A North End shrine
Ukrainian Labour Temple is a true city landmark
Tom Ford
Updated: September 10 at 10:12 AM CDT | Winnipeg Free Press Commentary
Few buildings in Canada's history have as colourful a history as the Ukrainian Labour Temple in Winnipeg's storied North End.
It's been the site of fiery political debates; orchestras with 20-odd mandolins; passionate dramas; little girls dancing with flowers in their hair and shiny, red leather boots; choirs; a centre that helped distribute two million publications a year; education programs; libraries; and police raids.
Myron Shatulsky, at Ukrainian Labour Temple, knows about the joys and tragedies of the North End. (Wayne Glowacki / Winnipeg Free Press )
The red-brick temple at Pritchard Avenue and McGregor Street is celebrating its 90th birthday. It's both a municipal and provincial heritage site.
In his book, Our History, Peter Krawchuk says the builders of Canada's first Ukrainian Labour Temple never dreamed that "20 years later the initiative would grow into the largest cultural-educational organization in the Ukrainian Canadian community, that it would have branches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with thousands of members and scores of its own beautiful temples, with orchestras, choirs, drama and folk dance groups, and libraries in them."
My guide to the temple was Myron Shatulsky, a bright, articulate 78-year-old, who knows a lot about the joys and tragedies of the North End, one of Canada's first and largest multicultural communities.
Myron and I get along well even though we have some profound political differences. He thinks oil companies are a pox on humanity; I buy their shares. But we share a passion for history.
The motto of the North End, says Myron, is painted on the roof of an auto repair shop on the edge of the area: "People before profits."
The Ukrainian community did much of the work on the temple, says Myron. They couldn't afford an architect so they hired an engineer who worked for the city. One of his main contributions was to dissuade the builders from putting "Ukrainian Labour Temple" in large, gold letters over the front door. He convinced them to use an old standby: "Workers of the World Unite."
The Ukrainian Labour-Farmer Temple Association became involved with the temple after it was established in 1924. In an article in the Canadian Encyclopaedia, Frances Swyripa says the association's communist sympathies attracted the unemployed during the 1930s. It criticized foreign rule in western Ukraine, but "condoned the Soviet purges and artificial famine of 1932-33 that killed six million people." Many Ukrainians now accuse Stalin of genocide.
The temple's dark days came during the world wars. In the First World War, Ottawa imprisoned members of some ethnic groups, including Ukrainians, because they came from countries allied with Germany. At the beginning of the Second World War, Ottawa rounded up some left-wingers because they were thought to have a fondness for Russia, which had signed a non-aggression pact with Germany.
As a part of the roundup of left-wingers, the Ukrainian Labour-Farmer Temple Association was banned by Ottawa in 1940; its leaders jailed, including Myron's father; its books burned and its temples sold off for a pittance.
The harassment of left-wingers ceased in 1942, when the Soviets joined the Allied cause, and the ban on the ULFTA was lifted. Its eventual successor, the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians (AUUC), now operates Winnipeg's temple.
Nolan Reilly, dean of the University of Winnipeg's history department and an expert on the North End, says even though the RCMP raided the temple, the prisoners were never charged with anything. They were rounded up under the War Measures Act, draconian legislation passed in 1914. It allowed the federal cabinet to bring it into effect in secret and govern by decree when it perceived the existence of "war, invasion, or insurrection, real or apprehended."
This pernicious law was used by Pierre Trudeau during the FLQ crisis and remained in the books until a more detailed and limited law, the Emergencies Act, was passed in 1988.
Some people's views of early Ukrainian settlers are shaped by a comment by Sir Clifford Sifton, prime minister Wilfred Laurier's interior minister, that he was looking for the "stalwart peasant in a sheepskin coat." Many of those did come to Canada, and they helped bring farming to the prairies. But other Ukrainians came from urban areas and were cultured and politically sophisticated.
Shortly after it opened, says Myron, the temple was home to 13 cultural groups engaged in theatre, music and dance. It was located in an area bubbling with vitality and diversity. Within four blocks of the temple were 15 buildings filled with the activities of seven ethnic and religious organizations. Not far away, Selkirk Avenue, the area's main drag, pulsated with the sights and sounds of many cultures.
"You would be hard pressed to avoid bumping into anyone not an immigrant," says Myron.
The various groups got along well, he says, but within the groups there could be some dandy arguments.
Opposite the temple is a former Ukrainian Presbyterian church that decided its arguments should not take place in its sanctuary "under God's eye" and built a smaller hall next door.
Rev. Panteleymon Bozhyk of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church St. Vladimir and Olga (affectionately known as Wally and Ollie) wrote that "we want to belong to the Ukrainian army, but we do not want to listen to its leader." The church split on how to treat the Pope, and the dissidents built a church directly across McGregor Street from Wally and Ollie.
"You never really knew what to expect in the North End," says Myron. "But that was its beauty... Forever changing... not always for the best, but rarely for the worst of the worst."
Tom Ford is managing editor of The Issues Network
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thats amazing nice find... o well we still got a land mark building that still standing!
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