‘Victims Of Communism’ Monument Unveiling Postponed
www.readthemaple.com
Canadian Heritage is conducting a review to ensure the monument is compatible with 'Canadian values.'

The Victims of Communism monument’s public unveiling has been postponed to an as-yet undetermined date in 2024 as Canadian Heritage conducts an additional review to ensure the monument is compatible with what the ministry deems to be Canadian values.

This includes a review of the list of names of alleged victims of communism to be commemorated by the monument.

The monument’s origins date back to 2007 and it was originally slated to cost $1.5 million drawn entirely from private donations, but the project’s fundraising effort stalled shortly after it began. The Harper government pledged to cover its costs in 2013, and by the end of 2014 the cost of the project had ballooned to $5.5 million, with $4.3 million coming from public funds.

The monument, which was supposed to be unveiled to the public later this year, is currently estimated to cost $7.5 million.

  • culpritus [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    18·
    1 year ago

    However, on September 21, Tribute to Liberty tweeted a video of the installation of a portion of the monument, as well as text indicating the monument was scheduled to be unveiled at a ceremony on November 2.

    The next day, a packed House of Commons honoured Yaroslav Hunka, a 98 year-old Waffen SS veteran, in front of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Hunka was introduced to those assembled as a “Canadian and Ukrainian hero” who had fought against the Russians during the Second World War.

    Canada and the Soviet Union were allied against the Nazis during the war, a basic fact about the war that critics said should have been obvious to anyone – including MPs in all parties who were present in the House of Commons – with an elementary-level knowledge of the conflict.

    The scandal cost then-house speaker Anthony Rota — who invited Hunka — his job, and renewed calls for Canada to open secret files concerning SS veterans who were allowed to immigrate to Canada after the war. Subsequent investigations by The Forward and the Progress Report revealed that the Hunka family had given a $30,000 endowment to the University of Alberta’s Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies and that as many as a dozen former SS veterans may have donated $1.4 million to the same institution over the past 40 years.

    Was looking for info about this ‘Institute’, and I found this lecture video featuring Alexander Vindman, the guy that testified at Trump’s impeachment, as the main speaker.

    Director for European Affairs for the United States National Security Council (NSC) until he was reassigned on February 7, 2020.

    Vindman starts at 16 min mark.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdNfJKFTK_A

    So the lecture series seems to be named after this institution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shevchenko_Scientific_Society

    If anyone can determine otherwise why this name is used, please let me know. Cause it sure seems like this is where it comes from:

    Upon their occupation of Lviv, the Soviets dissolved the society. Many of its members were arrested and either imprisoned or executed. Among the perished members were such academicians as R. Zubyk, a former Ukrainian minister I. Feshchenko-Chopivsky, a Ukrainian parliamentarian Petro Franko, Kyryl Studynsky, and many others. During the Nazi occupation, the society still was not able to function openly. In 1947, on the initiative of the geographer and one of the major collaborators with Nazi Germany Volodymyr Kubiyovych,[2][3] it was re-founded as an émigré scholarly society in Munich; the Society’s European center was later moved to Paris. Other branches were also founded in New York City (1947), Toronto (1949) and Australia (1950), and throughout the Cold War it functioned as a federation of semi-independent societies.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volodymyr_Kubijovyč

    He was a devotee of Adolf Hitler, an anti-Semite and a proponent of ethnic cleansing.[3][4][5] In 1943, he was a founder of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS.[6][7][4][8] Kubijovyč was a supporter of the OUN-M, Andriy Melnyk’s faction in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.[9][2] After the collapse of Nazi Germany, Kubijovyč settled in France. He later became the chief editor of the Encyclopedia of Ukraine and the Secretary General of Shevchenko Scientific Society.