50th Anniversary of the Communist Party of Canada

Reminiscences of a founding member

By JOHN BOYCHUK

I think back on our party’s
fifty years . . . The party is so
young’ and I am so old. I am a
godfather of our party. I com-
pare our young party to the
seasoned revolutionary socialist
movement in Europe. Our party
was born in 1921, but the Com-
munards of Paris had taken over
power and defended it on the
barricades 50 years before . ..

I remember that June in 1921
when a dozen left-wingers, in-
stead of going to Centre Island
for recreation, locked themselves
in a barn outside of Guelph for
three days and nights in order to
unify their thinking on socialist
ideas.

At that conference there were
representatives of the Left in the
Social Democratic Party and So-
cialist Party of North America,
people who had come to com-
munist positions. Among those
who took active part were Tom
Bell, Mrs. Florence Custance,
Mike Buhay, Matthew Popovich,
S. Bennett, M. Spector, and
Cowan from Winnipeg .. .

The persons that formed the
Communist Party were those
who were fighting to build
unions in the shops to win bet-
ter wages, battling against unem-
ployment, against the eviction of
poor people from their homes. It

was our party that promoted the.

idea of “putting Canada first”.
We pioneered in so many good
causes. Who went to jail for
fighting for all those things,
some of which we already have
won today? The Communists! It
did not come easily. It was a
very difficult struggle—those 50
years of the Communist Party in
Canada that we are now cele-
brating. All of us, young and old,
have the right to be proud. Some
of us are old, but our party is
young. Our party and the Cana-
dian people have a rough road
yet to travel before our goal is
achieved, but we are marching
ahead.

How quickly those 50 years ~

have flown. And what great
strides forward our party has
made politically during this half-

century.

* * Ba

I was born in the Ukraine on >

Nov. 15, 1892 and I was 20 years
of age when I came to Canada in
September 1913.

My brother met me at the
station in Toronto and took me
to the organization set up to
help people who had escaped
from prisons and exile in Siberia
via Japan and came to Canada.
Most of the members were such
refugees from tsarist Russia.

Our house was at Peter St. and
Adelaide Ave. It is no longer
there.

The house was rented and 16
unemployed lived there. My bro-
ther Michael earned $40 per
month on the CNR and paid the
rent and most of the bills. There
were many unemployed at that
time. We called it a club.

So I came into a household
where there was already a pro-
gressive way of thinking .. .
where Lenin’s thoughts were be-
ing applied to the problems in
this country . . . and where a
party line was already being es-
tablished. There were discus-
sions every evening on the vari-
ous social problems in Canada
and the socialist way of dealing
with them.

Most of the people living in
that house were from the
Ukraine. The leader was Artyom
Dibrov. I also recall an engineer
by the name of Kodiis and a

carpenter named Gregory Ku-
cher. There were several other
escaped political prisoners from
Siberia as well. Dibrov and
Kucher had worked in a foundry,
but Ukrainian’ nationalists at-
tacked them and had them fired.

‘This was before the 1917 Octo-
ber Revolution, but already there
were discussions on who was
right over there . . . the Social-
Democrats or the anarchists who
supported Kropotkin. There were
different schools of thought, but
even at that time opinions were
crystallizing along the lines of
Lenin’s thinking and especially
the solution which the Bolshe-
viks offered to the problems in
agriculture. This was of great in-
terest to us since most of us
were peasants from villages in
the old country.

In this group, for the first
time, I became acquainted with
progressive people and socialist
ways of thinking. I was too
young to understand fully these
political ideas, but every evening
this group met in the house
where we lived and conducted
discussions. Lenin’s Iskra used
to get here and we read and dis-
cussed its contents. We con-
templated what would actually
happen, should the revolutionary
movement overthrow Russian

imperialism.
% * *
And then it happened ... I

remember as if today how in the
middle of the night—it was two
o’clock in the morning — the
news was brought to us.

My brother, with whom I lived
and shared a bed, rushed in and
yelled to me, “Johnny, get up...
there’s a revolution in Russia!”

I said, “What are you dream-
ing? Why don’t you sleep?”

He said, “There are great
events in the world!”

Everyone in the house woke
up. No one could sleep. We were
very excited. This was such an
unexpected and tremendous oc-
currence.

