Met at the Train

At North Bay, Ont., two Canadian Communists clambered aboard a train on which Mike Moskal, 22, a Ukrainian D.P., was riding to a new job in a northern Ontario gold mine. They told him some very unkind things about Canada, handed him propaganda leaflets, tried to talk him into giving up, going back to Russia. The same thing happened, on the same trip, to Joe Trhlen, John Sanajko, Myroslaw Blauk, 50-odd other D.P.s. Said Mike Moskal: "Was no good. Didn't like."

When the story first came out, in mid-December, Canadians considered it an isolated incident. But last week they were beginning to wonder. In Winnipeg, "Mother City" of the Dominion's 350,000 Ukrainians, a man who ought to know charged that what had happened to Mike Moskal and his friends had happened to most, if not all, of the 6,700 odd D.P.s entering Canada since April 1947.

The man who made the charge was the Most Rev. Basil Ladyka, Ukrainian Bishop of Canada. Specially trained Canadian Communists, said he, have been posted in key Canadian centers under orders from Moscow to "confuse and discourage" incoming D.P.s. They work in teams, he said. Some Communists meet incoming D.P.s on the piers at eastern ports. Others contact them on their trains as they head for their new homes. The Communists constantly harass the immigrants, said Bishop Ladyka, and try to bribe them to return to Europe. They tell the immigrants "that they have been 'exported' here for slave labor." They offer to "produce the 'ransom' to 'rescue' the D.P.s if they will join the ranks of the Reds." Even when the immigrants reach their new homes in Canada, said Bishop Ladyka, the "Communist plea" continues by mailed pamphlets which warn the immigrants that Canada is controlled by "fascists and capitalists," and to return to Europe "before it is too late."

The Bishop announced a counteroffensive. The Ukrainian Canadian Council, said he, will distribute some pamphlets too--depicting Canada as it really is.

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