Perspective: Ukrainian Immigrants

The first immigrants to come to Canada from the Galicia and Bukovyna regions of the Austrian Empire can be traced to 1891. The boom years occurred after 1895, however, when between 128,000 and 170,000 Ukrainian immigrants arrived mostly to Western Canada. Clifford Sifton, heading Canadian immigration in the Interior Department, opened the door to "men in sheepskin coats" and their farming families from the Ukraine because he believed they would quickly settle the land. His department gave incentives to railway

and steamship agents to recruit immigrants. Information about Canadian farmland circulated in popular emigration books in the Ukraine. Dr. Osyp Oleskiv, who had visited the Edmonton district as a guest of the immigration department in 1895, wrote probably the most influential of these books. His widely read Pro vilni zemli (About Free Lands) and O emigratsii (On Emigration) had singled out Western Canada as the most viable settlement region for those wishing to find farm land beyond their homeland.

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