I’m not a north-ender. From the day I was born, and for all the years I have lived in Kingston, I’ve never made my home in what some people call “the swamp ward.” That’s the portion of our city roughly contained to the north and east of Queen and Division streets. In my time, we used a geographical descriptor, calling it “the north end.” It was a working-class and immigrant part of town, populated by many Irish, Italian, Polish, Ukrainian and other eastern European immigrants and their kids. I don’t recall anyone born or living there describing it as “the swamp ward,” at least not when I was young. There was nothing claggy about it. While the homes I visited were modest, they were always tidy, warm and welcoming. Most had large gardens, well-tended sources providing nutritious food, not all of which was intended only for family. Guests were always served something good to eat, an almost ritual observance. To this day, the redolence of a homemade cabbage soup simmering on a stove brings back memories of the simple but delicious food I ate in “the north end.”
While not residing there, I spent a lot of time in the Ukrainian hall, on Bagot Street. It was the focal point of our small community, including interwar immigrants and others who, like my parents’ generation, came after the Second World War. The latter were labelled Displaced Persons (DPs), a cohort whose militant dedication to Ukraine’s independence sometimes rattled the others, worried as they were about how we were viewed by mainstream Canadians. In those days our fellow citizens mostly didn’t know where Ukraine was, or even if it existed. Some even joked that DPs spent their days “sitting on packed suitcases,” ever-ready to cross the Atlantic to rejoin the struggle for a free Ukraine. To some degree, this was telling it like it was. A suitcase my parents had when they “got off the boat” still occupies a central place in my library. It reminds me of what they achieved in this country, having been given political asylum and a chance to rebuild their lives – an opportunity for which they were ever-grateful. Yet, it also brings to mind how they never forgot who they were, where they had come from, or why. They never let us forget, either. Sometimes it all got to be a bit too much.
Most weekends our hall hosted various Ukrainian cultural events. The bonus was that it was located in a neighbourhood we kids enjoyed exploring. We’d furtively hop the fence of an adjacent lumberyard to construct hiding spots amongst the piled timbers. Not safe, but fun. The corner store across the street, one of many that used to be all over the city but are now no more, was where we bought penny candies. Unsurprisingly, the proprietor was rather crotchety. He realized we sometimes filched his wares (not a confession, merely an informed observation). And, a bit further afield, astride Rideau Street, we’d foray into rather gritty industrial properties, everything from Rosen Fuels (which supplied our family’s Nelson Street home with coal) to the Anglin Company’s massive oil storage tanks. And, nearby, was the odiferous Davis Tannery. I got a summer job there in my senior high school year. I lasted but a day: the fetid smells and toil were all too much. Yet this experience taught me about how tough those who got and kept jobs there had to be.
On a list of Davis Tannery employees, I found the name of John (Ivan) Zubyck, quite possibly the first Ukrainian to settle in Kingston. Hired in March 1911, he married 20-year-old Ida
Adrain, 20 April 1917. Although his marriage certificate identified him as an “Austrian” he was gainfully employed and a married man and that probably spared him from being branded as an “enemy alien” and internment in Fort Henry. I interviewed a less fortunate Ukrainian, Nick Sakaliuk, transported from Montreal on 17 October 1914 to become a prisoner at the Fort. This survivor of Canada’s first national internment operations told me what happened to Ukrainians and other Europeans following the passage of the War Measures Act. Nick’s testimony altered the course of my life, professionally and personally.
Most of the other tannery workers I met arrived in Kingston much later. Among them were Mike Polomany (hired in December 1926), Ivan Zaplotinsky (who began working in February 1927) and Sylvester Kotowich (employed as of September 1935). Many boarded close to where they worked and were still living nearby when I spoke to them in the mid-late 1970s. They were true “north enders.”
They were also among the founders of a pro-Soviet Ukrainian organization which even had a meeting hall down on James Street, attracting others on the Left. Outwardly engaged only in cultural activities, this small band nevertheless came under RCMP surveillance around the time of the Second World War. While the Kingston group represented no internal security threat, the national leadership of this “progressive movement” was far less innocent. Locked in open conflict with decidedly anti-Communist nationalists, whose ranks were strengthened by the postwar influx of DPs, the local Left was gradually eroded into insignificance. The James Street constituency had disappeared when I began asking questions about the historical geography of Kingston’s Ukrainians. By then the centre of gravity had shifted to the Bagot Street hall and the Ukrainian (Greek) Catholic parish of St Michael the Archangel. For years we celebrated the Divine Liturgy in St James’s Chapel, at St Mary’s Cathedral, leaving the hall for secular events.
Nothing lasts forever. Following a dispute over how the Bagot Street hall should be used, a majority left the parish and established the Ukrainian Canadian Club of Kingston. Ever since this group has promoted a Ukrainian Canadian presence in this city, particularly through the annual “Lviv, Ukraine” pavilion at Folklore.
Of course, depicting all this history on one plaque is impossible. Even so by unveiling a Kingston Remembers monument in Riverview Park, not far from where many of our people worked and lived and played – myself among them – we’ve tried to remind others that we were here and who we were. And, as the Russian war against Ukraine and Ukrainians continues, a new wave of Ukrainians have found safe haven in Kingston. Slowly, they have begun to recover and regroup. Perhaps, when circumstances allow, some of them will return “home.” Others will certainly stay. They have reinvigorated us.
Ukrainians have made Kingston their home for well over a century, whether as immigrant workers, prisoners, soldiers, refugees, students or scholars. They have put down roots in this city. Soon enough it will be up to the “newcomers” to decide how best to make sure those roots endure.
Lubomyr Luciuk is a professor of political geography at the Royal Military College of Canada