Enemy Alien: A True Story of Life Behind Barbed Wire by Kassandra Luciuk and Nicole Marie Burton.
Title: Enemy Alien: A True Story of Life Behind Barbed Wire.
Author: Kassandra Luciuk.
Artist: Nicole Marie Burton.
Genre: Non-fiction, graphic novels, WWI.
Country: Canada.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 2020.
Summary: This graphic history tells the story of Canada’s first national internment operations through the eyes of John Boychuk, an internee held in Kapuskasing from 1914 to 1917. The story is based on Boychuk’s actual memoir, which is the only comprehensive internee testimony in existence. The novel follows Boychuk from his arrest in Toronto to Kapuskasing, where he spends just over three years. It details the everyday struggle of the internees in the camp, including forced labour and exploitation, abuse from guards, malnutrition, and homesickness. It also documents moments of internee agency and resistance, such as work slowdowns and stoppages, hunger strikes, escape attempts, and riots. The story also traces Boychuk’s parole, his search for work, his attempts to organize a union, and his ultimate settlement in Winnipeg.
My rating: 7.5/10
My review:
♥ By tracing the plight of a migrant lured to Canada with the promise of prosperity, only to encounter a much harsher reality on the ground, the memoir offers critical insight into the way in which internees understood their incarceration. Internment, while abhorrent, was not a lone enterprise or isolated event; it was apart and parcel of Canada's longstanding and unjust treatment toward populations it deemed "undesirable others." In other words, the memoir effectively shows that internment was not a regretful anomaly, but rather part of the regular functioning of nation building. The bodies of undesirable migrants could be used to build the country, but they could not join it.
Ukrainians first began migrating to Canada en masse in 1891. Most arrived from the Austrian crownlands of Galicia and Bukovyna, two of the poorest and most overpopulated areas in all of Europe. Their migration was encouraged by the efforts of Clifford Sifton, Canada's Minister of the Interior, who was recruiting the foot soldiers of settler-colonialism on the Prairies.
Life for so-called first wave of migrants was difficult. Those who managed to settle on homesteads struggled with outdated technology, limited capital, a challenging climate, poor land quality, and insufficient experience with large-scale agriculture. The majority, recruited into the labour-intensive industries of railroad building, mining, and lumbering, faced exploitation from their employers, who threatened deportation at even the slightest inkling of defiance.
As migration rates increased in the early twentieth century, many migrants found themselves held captive in immigration sheds, where they were auctioned off like cattle to private companies looking for cheap sources of labour. This was the case for the author of the memoir. Arriving in Canada in 1912, he could not afford to pay the $25 fee required to be released from the sheds. This perempotory and discriminatory policy was designed to funnel recent migrants into predatory work gangs, ever more cheap fuel to facilitate capitalist accumulation. Conditions only worsened when the majority of railroad construction was completed at the same time as agricultural mechanization took hold. This meant that for migrant workers, particularly those from southern and eastern Europe, there as little work in the years leading up to the First World War.
By the time the war broke out, then, the majority of Ukrainians were already familiar with the often-brutal reality of the migrant experience in Canada. It was perhaps no surprise to most when widespread xenophobia began to grip the public imagination and they became targets of outright hostility and calls for swift assimilation. Nor would they have been shocked when the government officially announced its decision to begin arresting those deemed "enemy aliens," which, in the case of the Ukrainians, was a result of their Austro-Hungarian passports.
..All in all. 8,579 people were interned between 1914 and 1920, the majority of whom were Ukrainian. An additional 80,000 others were forced to register and report regularly to local police.
..In total, 107 internees died in the camps. Their deaths were caused by trying to escape, work-related injuries, infectious diseases, drowning, and suicide.
Beginning in 1916, the government began granting internees parole in order to fill wartime labour shortages in railway construction, mining, and agriculture. The internees, however, were averse to continuing their exploitation willingly and only left the camps by the force of a bayonet. The author of the memoir, for example, was released into the custody of the Dominion Steel and Coal Corporation (DOSCO) in Sydney, Nova Scotia. When armistice was declared, he was not free to go, only leaving Sydney in 1923 after he was blacklisted for joining a union and going on strike.
~~from Introduction.
♥ The police told me I had been stopped because I looked suspicious.
