The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists was founded in 1929. Its fascist and openly anti-Semitic ideology was that Jews and Russian-speaking citizens must be removed from Ukrainian society at any cost. They enthusiastically collaborated with Nazi Germany in the 1940s to exterminate Jews, Russians, and anyone who attempted to protect them. The OUN was only forced out of Ukraine after the USSR took control of the country, upon the end of the Second World War.

The Ukrainian fascists found new homes in Canada, where the ideology of anti-communism was extremely potent. Peter Vronsky, a former documentary Director at the National Film board revealed that:

“a little known US-financed group in Canada called the "Canadian Christian Council for the Resettlement of Refugees" privately lobbied the Canadian government in the 1950s to admit former Nazi Waffen-SS 'foreign legion volunteers' like the Moslem Bosnian-Albanian Nazi SS troopers, Ukrainian SS volunteers, and others, to come to Sudbury wholesale to work in the mines.”

The Jewish News of North California reported that the Canadian government admitted more than 2,000 Ukrainian members of the Nazi 14th SS Division in the 1950s. This was done to crush the burgeoning leftist Ukrainian diaspora that was building up during the previous few years.

One way of getting into postwar Canada "was by showing the SS tattoo," Canadian historian Irving Abella told 60 Minutes interviewer Mike Wallace in 1997. "This proved that you were an anti-Communist."