The revolution—this was the
February (March) Revolution of
1917—had just taken place, but
already people were thinking
about what would happen should
it be dealt with as had the Paris
Commune, which had been sup-
pressed so ferociously. Each of
us tried to decide in his own
mind what would be the best for
the people of Russia. No one
slept till morning. When some-
one suggested that we return to
bed, we said, “How can you
sleep when people are dying on
the barricades?” It was at this
moment that I became commit-
ted with my whole being to this
movement.

* a %

Then came the October Revo-
lution, the Bolsheviks came to
power and the workers’ and
peasants’ revolution was com-
plete.

After the March revolution, a
committee was formed and
moneys were collected to assist
the people of Russia in any way
we could. I was chosen as repre-
sentative from our group, Dolni-
kov from the Jewish group and
Protas from the Social-Democra-
tic Party. We three were the
committee elected by the people
to gather the money that was
donated and send it on.

Part of the money was sent
to Tsereteli, who was a member
of the Provisional Government in
Russia, but when we discovered
that this government was not
going to deal with the land ques-
tion properly but was going to
“leave it to the Constituent As-

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, APRIL 23; 1971 PAGE 14

JOHN BOYCHUK 1919

sembly” we decided not to send
them any more money. We sent
that money only when the Bol-
shevik Party under Lenin came
to power.

Before 1917 there were already
a Social-Democratic Party and
other socialist groups in Canada.
In Winnipeg there was a large
Ukrainian group headed by Mat-
thew Popovich and John Navi-
ziwsky. They published a revolu-
tionary socialist paper since
1907. The paper was closed
down by the authorities under
the War Measures Act, but was
resumed under the Trades and
Labor Council label. In Montreal
there was a very large and
strong progressive organization
led by Hnyda, and they also be-
gan to publish a paper. ~

We also had a strong party
group in Timmins among the
miners and also among the coal
miners of Alberta, where John
Stokaluk was a leader.

* * *

In regard to the conference
that took place in that barn on
the outskirts of Guelph in June
1921 (where they fed us sand-
wiches for three days and
nights), it is interesting to note
that although Canada was still
subjected to the War Measures
Act and there was great repres-
sion by the government of radi-
cal or socialist groups, that the
owner of the barn was not in-
timidated, but let us meet there
to discuss the future unity of so-
cialist groups in Canada.

But there were preliminaries
to that meeting.

In January 1919 Comrade Niz-
nevets called a meeting of the
Social-Democratic group with
the idea of organizing a Com-
munist Party in Canada. At that
time the Allies had organized the
intervention against the revolu-
tion in Russia. There was great
unrest among the people of Can-
ada because Canadian soldiers
were being prepared for war
against the Red Army. Five hun-
dred. technicians had already
been sent to Vladivost6k, and
five thousand soldiers were in
Vancouver, ready to sail.

_ Party comrades in the United

States and the Social-Democratic
Party in Canada, had decided to
protest against the Allied inter-
vention. There were great diffi-
culties in making such a protest.
First of all, it was almost impos-
sible to find a printshop that
would print material of this na-
ture, and secondly it was ex-
tremely difficult to distribute this
material across the country. This
was Canada... . still under the
War Measures Act. Any person
not Canadian born or a Canadian
citizen caught with such printed
matter would immediately be de-
ported . . . put in jail . . . their
very lives in danger should they
be apprehended with leaflets
protesting the intervention. But
we decided this must be done.

It was a_ beautiful Sunday
morning in May .. . I had just
bought a new suit and a new hat
and I was going to take my girl
Josephine (who later became my
wife) to Centre Island for an
outing. But our committee called
this meeting that morning at 553
Queen Street to discuss the dis-
tribution of the leaflet protesting
the allied intervention in the
Soviet revolution.

Tom Bell had just read the
agenda when five police detec-
tives jumped us and arrested us.
They took us to jail where we
stayed until Monday when we
were taken to court and sentenc-
ed by Judge Cohen. As I recall,
we were: Tom Bell, Rotchell,
John Boychuk, Barelski, Vishta,
Hyte, Clarke and, later Watson
(my spelling may be wrong)....

Tom Bell and Rotchell were sen- —

tenced to two years in Kingston
Penitentiary and the rest of us
were sentenced to one year at

Burwash for the distribution of-

this leaflet. Edward and his wife
were deported to Germany.

