Ukrainian Canadian - History

History

Over the last thirty years, a debate has been ongoing whether a tiny number of Ukrainians settled in Canada before 1891. Most controversial is the claim that Ukrainians may have been infantrymen alongside Poles in the Swiss French "De Meurons" and "De Watteville" regiments who fought for the British on the Niagara Peninsula during the War of 1812 – and that Ukrainians were among those soldiers who decided to stay in Upper Canada (southern Ontario). Other Ukrainians supposedly arrived as part of other immigrant groups: claims that individual Ukrainian families may have settled in southern Manitoba in the 1870s alongside blocks of Mennonites and other Germans from the Russian Empire; or that single male Ukrainians were participants in the Russian Empire's exploration parties and fur trade along the western coast of North America (including British Columbia). Because there is so little definitive documentary evidence of individual Ukrainians among these three groups, they are not generally regarded as among the first Ukrainians in Canada.