Association of United Ukrainian Canadians

Association of United Ukrainian Canadians (Товариство об’єднаних українських канадців; Tovarystvo obiednanykh ukrainskykh kanadtsiv or ТОУК; AUUC). Pro-Communist organization of Ukrainians in Canada, incorporated in 1946 to replace the Association of Canadian Ukrainians (est 1942) and its predecessor the Ukrainian Labour-Farmer Temple Association, banned in 1940. After the wartime popularity of the pro-Communist movement the AUUC declined steadily. It was severely criticized by the third wave of Ukrainian immigrants and negatively affected by the Cold War, Nikita Khrushchev’s revelations concerning Joseph Stalin at the 20th CPSU Congress in 1956, Russification in Ukraine, and the increasing socioeconomic integration of Ukrainian Canadians. The AUUC has been most active in Ontario, Alberta, and Manitoba, with Toronto, Edmonton, and Winnipeg the largest centers. Through its network of workers’ centers, libraries, and its resort in Palermo (near Toronto), the association carried on a modicum of cultural activity, maintaining choirs, theater groups, Ukrainian language courses, and the like. Until the 1990s the AUUC indirectly ran a bookstore and merchandising outlet, Ukrainska Knyha, and the travel agency Globe Tours, both of which were associated with Soviet foreign-trade institutions. It sponsored Soviet Ukrainian delegations and performers in Canada and regularly sent students to study in Kyiv. Liaison between the AUUC and the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) was maintained by key AUUC functionaries, who were also members of the central organs of the CPC. However, relations between the AUUC and the CPC were somewhat strained from the late 1960s following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia and the release of a critical report by a CPC-fronted (but largely AUUC-led) delegation sent to the Ukrainian SSR in 1967 to investigate the Soviet Union’s nationality policy. In 1965 the two pro-Communist weeklies Ukraïns’ke zhyttia (Winnipeg) and Ukraïns’ke slovo (Winnipeg) merged to form Zhyttia i slovo (Toronto); the English-language The Ukrainian Canadian switched to a monthly journal format in 1968. Both publications were succeeded by the Ukraïns’kyi kanads’kyi visnyk/Ukrainian Canadian Herald in 1991. The AUUC has maintained close fraternal ties with the Workers’ Benevolent Association. Its most important members have been A. Bilecki, John Boychuk, John Boyd, W. Harasym, Mykola Hrynchyshyn, Peter Krawchuk, G. Moskal, John Navis (Ivan Navizivsky), Z. Nykolyshyn, M. Prokop, Peter Prokop (Petro Prokopchak), Mitch Sago, Matthew Shatulsky and Myron Shatulsky, Mary Skrypnyk, and John Weir.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kolasky, John. The Shattered Illusion: The History of Ukrainian Pro-Communist Organizations in Canada (Toronto 1979)
Krawchuk, Peter. Our History: The Ukrainian Labour-Farmer Movement in Canada, 1907–1991 (Toronto 1996)

Frances Swyripa

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]