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RD: How common were Ukrainians in the higher bureaucracy in Ottawa?

OK: Nonexistent.

RD: You can't even... you were in --

OK: I was one of the most senior ones. There was a man who became a deputy minister... names now, Bill Teron... he was more a Ukrainians in name than he was in any involvement in the community. It was, in fact, as he became, after he became a deputy minister, people went to him and basically tried to bring him back into the community, because he had been away from it. Another colleague of mine was in the Department of Immigration, who eventually became a Regional Director General for Immigration, and we were about the three people of Ukrainian origin that were in the executive group in the bureaucracy. There was another man who came along a few years later in Statistics Canada, but there were very, very few people in the bureaucracy. And as the Official Languages Program was established, it served as a barrier to more people, not only from the Ukrainian community, from all kinds of minority communities getting into the bureaucracy, because French became a requirement for the executive group. If you didn't speak French, you couldn't be in the executive group. And that has really been an issue of... one that I would raise periodically when I was still working, saying, "Look, you have to do something about this. We either have to change the way we are teaching the languages, but you're restricting who, in fact, is going to get into the bureaucracy." And today, the senior levels of the bureaucracy in Ottawa are very much dominated by, one, Easterners, and French Canadians now form a very, very significant component of the senior bureaucracy because of the language requirements. And that was a dramatic change. When I first went to work in Ottawa, you could count the senior French Canadian bureaucrats on that, literally two hands. They were just not there, I mean, because English was the dominant language, and if you didn't know English, you weren't going to get ahead. So that that has been a major change. But for minorities, it's still an organization that is very, one, it's very white, and it's very Anglo-Saxon, it's very French Canadian, to this day.

RD: Now, what were your ongoing relations with the Ukrainian Canadian community?

OK: Once I went to school, to college and to graduate school, my involvement in the community was virtually nonexistent. When I went back to Edmonton to graduate school, I would periodically go to church with my parents, mainly at those major events, Christmas, Easter, things like that. Had no involvement in community organizations. Did some speaking to the Ukrainian Professional Business Association in Edmonton and Calgary about my, the research I was doing, but that was mainly because I was Ukrainian in graduate school, and so I think the people who organized those speaking events thought, "Well, it'd be interesting to have him." But I had no organizational involvement whatsoever. My family, my parents were very much involved in the community, right up at the time of their death, they were not only involved in the church but a number of organizations as was my older brother. But I, part of that was that I married outside the community. I married a person of, who refers to herself as a "Heinz 57," a variety of ethnic mix, and who spoke no Ukrainian, even though she over time learned some Ukrainian from interaction mainly with my mother. But I guess the interesting, one of the interesting things, she started, my wife started in the community we lived in when we went back to Edmonton in 1974 when I was, went back to work for the government of Alberta for two years, she started a Ukrainian dance group in the community we lived in. Which was both on one hand quite amusing, because here was this, basically, Anglo-Saxon woman getting a Ukrainian dance group going, and on the other hand there was some resentment in the Ukrainian community. What was this person doing establishing a Ukrainian dance group out in Millwoods where there are no Ukrainians or very few Ukrainians? As it turned out, there were more than you thought there were, because she had quite a little group that got going. That was my children's, aside from them attending church periodically, only involvement in the Ukrainian community. And so neither one of my kids speak any Ukrainian. When they were very young, they could understand some, again, from interaction with my parents, but never really speak it or have any knowledge of the language in any meaningful way.

