LOTTA
HITSCHMANOVA: FOUNDER, UNITARIAN SERVICE COMMITTEE OF CANADA
1909 - 1990
From the First Unitarian Church of Ottawa
Dr. Lotta (as she is known) was a refugee from Czechoslovakia
during World War II, fleeing to Belgium, southern France
and Portugal, before finally coming to Canada. She began
to work on behalf of refugees with the Unitarian Service
Committee in Boston. Three years after arriving in Canada,
she founded the Unitarian Service Committee of Canada with
the help of the people in the Ottawa Unitarian Congregation.
In recognition of her work, she has received awards from
various governments, and Canada has made her a Companion
of the Order of Canada, the nation's highest award.
Members
of the Unitarian Congregation of Ottawa are proud to have
helped at the beginning and now to have her bust as a reminder
of our present obligation to help those in need.
Don Saxon, then President of the Congregation, learned that
Harold Pfeiffer had his original sculpture of Dr. Lotta
in his basement. After a visit to Dr. Pfeiffer's, a bronze
was commissioned and presented as a gift to the church.
Dr.
Lotta admiring the carpentry work of a young boy sponsored
in a children’s home.
Dr.
Lotta, as she was known, was rewarded for her work many
times, including the designation Companion of the Order
of Canada, the Rotary International Award for World Understanding,
and national awards from Lesotho, Korea, India, Greece,
and France. Dr. Hitschmanova proudly accepted these awards
for the USC and wore them on her self-designed uniform,
five rows of ribbons.
Lotta Hitschmanova was from Czechoslovakia, but the trip
she made from there to Canada was a long and winding one.
She was born in 1909 in Prague, the daughter of a prosperous
family. She had a younger sister, Lilly. Their mother was
elegant and socially ambitious, and fluent in several languages,
including Italian, French and English as well as German,
the state language at the time. Their nanny spoke Czech;
their governess taught them French. The girls attended school
together, and Lotta finished with honours. Even then, she
tried to help others, running an informal tutorial during
the morning high school recess for those who were not prepared
for the daily Greek and Latin classes.
Lotta entered the University of Prague in 1929, studying
languages, and spent two of those four years in Paris at
the Sorbonne. One of her several diplomas in various languages
earned her a scholarship for her Ph.D. Then she was back
to Paris for more studies in journalism and political science.
After she finished in 1935, she returned to Prague to help
her father in his malt growing business. She couldn’t
stay away from political journalism, though, and managed
to be a correspondent for several papers until the signing
of the Munich Pact in 1938. Her views were definitely anti-Nazi,
so she was persuaded to leave Czechoslovakia for her safety,
and returned to Paris, then with friends in Belgium, and
back again after some time there, leaving just ahead of
the advancing German army. In 1941, she was in Marseilles,
trying to get a visa to go to the United States. The migration
service she appealed to was not able to help, but they did
need a secretary and interpreter fluent in French, English,
German, Spanish and Czech! She was able to forget her own
pain by helping others. However, her diet of beets and carrots
led to a collapse on the street from fatigue and hunger.
She was taken to a clinic run by the Unitarian Service Committee,
an outreach of the American Unitarian Association in Boston.
Dr.
Lotta interviewing an old man with Cho Ki Dong,
USC Korea Director, looking on.
Thus
began Lotta Hitschmanova’s introduction to the
Unitarian Service Committee. She had originally wished
to emigrate to the US, but the visa that came through
was from Canada. She caught the last boat from Lisbon
to New York, and then went on to Montreal. She settled
in Ottawa and joined the Unitarian church there.
By 1945, the idea of a Canadian Unitarian Service Committee
had become a possibility. Representatives from the six
Canadian Unitarian churches—from Ottawa, Montreal,
Toronto, Hamilton, Winnipeg and Vancouver—met and
eventually approved the notion. At first, the organization
was limited to raising funds from Unitarians only, but
that didn’t last long. Unitarians were, however,
the core support for many years.
Mounties Spied on Lotta
Hitschmanova
by Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun
Dr
Lotta receiving the Order of Canada from Governon General
Roland Michener in 1972.
Wearing her trademark military-style cap, Dr. Lotta Hitschmanova
became a household symbol of Canadian goodwill when she
appeared repeatedly on TV ads soliciting donations for the
Unitarian Service Committee.
But to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, (RCMP), during
the Cold War, Hitschmanova's passion for aiding starving
children in Europe and the Third World was highly suspicious,
political scientist Steve Hewitt says.
The RCMP worried
that Hitschmanova, a Czech refugee, might be sympathetic
to Communism. So they spied on her for three decades. Hewitt,
who is currently teaching at Purdue University in Indiana,
says the RCMP would gather files on religious groups when
their members expressed concern about the Third World, protested
the nuclear-arms buildup, opposed the Vietnam War or called
for diplomatic relations with China.
The RCMP feared prominent members of the religious groups
may be subversive. While RCMP investigators didn't think
Christian leaders and activists were actual spies for the
Soviet Union, Hewitt said, they did believe they could be
seduced by communism and would therefore "erode Canada
from within."
Through access to information requests, Hewitt has uncovered
stacks of documents showing the RCMP spied on Christian
groups from the 1940s until at least the 1980s, when the
RCs intelligence gathering role was largely taken over by
the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). However,
Hewitt speculates that Canadian security officials may continue
to spy on religious groups and other activists today—particularly
since the RCMP admitted infiltrating student organizations
as recently as 1998.
