OTTAWA - We were saddened to hear of the death of Mrs. Mary Manko Haskett, the last known survivor of Canadian internment camps during the First World War and the postwar period. On behalf of Canada's New Government, I would like to extend my condolences to Mrs. Haskett's family, as well as the Ukrainian-Canadian community.

Born and raised in Montreal, Mary was six years old when she and her family were detained in the Spirit Lake internment camp. Despite advice from British officials that "friendly aliens" should not be interned, Ottawa invoked the War Measures Act to detain 8 579 "enemy aliens" including Poles, Italians, Bulgarians, Croats, Turks, Serbs, Hungarians, Russians, Jews, and Romanians-but the majority (perhaps as many as 5 000) were of Ukrainian origin. Many were unwilling subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and thus not "enemy aliens" at all.

For years Mrs. Haskett and others argued that "Canada's first internment operations" herded together individuals based on nationality - many of them Canadian-born - and compelled them into forced labour. Despite the original wartime justification for these measures, many were kept in custody for two years after the Armistice of 1918. We are all grateful for Mrs. Manko Haskett's dedication to the cause of remembering and commemorating this important event in Canada's history.