Politics

The first collective expression of Armenian aspirations in Canada was the organization of branches of Armenian political parties. Armenians have been keen but low-profile participants in the Canadian political process. They have taken Canadian naturalization seriously, and many have joined, worked for, and financially supported various Canadian political parties and maintained good relations with their elected representatives at all levels of government.

In the past, Armenian factory labourers voted for the Liberal Party or the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). More affluent Armenians also backed the Liberal Party. During the Cold War, staunch anti-Communists moved to the Conservative Party. Today, Armenians vote primarily Liberal or Conservative. For each election, Armenian political organizations suggest a slate of preferred candidates and arrange for speeches and rallies in their community centres, as they have done for decades.

Until the 1990s Armenians were generally not inclined to run for political office in Canada, perhaps because they were convinced that a “foreign” name could not win votes, or perhaps because they lacked connections in the established parties. More probably, the impact of trauma, uprooting, and loss inhibited them: refugees and their children devoted their energies to physical survival and to preservation of a threatened heritage.

Armenians entered politics initially through ethnic/ multicultural organizations; for example, John H. Mooradian of Hamilton was founder and first president of the Canadian National Unity Council, formed in 1947, and Kevork Baghdjian of Montreal was president of the Fédération des Groupes Ethniques du Québec from 1975 to 1988. As the community matures, more Armenians are vying for public office. Tom Jackson is a city councillor in Hamilton; another Hamiltonian, Ara Mooradian, was mayor of Deep River from 1958 to 1962. Noushig Eloyan, the first Armenian-Canadian woman to hold political office, is president of the executive committee of the city of Montreal, while Hasmig Vasilian-Belili and Jack Chaderjian are Montreal city councillors. In 1993 Sarkis Asadourian, an Ontario Liberal, became the first Canadian of Armenian descent elected to the House of Commons.

Armenian Canadians are inextricably drawn into the affairs of the homeland. As early as 1902–03, when they founded branches of the Social Democratic Hunchag party and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, or Tashnag party (ARF), immigrants sought to help needy compatriots in the Ottoman and Russian empires. In the post-1918 period, the Hunchag faction, loyal to Soviet Armenia, fell under attack by Communist agents, and by 1925 it had succumbed as a political party in Canada. No single, strong Armenian leftist organization replaced it. From the mid-1920s until the Cold War, when the Armenian left disappeared from the Canadian scene, leftists aligned with various Communist-front organizations, with headquarters and a press abroad, usually in the United States. These groups included the Relief Committee for Armenia (HOG), the National Red Cross (not the Armenian Red Cross), the Armenian Workers’ Party/Armenian Communist Party, and the Armenian-American Progressive Party, later the Armenian-American Progressive League. These bodies sought to provide moral and material aid to Soviet Armenia. Eventually, many Armenian leftists in Canada chose participation in the Apostolic Church with its Mother See in Soviet Armenia, but they continued to read the left-wing U.S. press, and some turned their energies to the trade union movement. In the meantime, the Tashnag party held firm and remained the only viable Armenian political organization in Canada. It continued to promote politicization and literacy among its members and, as a by-product of political consolidation, helped strengthen Armenian community cohesion. The party always worked for creation of a free, independent, and united Armenia.

The third wave of Armenian settlers swelled Tashnag ranks and also brought Armenian Democratic Liberals (Ramgavars) to Canada. After the Communist overthrow of the Armenian Republic in 1920, the Ramgavars upheld the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Mother See situated in Soviet Armenia, but they opposed communism. Taking into account geographical and historical realities, this conservative group opted for accommodation with Soviet Armenia as the only means of survival, both of the Armenian state and of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

Today, the Tashnag party is the largest Armenian political organization in Canada, with nine branches. Ramgavars rank second, with branches in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, followed by a small but active Hunchag group, established in Montreal and Toronto in 1979–80. In the 1970s and 1980s cultural and economic progress in Soviet Armenia, greater religious tolerance, and a more open attitude to the West improved relations between Armenia and Armenian Canadians. Exchanges and visits became more numerous, the transatlantic press more accessible, and Tashnag attitudes towards Soviet Armenia more favourable.

With renewed turmoil in the Caucasus since 1988, all groups in Canada have mobilized on behalf of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh by contributing relief supplies and personnel, undertaking reconstruction projects, and intervening with foreign governments. Following the creation of an independent and democratic Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, political groupings rushed in to establish a footing in the homeland. At the same time, they began to reappraise their future roles. Since Armenia was now free and independent, the question arose whether political parties should continue to function in the diaspora, transfer their activities to the homeland, or disband altogether. In 1994 the democratically elected regime unexpectedly expelled from Armenia the Tashnag party and its affiliates – the charitable Armenian Relief Society, the cultural Hamaskine, and the sports group HMEM; confiscated all properties, supplies, and equipment; closed the press; and imprisoned Tashnag members.

Armenian Canadians responded with disbelief and consternation, since their commitment to a free Armenian state dated back to the early years of the century. Such recent events in the ancestral homeland have forced them to reconsider their political priorities.

For decades Armenian Canadians have sought to familiarize their fellow citizens with the Genocide by petitioning all levels of government. In 1980 the Ontario and Quebec legislatures unanimously recognized the Genocide as a violation of human rights and decency and called on Ottawa to do likewise and to designate 24 April as a day of remembrance. Armenian-Canadian political parties have evolved into political organizations, with a host of ancillary subgroups, involved in all aspects of community life and centred around the little clubs or halls of the past and the large complexes of the present. Because each is so all-encompassing, each has tended to entrench its own set of attitudes. However, competition among them has stimulated cultural maintenance and development, and the structures that they set up have helped immigrants to integrate into Canadian society. While all Armenian-Canadian political groupings are part of worldwide organizations, they have distinctive Canadian characteristics and interests. For example, early Hunchags and Tashnags held annual party conventions of the Canadian chapters. The Tashnags revamped their branches in 1937 as the Canadian Regional Committee and in 1975–76 as the Canadian Central Committee. They created the Armenian National Federation to participate in the Canadian Ethnocultural Council and set up the Armenian National Committee of Canada as a liaison between them and Canadian governmental and non-governmental organizations.