Canada Has a Nazi Monument Problem
A journalist in Edmonton is the most recent Canadian to be charged with vandalizing a Nazi monument. How Canada came to be home to so many monuments dedicated to Ukrainian Nazi collaborators is rooted in some dark chapters in the country’s history.
Ukrainian Nazi Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 with Roman Shukhevych (sitting, second from left), 1942. A monument in Edmonton, Canada, commemorates Shukhevych, who was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands in genocidal campaigns during the Holocaust era.
On October 14 2022 the Edmonton Police Service filed a mischief under $5,000 charge against journalist Duncan Kinney, claiming he spray-painted the words “actual Nazi” on a bust of Roman Shukhevych, a World War II–era Ukrainian ultranationalist and Nazi collaborator. The charge relates to an August 2021 incident in which the monument, located on the grounds of the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex in North Edmonton, was found to have been vandalized.
Kinney is an independent journalist and the editor and primary contributor to the Progress Report, a media project of Progress Alberta that includes a weekly podcast, a newsletter, and regular investigative reporting. Kinney has reported on the Shukhevych monument, including the vandalism against it, several times in recent years.
This is not the first time the Shukhevych monument has been vandalized with graffiti pointing out that the man was a Nazi collaborator: in December of 2019 it was tagged with the words “Nazi scum.” Kinney reported in 2020 that representatives of the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex and the League of Ukrainian Canadians’ Edmonton Branch had contacted Progress Alberta to indicate their belief the Edmonton police were investigating the incident as a possible hate crime, though this was not confirmed at the time.
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