Ukrainian Social Democratic Party of Canada

Ukrainian Social Democratic Party of Canada (Українська соціял-демократична партія в Канаді; Ukrainska sotsiial-demokratychna partiia v Kanadi, or УСДПК; USDPC). A socialist political organization established in 1914. Its organizational antecedents include the Taras Shevchenko Society, formed in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1904; the Ukrainian branches of the Socialist Party of Canada, organized in Nanaimo, Portage la Prairie, and Winnipeg in 1907; and the Federation of Ukrainian Social Democrats in Canada, formed in 1909, whose biweekly newspaper, Robochyi narod, became the USDPC’s official organ. The group’s leaders included Ivan Navizivsky and Matthew Popovich. When banned in 1918 for antiwar agitation, the USDPC had about 1,500 members, mostly immigrant laborers in mining, lumbering, and construction. It was later reconstituted as the Ukrainian Labour-Farmer Temple Association.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]