(upbeat music)

Meepelous: Hello and welcome, my name is Meepelous (they/he/she)!

And today’s pick is Enemy Alien: A True Story of Life Behind Barbed Wire by Kassandra Luciuk and Nicole Marie Burton. Published by Between the Lines in 2020.

I feel like this book has been on my TBR since it was published. Anyone whose been here for more then a minute knows that I have an interest in reading and reviewing comics about incarceration. That said, I will admit that my not reading the blurbs for books did bite me in the butt a bit with this one. I assumed that they were talking about Japanese internment during world war two, because surely that was the totality of north american internment camps – besides the reservation system inflicted on Indigenous people… But apparently so called canada also interned people with astro-hungarian passports during world war one as well.

Content notes for police harassment, forced work, starvation, and military responses to work agitation.

Keywords that came to mind reading this volume: work, resistance, profiling, exploitation, Orthodox Christianity, and police state.

The summary over on goodreads says “This graphic history tells the story of Canada’s first national internment operations through the eyes of John Boychuk, an internee held in Kapuskasing from 1914 to 1917. The story is based on Boychuk’s actual memoir, which is the only comprehensive internee testimony in existence.
The novel follows Boychuk from his arrest in Toronto to Kapuskasing, where he spends just over three years. It details the everyday struggle of the internees in the camp, including forced labour and exploitation, abuse from guards, malnutrition, and homesickness. It also documents moments of internee agency and resistance, such as work slowdowns and stoppages, hunger strikes, escape attempts, and riots.
Little is known about the lives of the incarcerated once the paper trail stops, but Enemy Alien subsequently traces Boychuk’s parole, his search for work, his attempts to organize a union, and his ultimate settlement in Winnipeg. Boychuk’s reflections emphasize the much broader context in which internment takes place. This was not an isolated incident, but rather part and parcel of Canadian nation building and the directives of Canada’s settler colonial project.”

Looking at the creative team we have Kassandra Luciuk who is an assistant professor in Dalhousie’s Department of History. Her research topics include Canadian history, migration and ethnicity, law and human rights, social and political movements, communism and anti-communism, as well as Ukraine and Ukrainian diaspora. Which makes a lot of sense given the subject and focus of this book.

I’ve previously reviewed two books illustrated by Nicole Marie Burton. I profiled them in my review of The Beast: Making a Living on a Dying Planet, but would also recommend you check out my review of Wonder Drug: LSD in the Land of Living Skies which she also illustrated.

Looking at the writing. I found this book extremely interesting and engaging. Not only because of my interest in the material, but also the perspective that it took and the way the story was told.

One clarifying note however, is that despite the fact that the summary seems to indicate that this book is directly based off of John Boychuk’s memoir… The introduction indicates that the author of the memoir is not actually credited to a named author and includes some evidence that it probably was not the actual historical Boychuk – who was a Ukranian communist in Toronto. Although the main character still goes by that name. Which seems fine, but not entirely clear. I also appreciated the extra context about how Ukrainians found themselves in so called canada during World War One, not to mention insight into the research process and Kassandra’s motivation.

Otherwise I appreciated how much action/resistance was attributed to the internees – they were not presented as passive victims.

Looking at the art, I’m not always the biggest fan of grey scale but it still works and compliments the story with engaging framing and page layouts.

Digging into the different identities and themes that I always do:

Class and race were definitely the most focused on aspects of the story.

Flipping to the start of the book we learn about how people with Austro-Hungarian passports were being targeted by the government during this time. With 80,000 people forced to register with police and 8,579 people ultimately being interned across 24 camps. Not to mention that 32 men died in Kapuskasing.

These people started out sleeping in box cars and had to build their own housing. And when they resisted being forced to do this hard and menial labor they were intentionally starved and otherwise abused. All because of their passport.

So called canada even picked up some americans by accident and despite internees writing to both Ottawa and Washington, nothing was done.

There was also a point in the story in which a priest gets called in austencable for spiritual support. But he’s catholic and a lot of the men are orthodox, which are very different things… But when some of the orthodox decide to attend the catholic service anyway the priest rats them out.

Much like today, the government tried to force these internees to fight wildfires and thankfully apparently failed. Eventually they were able to teach each other subjects like math and english, but they were also fed rancid meat and companies came to the camp to take the men away to continue to be exploited but now for private industry.

Place was a strong background character in the story. It was particularly interesting when our protagonist returns to Kapuskasing again many years later and sees how it’s been turned into something else entirely.

Disability wasn’t much of a focus per say, but the physical tole of labor, resistance and starvation was explored a bit.

Gender was (fairly understandably) one note and sexuality went largely ignored across the spectrum.

Wrapping things up. One of those books that I would highly recommend. Particularly if you have been burned by one too many very important but very dull or badly done political comics in the past. Five stars.

Bye y’all, keep reading and stand with striking workers.

And Literally Graphic is created on land that should be given back to the traditional land holders, which in this case is to my knowledge the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, an Anishinaabe people, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Huron-Wendat nation.