Members of Calgary’s Ukrainian community, along with hundreds of supporters, met for an impromptu rally in front of Calgary City Hall last Sunday.
The event was a show of solidarity following a widely-condemned meeting in the Oval Office during which Donald Trump and his attack-dog Vice-President JD Vance berated Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelenskyy while defending Russian dictator Vladomir Putin.
The spectacle was broadcast live on TV.
A Show of Solidarity
“Ukraine was humiliated publicly, and I think it’s not right. We have to show that you cannot humiliate [an entire] nation in front of the whole world like this,” said Pavlo Karach, in an interview with CBC. “I felt like I needed to come and see other Ukrainians.”
Karach, who came to Canada in 2022, said he normally doesn’t go to rallies.
As of 2021, Alberta had the highest number of Ukrainian-Canadians in the country, with 344,000 making up 8 percent of the provincial population.
According to the Alberta government 57,000 Ukrainian refugees have come to the province since the Russian invasion started more than three years ago.
Fellow Ukrainian-Canadian Nataliya Oleksiv, said Zelenskyy’s humiliation at the hands of Trump and Vance makes her “feel like people died for nothing to be told some lies straight to the face.”
History Repeats Itself
University of Calgary historian Rob Huebert called the Oval Office outrage ominous.
“We’re heading into a horrible situation,” Huebert told CTVNews, adding that the verbal beating and public humiliation are exactly what “Hitler did with Austria and Czechoslovakia.”
Then World War II happened.
“Trump is talking about making good TV, instead of dealing with the very deadly nature of what he is talking about,” Huebert said.
Petition for a Trump Ban
Should a president who talks about taking over our country be kicked out of the G7 (Group of 7)? A growing number of Canadians think so.
The American president is scheduled to attend a summit of G7 leaders June 15 – June 17 in Kananaskis Country.
The G7 used to be the G8 until Russia was booted in 2014 after it forcefully annexed Crimea, a strategic region that juts into the Black Sea and borders Ukraine.
Trump wants Russia to be allowed back into the Group.
However a growing number of Canadians think Canada should shut the door on Trump before the Kannanaskis conference starts.
In February, Alberta resident Gerard Aldridge launched a petition calling on the federal government to bar Trump from entering the country, citing the president’s felony convictions and repeated statements about annexing Canada.
“I was born a Canadian and I want to die a Canadian,” Aldridge said in an interview with GlobalNews. “I don’t think he deserves to be in our country whether he’s president or not.”
Aldridge is a former University of Saskatchewan agrologist who served as Liberal MLA in the Saskatchewan legislature from 1995 to 1999. He now lives in Alberta’s Peace River country and said he no longer belongs to a political party.
The petition asks the Canadian government to “refuse Donald J. Trump entry to Canada until such time as he ceases and desists making threats or taking actions contrary to the well being of Canadians, in particular to our monetary and sovereign security, with compliance as a step toward overcoming his inadmissibility.”
Though initiated by Aldridge, the petition is sponsored by Charlie Angus, the NDP Member of Parliament for Timmins-James Bay in Ontario.
So far nearly 60,000 people have signed it.
