protestants. Despite all this, the peasants put down roots and prospered. Peasants in the Promised Land is the first book to focus on the formative period of Ukrainian settlement in Canada. Drawing on exhaustive research, including rich Ukrainian-language archival sources, Jaroslav Petryshyn brings history to life with extracts from memoirs, letters and newspapers of the period. His text is illustrated with maps and historical photographs. |
Contents
The Dual Frontier | 3 |
Canadian Immigration and the NorthWest | 12 |
The Seeds of Emigration | 27 |
Crossing the Rubicon | 42 |
IN THE NEW LAND 18911905 | 57 |
The Labouring Frontier | 114 |
The Social and Institutional Frontier | 128 |
STEADYING THE FOUNDATION 19051914 | 139 |
Labour and the Socialist Perspective | 154 |
Politics and the Issue of Education | 170 |
Consolidating the Religious Question | 193 |
Conclusion | 208 |
Notes | 218 |
240 | |
256 | |
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Common terms and phrases
agents Alberta Andrew Sheptytsky Anglo-Celtic assimilation Austria-Hungary Austrian bilingual schools bishop British Columbia Budka Bukovynian Canadian Immigration cent Cited Clifford Sifton colonies district Dmytriw economic Edmonton emigration Empire English ethnic European farm foreign Galicia and Bukovyna Galician and Bukovynian Genik Greek Catholic Greek Catholic Church Greek Orthodox Church Himka History homesteads Ibid Idem immi Immigration Policy Imperialists Independent Greek Church intelligentsia Ivan Franko Joseph Oleskiw Krat labour land language Lviv Manitoba Martynowych mining nationalist nian North-West Oleskiw Ontario organized Party peasants Polish political population prairies Presbyterian priests Prosvita Protestants province radical railway religious Robotchyi Narod Roman Catholic Russian Rusyn Ruthenian Saskatchewan settlers Sheptytsky Society Stechishin Stuartburn Svarich Svoboda teachers tion Toronto Ukrai Ukrainian Catholic Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Ukrainian immigrants Ukrainian Settlements Ukrainian Social Ukrainian Socialist Ukrainian-Canadian Ukrainians in Canada United unpublished paper Vegreville village W.F. McCreary Wasyl Eleniak Western Canada Winnipeg workers Yorkton Yuzyk