Ukrainian Labour Farmer Temple Association

The Association of United Ukrainian Canadians (AUUC) is a national cultural-educational non-profit organization established for Ukrainians in Canada. With branches throughout Canada it sponsors such cultural activities as dance groups, orchestras, choirs and children's activities within the Association. The organization was procommunist.

The Ukrainian Labour Farmer Temple Association (ULFTA) was established in Winnipeg in 1918 as an association of left-leaning cultural societies and community halls and the Ukrainian Social Democratic Party of Canada (USDPC). By 1928 it had 167 branches across Canada. Labour Temples and other associated halls existed in cities like Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Toronto (1921), as well as in rural communities in the Ukrainian Block Settlements. These Labour Temples competed directly with nationalist-related halls called narodny dim (national homes) to provide services and attract patrons, and the UFLTA competed against a plethora of nationalist and Church-backed cultural groups for the loyalty of Ukrainian Canadians. It was funded, in part, by Moscow, and assumed an uncritical pro-Stalinist position, even as a broad consensus was formed about the alleged Great Famine of 1932-33 in Soviet Ukraine (the Holodomor). A small group of UFLTA dissidents (Lobay movement) would break away from the main body and join the Ukrainian Canadian Committee.

As no form of public medicare was available at the time, ULFTA founded the Workers Benevolent Association (WBA) in Winnipeg in 1922, with branches and membership rapidly spreading throughout Canada; it even extended its membership to all workers, irrespective of ethnic origin. It was also a front organization for the ULFTA, supporting it financially.

In 1940, the ULFTA was banned under the wartime Defence of Canada Regulations, because of its support for Stalinism and the Soviet-Nazi pact, and a few of its leaders and journalists were interned along with the leadership of the Communist party. Several Labour Temples were confiscated by the federal government as "enemy property" with several being sold off.

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