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RD: What about that other "non-event," the World War I internment of Ukrainians?

OK: Same thing.

RD: That was, but that was even later, wasn't it?

OK: Oh, it came much later.

RD: When did you hear about it?

OK: In 1986, '87. It must have been '86, when I was back in Ottawa working as the Assistant Under-Secretary of State for Multiculturalism, and Lubomyr Luciuk and others came and made their first approach to Ottawa, and I knew nothing about it until that day. That was the first time I ever heard about it, that was, again, something that was not spoken of in the Ukrainian community. It just was not ever, ever an event that was ever talked about And I think I mentioned to you when we were in Kingston that it was after that that a good friend of mine who was the mayor of Edmonton, Laurence Decore, when I mentioned this to him, he said, well, his mother had been interned. Again, it was not something that he had ever, ever mentioned, it was never discussed. When I mentioned it to my older brother, who knew the Decore family, 'cause they were members of our church, he said he'd never heard of it. Never heard of the event, never heard of Laurence's mother being interned. So these things were, it's... when I think back on it now, that how the history of Canada was written in such a way that events of this magnitude were simply ignored. When I think back on it as an academic, it's not surprising to me because most of the people writing the histories of Canada were of Anglo Saxon origin. The dominant historians were all Brits, of British origin, and they, their big thing was the fur trade. I mean, when you think back on, and look at the works by... I'm really going to start showing my age trying to remember names now. I'll think of these historians.

RD: You know at one time two the leading historians in Toronto were named Wrong and Careless, which always struck me as a wonderful couple of names. [Laughs]

OK: [Laughs] Yeah. I'll think of it.

RD: The immigration historian Donald Avery?

OK: No. It was one of the preeminent historians from Toronto. I mean, if you read their histories... in fact, I, one time, we were doing some work in the '70s when we were talking about establishing what became known as the Ethnic History Project, if you read a lot of the histories, the history of immigration was not a story that was told. It was simply absent. It was as if Canada was created out of whole cloth, that somehow these people arrived but nobody bothered telling the story about it, and what it meant, what their experiences were. It was just something that didn't happen. And when I used to go back and when I was teaching I would say, "Well, go and look at the history of Canada and tell me what you can tell me about immigration." And so they would go to the main history books, Careless, Wrong, others. There was very little there. I mean, there was something about the Scottish immigration because it formed an important part in Canada, something about the Irish immigration because they were "problems." But when you got to other immigration, Charles Sifton's big push to populate the west. They talked about him going with the CPR into eastern Europe and recruiting a lot of immigrants. But again, these people, you learn something about the fact that they were there and then they were here. But what that meant, and how they got there, what their experiences were, was simply not a story that was told. And it's only now more effectively being told. But even today, you can't learn a lot about the immigration to Canada by looking at the major history works. It's just not there. I mean, it's absolutely amazing to me, when I think about it, that yes, you'll find references to the Chinese Exclusion Acts, mainly in terms of the story being told from the perspective of the majority community, never from the perspective of the minority or ethnic communities. And that's something that I think will, I hope, over time, be remedied. Am I optimistic? No, I'm not optimistic about that because it's, the whole, the way the history of Canada has been portrayed is so dominated by the French-English divide that everything else is secondary. And I think that's part of Canada's problems in terms of its cultural development, is that it's never really, the mythology of the country is missing. One of the things that I used to say when I was working is that in comparison to the United States in particular, we have a very weak mythology. That if you look at it, you learn about the fur trade, and there's a mythology about that, Le Courrier des bois from the French Canadian communities. But if you want to know something about the role of salmon and fishing and what mythology did that create, it's not there. But my goodness, it's so rich in terms of what we are as a West Coast people. But it's... and I think that goes back to the way the history of the country has been told, and the way the history of the country has been written, that everything was done from the perspective of French-English, French-English. And ironically, that became even more dominant in the late '60s, '70s and '80s because of the growing French Canadian awareness and awakening. That everything else was judged to be not as important.

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