This was nonsense, but under the law they had a right to arrest and detain anyone with an Austro-Hungarian passport because of the war.
I came to Canada because the government promised prosperity for migrants. But now they were arresting us and calling us "enemy aliens," even though we were loyal to Canada.
I later learned that 8,579 people were interned at 24 internment camps and receiving stations across the country. Another 80,000 people were forced to register with the police and report to them regularly. The majority of us were Ukrainian.
♥ We were forced to work from morning until night, and we didn't understand why. A few men tried to resist. Many more of us chose to work as slowly as possible. It didn't do much, but it helped us feel better about our circumstances.
♥ On the third day he was force-fed. But as soon as he was left alone, he put his fingers down his throat and threw up the food. He couldn't throw everything up, which is the only reason he survived.
In the summer of 1915, all of the Croatians from America were released at the behest of a Croatian association - including Frank. He was so weak that he had to be carried to the train like a small child. Frank was relatively lucky - he made it out alive.
In total 32 men died in Kapuskasing. All died of so-called "natural causes," but there was no doubt they died because of their incarceration. My friend, Fredko Prokop, a Ukrainian, died of spinal meningitis on June 1, 1915. The guards were decent about letting us pay our respects. I later learned that, in November 1918, 17 men died in the span of eight days. They died just as the war was ending.
They almost made it.
♥ To keep the rats down, we were allowed one cat per bunk. But the cats became more than just an effective form of rodent control. Other animals were not allowed, but I heard rumours that Carl Wolters, a German internee, was keeping a white mouse and a snake in his bunk. Wolters had previously been held at Fort Henry. He told us that he had been allowed to domesticate two bear cubs while in the camp - Fritz and Fanny.
♥ Our first taste of the new commandant came a few days later.
Forest fires were ravaging much of northern Ontario and we were called to put them out. All of us refused - the job was too unsafe.
"You'll do as we say."
"There are trained civilians in town. They should put the fire out themselves!"
Those of us who opposed this were sent to a special barrack built on a small island. We were held until we agreed to work. One by one, we were brought before the commandant.
"Will you obey me?"
"If you tell me to jump in the water, am I supposed to jump in the water?"
"Answer yes or no!"
We all said no, so we were taken back to the island. They took our hats, shoes, and blankets. We had to sleep on bare boards. Talking was forbidden. Six soldiers with bayonets stood guard. The officers were right. We were learning just how persuasive the new commandant could be.
To make matters worse, there was nothing to eat or drink. They had thrown all our food in the river. Some men got creative. One day, Nikolay Witka said he had to go to the washroom. When he came close to the river, he fell in the water, but the soldiers grabbed him just as he was wetting his whiskers.
At dinnertime, the commandant came to see us.
"Have you had enough? Will you obey me?"
"No."
There was no dinner or water that night. The next morning, we were brought before the commandant again. Two men broke, pledged their allegiance to him. By lunch, another five had caved. By dinner, there were only two of us left. The cook who had been held with us on the island understood our pain. He fed us soup through a crack in the wall. We got away with this for two days before getting caught.
Eventually even I had no choice but to give in.
"Will you obey me?"
"Yes."
There were still other barracks who had to go before the commandant. The men in the next barrack were also sent to the island. By the fourth day, men were fainting from starvation and had to be given pills to regain consciousness. By the fifth day, there was no way out. The men returned to the camp defeated, but were happy to be eating.
Knowing that dealing with every barrack in this way would take too long, the commandant came up with a more efficient system. Men were lined up and told to stand at attention. Anyone who relaxed was prodded by the officers. By dinner, two barracks had given in.
"Will you be loyal to me?"
"Yes, sir."
The commandant continued to punish us by feeding us rotten meat. Eventually we got tired of eating it and started leaving the meat on the front steps of our barracks. Of course, this irritated us, but they could not break our spirit. In fact, resistance in the camp only grew.
..Soon enough, hundreds of men were refusing to work.
"We are being tortured here."
"This is slavery!"
The commandant did not take too kindly to this. He retaliated against us quickly and violently.
"Don't let them get out of control!"
"Back down!"
But we decided to fight back. Just when the tide had turned in our favour... the guards opened fire. This was the biggest riot I had witnessed in the camp. A dozen men were injured that day. The riot reminded us that we were not free men.