They took us to Burwash, near
Sudbury, where we were put in-
to a large dormitory. We had to
work 10 hours each day. We
were very tired and they fed. us
poorly... We suffered greatly.

A small group there decided
to make an escape one Sunday.
They broke through the floor
near one of the beds and 11 pris-
oners escaped, among them our
comrade Hyte. Within two days
almost all of thent were caught
because there was no place to
run except to cross a large river.
They were forced to walk along
the bank of this river until they
came to a bridge. The authori-
ties knew that they would have
to cross this bridge, and were
waiting for them. And so they
caught our comrade. It was piti-
ful to see him when they brought
him back. They tied him up and
laid him by the bed on the floor.

I served my term and got
three days: off a month because
I worked.

On my return to Toronto I
again took up the work of our
organization—the work for the
benefit of the working people of
Canada that I have been carry-

going strong.

JOHN BOYCHUK—ONE OF THE BEST

The founders of the Communist Party, even as its members
today, were of the different backrounds that make up the
Canadian people. Ukrainian-Canadian John Boychuk, together
with Tim Buck, the only surviving member of the first Central
Committee of the Party. He was one of the Party leaders who
were sentenced to Kingston Penitentiary under notorious Sec-
tion 98 in 1931, and then for over two years was held behind
barbed wire under the vicious War Measures Act during World
War ll. John Boychuk is one of the finest leaders of the Ukrai-
nian Canadian workers’ organizations, a trade union organizer
and devoted Communist fighter all his adult life—and is still

‘day you can still

ing on ever since to the pest
my abilities.

It was very difficult to
materials printed, so Tom
who worked for the 1
Telegram, printed our teaflt
their print shop and thous
of copies were distribul }
over Canada, spreading OUlT
test against the interver
There were. progressive ab
in the Toronto Trades an nf
Council, such as Jack Maeu
ald, who later joined the Pye
and Tim Buck, who was at
executive member and 4 PM
ent member of the patt
tried to convince the majoMiy
the members of the Count,
come out against the ine
tion, and for progressive ;
Our comrades, among them"
Ukrainians, who were my
of the Council together W
for these aims.

get

BS

My brother Mike came 100
ada in 1911 and began ag
on the Canadian Nation®
way. When the First vagp
War broke out, simply | 7)
he was considered an AN i
subject, therefor an alien ®
al, he was arrested and
at Kapuskasing, where he fot
until 1916 when I was ihe
able to bring him out of spf
ternment camp by taking ™ fi
sibility for him. But he H# iy
tracted tuberculosis an
to a sanitorium in Graver iif
He wanted very much 1 if
io Ukraine . . .But he ws Oe
ill . . . and his illness Yip
result of the conditions |. jf
been subjected to while the
internment camp, whet b
had been forced to sleeP ® i
crete floors covered Ol a
straw. He died in June 4 if if

Many others had dié of tt
internment camp because aif
terrible conditions, an© 1)
find a yo!
cemetery in KapuskasiNe ie
overgrown and almost | if
where a large numbet put
unfortunate ' people ane bs
Some were our comma a
and others were imprisO 4
because they were ©
Austrian subjects.

x x * fel

I would like to say
words about Mrs. custa wf
worked very hard "ae i
group, even before 4 wif’
Revolution. She was; )
school teacher and a ver’ ot
capable and intellige” ant
who took a very impo! “y)
in our discussions wher ies
hammering out the poll ou
planning the activities
tire organization. restifey

It might also be inté ‘i yi
relate that in the gf Pat
began to organize thes is
ist Party of Canada th tind i
man with a most interes
tory. He had been sen ee |
tsarist regime to © cvh
check on those Russia ut
tionaries who. might ? a “i
Russia. He was Pal” off
group, and when we W wh Ns
ed in 1919, it was h® “and
reported our meetin’ ice ‘|
whereabouts to the Pa J®
name was Orlovsky, ® mel! i
have a picture of him ie ou!
...He disappeared aft eet
rest, but later on Ne
from an item in the
Times that his wife
him. 105
And so—a few ener
as now. besmirched he po”
with betrayal, but Poth
workers then, through” roe!
years, and today car :
our banner unsullie®