Kirjahaku

Mike Starr had a remarkable career in Canadian politics. In June 1957, he was appointed Minister of Labour in John Diefenbaker's cabinet and created a sensation, especially among Canadian ethnocultural groups. He made political history as the first Ukrainian Canadian appointed to federal cabinet. As Minister of Labour, Starr was faced with numerous national problems, including seasonal unemployment, regional disparities, union negotiations and emerging militant nationalism in Quebec. When the Diefenbaker government was defeated in the 1963 federal election, Starr returned to his earlier role as Member of Parliament. With the changing Canadian political environment, he was defeated by a tiny margin in the 1968 federal election. Starr continued his distinguished career of public service from 1968 to 1980. He promoted the increasing involvement of ethnocultural groups in Canada political life. In recent decades, it has become a political norm to have members of various ethnocultural and visible minority groups elected to the House of Commons, and appointed to Cabinet and other senior government positions. For breaking this barrier, Mike Starr was indeed a pioneer in Canadian politics.

The Cold War in Val-d’Or, A History of the Ukrainian community in Val-d’Or, Quebec is a mini-history of an ethnocultural community in northwestern Quebec. The story has many similarities to the evolution of immigrant and ethnocultural groups in many one-industry towns in northern Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba. This study should be of special interest to the many former residents of Val-d’Or who lived in an isolated resource town in a predominantly francophone milieu. The mining economy and the local cultural environment shaped this community but also the left-right political rivalry during the Cold War years, documented in the surveillance reports prepared by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). This surveillance by the RCMP may also interest students and researchers in Canadian labour and political history. Ukrainian immigrants arrived in the Abitibi region as prospectors and miners in the 1930s and established the first rival pro-communist and nationalist community organizations that reflected their political orientation. This rivalry was the ‘motor’ that activated the community but also perpetuated political differences that is the main theme of this study.