So that when I went to work in Ottawa in the Multiculturalism -- well, let me step back a bit. Working in the Official Languages office, one of the responsibilities I was charged with by the commissioner was to try and build some bridges into the ethnic communities. Which was somewhat ironic in that I had no involvement in most of the ethnic communities, certainly not in the Ukrainian community, and less in any other community. But Keith thought, well, I'm of Ukrainian origin from western Canada, so I'm an ethnic. And if I'm an ethnic, I must have ties, and if I have ties, then I can build bridges. Well, I had to start building bridges literally from scratch because I didn't have those ties. And one of the first things I did was approached some members of parliament of Ukrainian origin and started interacting with them to see if I could open up some avenues of dialogue for official languages. They were pretty well all conservatives, the conservative party was officially opposed to the official language programs, and they weren't what you would term "openly receptive" to my approaches, with the exception of one or two who became important interlocutors to me, both to the community and to other people in the conservative party. But that forced me to have to go back out west to the Ukrainian Canadian community which was based in Winnipeg and introduce myself and see if I could build some relationships. I must admit they were very unsuccessful, there was very little openness or receptivity to official languages that, on the part of most of the minority communities. They perceived the official language status as granting special status to French Canadians. And if they had special status, that meant everybody else had a lesser status, so they opposed the official language programs. And it was quite a, quite an interesting experience trying to open up a dialogue.

One of the members of parliament who became very supportive and ultimately became the deputy prime minister to Mulroney was a man named Don Mazankowsky, who was an MP, a member of parliament from Alberta. And he agreed, after some arm twisting, to host a visit by the Commissioner of Official Languages to his constituency in northeastern Alberta. He represented an interesting constituency, it was heavily Ukrainian, but it also had two major pockets of French Canadians. And I think Mazankowsky in the beginning did his, or his openness was, "Well, maybe I can get some votes out of these French Canadian communities." He didn't have to worry about the Ukrainian community, he had them in his pocket as far as he was concerned. But it was an act of courage on his part to host a visit by the commissioner into various Ukrainian organizations to speak about official languages knowing the hostility that existed in the community in those organizations. And he ultimately became one of the strongest supporters of official languages in Canada. He was also ultimately a person that was a strong supporter of multiculturalism in the conservative party, which was overwhelmingly opposed to the policy, overwhelmingly opposed to the policy. And because of his status in the party he was able to dampen the opposition because he was one of the senior ministers in Mulroney's government, and he was an important person in terms of the Japanese Canadian issue in the long run. Because he was somebody that Mulroney knew he could depend on who had such great authority with his colleagues in terms of western MPs, more authority with those colleagues than did Mulroney have. And that was an important thing. So he's a man that has not had his due in terms of some of the histories that have been written, current histories that have been written about the conservative party or the Mulroney government in terms of the influence he had on a number of policies. It's partly because he is a very quiet individual, he's not one to blow his own horn.

RD: Still alive?

OK: Still alive. Still active in, not in partisan politics, but active as a businessman and an adviser to the provincial conservative government in Alberta. But again, partly I guess it reflects my own bias about how we tell stories in Canada, that he's from the west, he's an ethnic, and he has not had the kind of recognition in the power circles of Canada. You know, if you talk to people in the business community, you say, "Mazankowsky," he's highly, highly regarded. He's a very, very good minister, a very powerful minister. But, I mean, if you talk to people in the academic community and say, "Don Mazankowsky," "Oh, yeah, he was the Deputy Prime Minister to Mulroney," and that's about it. I mean, nobody has taken the time to -- and I think that's partly, in all fairness, it's partly a reflection of how we do our history -- to talk to him about his role in policies, and policies outside of... he was seen basically as an economic minister. But they haven't talked to him about, "What role did you play in these other areas?" Even though I've talked to colleagues of mine about Maszankowsky and said, "Look, in terms of official languages, this man was an important player," you know. That I'll never forget is one time when I went to see Mazankowsky in his office and we were there talking about the possible visit of Spicer to his constituency, and another member of parliament walked in, a man named Jack Horner who was a conservative MP from Alberta. And Don said, "I'd like you to meet a fellow Albertan, Orest Krulak." And Jack Horner said, "Oh, great to meet you, what do you do?" And I said, "Well, I work for the Commissioner of Official Languages." He said, "How could you sell out our province?" Turned around and walked out. And that was an attitude that Mazankowsky had to deal with within his own party supporting a policy that was so highly, highly unpopular and opposed.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.