Around this time, I heard that some of the men had built a tunnel out of the camp. Apparently it started in Bunkhouse #1 in the second-class yard, though how anyone even attempted such a thing under constant guard is a mystery. The door was hidden under a small seaman's chest. Beneath the chest there was a trap door. From there they were digging toward the Quartermaster's Store, where arms and ammunition were kept. Built with a sump for drainage and ventilated by lateral air shafts, it must have been something to see.
Imagine those men toiling away to build it, hour by hour, night by night, slaving away underground. I have to wonder - did they manage to steal some tools? Or did they do it all by hand in the lonely hours of the night? What would they have done if they got those rifles? Where did they think they could escape to? How long would they have lasted in the wilderness?
And all that to be discovered by the camp guards. I pity the poor devils who got caught. They were forced to fill it back in, burying their hopes along with their tunnel. But I suppose all of us were buried alive in our own way.
♥ The war continued, and even more workers were needed. The authorities in Ottawa knew that we could be very useful to them. The commandant brought in a man who had been interned with us to try to convince us to accept parole and work.
"It's not so bad! They pay you."
We attacked him as he talked to us.
"Traitor!"
"Get out of here!"
If it wasn't for the soldiers, we would have lynched him. He left with what he had arrived with - nothing.
We worked and dreamed until April 1917.
♥ They brought us back to the foundry where the slave trade with internees continued. They implemented a system that made sure we could never leave. If we wanted to go anywhere, we had to get permits. They were expensive - anywhere from $25 to $100. If you tried to leave without a permit, you were arrested and sent to the Strait of Canso by boat. They also collected an annual tax of $10. If you didn't have this money you were arrested and had to do time in jail - all without a day in court! We never knew what the tax was for, since there weren't even sidewalks. All of this meant that we remained in Sydney long after the war had ended.
♥ In the summer of 1945, I went back to visit Kapuskasing.
Near the river, where in 1916 there was nothing but forest, there was now a large hotel built by the owner of the Spruce Falls Power and Paper Company. There was also a nice hospital, several schools, and a post office.
When I got off the train, I couldn't believe my eyes. On the island where I was held for insubordination, there was now a modern power house that supplied electricity to the paper mill. Horses were grazing where the barracks once stood. Further west, I saw rows sown with various plants. I learned that this was now an experimental farm run by the government. In the big barn that the internees had built 30 years before, I saw chickens, horses, and cattle.
I also stopped on the bridge before town. The people who live here now don't see Kapuskasing the way I do.
In front of me is a picture from 30 years ago where Ukrainians, at the point of bayonets, fed on sauerkraut and rotten liver, cleared hundreds of acres of forest, and made a wasteland fertile.
I remembered when I arrived in Canada in 1912. They put me in an immigration shed and wouldn't let me out until I paid $25. Since I didn't have the money, they told me they were going to deport me. Through the doors came agents from various companies and contractors who promised to save me from deportation if I worked for them. Because of this, many Ukrainians ended up working for railroad companies, breaking rock with primitive equipment. Others worked for the Dominion Steel and Coal Corporation. When I was in Sydney, I met people who had been taken from the immigration sheds to work for nine cents an hour. Those who were given parcels of land in western Canada fared little better. The work was arduous and rarely rewarding.
Then, in 1930, trust companies claimed it all as their own. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians ended up on the street. Many former farmers moved into industrial cities and joined the growing number of the unemployed. Many travelled across Canada looking for work. In 1940, I went to Sudbury because then International Nickel Company was promising its workers $6 for an eight-hour day. I stood outside the hiring office for days. It was all a scam. Only one out of 100 got a job. The rest of us had to sell the clothes off our backs to buy some bread.
This is Western democracy. This is the reality of Canada for "enemy aliens" like me.
♥ He was right. Most visitors went to Kapuskasing's other cemetery, where the grass is cut, there are nice flowers, and the tombstones are maintained. Here the men who cleared the forests lay forgotten by the world as if they were made by another God.
But I had not forgotten them.
As I walked back into town, I remembered what all of us internees promised each other in the camp. We were going to tell the world about how we were tortured, and it would become a part of history.