Sandra Semchuk will present her book The Stories Were Not Told: Canada’s First World War Internment Camps at an upcoming event in North Battleford. (submitted photo/The Chapel Gallery)

By Angela Brown

A history of suffering

Local artist of Ukrainian descent tells story of Canada’s immigrant internment camps

Jul 5, 2019 | 2:45 PM

Sandra Semchuk wants to bring to light many of the untold stories of those who suffered in internment camps in Canada, largely from the present-day Ukraine, during the First World War with her new book The Stories Were Not Told.

She will give a presentation on the project at an upcoming event in North Battleford.

Semchuk recounts stories from many internees and their descendents for her project. Her book also includes a collection of archival photographs as well as her own photographs, many depicting the sites where these camps once operated.

She said she discovered some of the history when she saw a plaque erected by the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association to memorialize the historic event at a former internment camp called Castle Mountain located in Banff.

“I was shocked to hear that so many of my own people – Ukrainian people, along with Germans, Bulgarians, Croatians, Hungarians, Italians, Jews, Kurds …(and others) were interned,” she said. “Most of them were Ukrainians, and most of them civilians.”

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An archival photograph from the Luhovy Collection, shown in The Stories Were Not Told. (submitted photo/Sandra Semchuk)

Semchuk said her project is part of larger movement that aims to raise awareness of what she describes as Canada’s unjust imprisonment of immigrants, then called “enemy aliens,” most of whom were civilians, in internment camps across the country from 1914 to 1920, that continues to impact people’s lives today.

Semchuk said the historic event also leaves an unfortunate legacy of shame for future generations to come to terms with.

“I had to reflect on what I was learning from this story, and from my own elders and from elders from other nations, and try to understand how this could happen, and how it could happen that the stories were not told after more than 100 years,” she said.

In her book, Semchuk explains the immigrants’ treatment was essentially “legislated discrimination,” and talks about the need for greater reconciliation, remembrance, and healing.

She said most people don’t know that thousands of immigrants were sent to 24 internment camps located in many communities throughout Canada.

Semchuk hopes her project helps increase awareness.

“For me as an artist, I think the important thing is to encourage people to think across cultures so that we can reach across, as Bernice King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter, said, to nourish one another and feel each other’s pain. So that we can move out of these structures of containment and control, of violence, repression and suppression,” she said.

Originally from Meadow Lake, Semchuk now lives in Vancouver and spends her summers in the Battlefords at her cottage at Murray Lake. Semchuk is a nationally-acclaimed Ukrainian-Canadian photographer and video artist. She recently retired from teaching art at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She received a Governor General’s Arts Award in 2018 for her work.

The Stories Were Not Told project received support from the Endowment Council of the Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund.

Semchuk will give a presentation and sign copies of her book at the Chapel Gallery in North Battleford from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on July 12.

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angela.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow