Lubomyr Luciuk: Remembering a time when Canadians were caged
2014/08/26 2 Comments
Lubomyr Luciuk on the World War 1 internment camps and the unveiling of plaques commemorating them. More balanced that some of the language of activists interviewed on CBC that called them “concentration camps:”
That led to the creation of the Endowment Council of the Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund, an inclusive body charged with hallowing the memory of all of the First World War’s “enemy aliens” through commemorative and educational initiatives. I take great satisfaction in recalling how two men working together, one of Chinese and the other of Ukrainian heritage, saw justice done, despite all the naysayers and thwarters. The country Inky and I share is one we are proud to be citizens of.
Today, one hundred years after passage of The War Measures Act — the same Act deployed in the Second World War against our fellow Japanese, Italian, and German Canadians, and against some Québécois in 1970 — over 100 plaques will be unveiled at 11 am local time in over 60 cities, starting in Amherst, Nova Scotia then flowing west to Nanaimo, B.C., a first-ever event in Canadian history. This national wave of remembrance, beginning and ending at internment camp sites, will sweep from coast to coast where a wave of repression once passed. These plaques fulfil Mary’s dream.
Lubomyr Luciuk: Remembering a time when Canadians were caged
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Multicultural Meanderings 
The internment camps of the First World War period were called “concentration camps” during that period, not only in the media but in government reports – there is even an image showing that phrase used at the Vernon, BC camp, laid out in whitewashed stones for all to see. While it may not be politically correct to use the term these days in relationship to what happened in the Dominion during this country’s first national internment operations it is not historically inaccurate to do so.
Times and terminology changes, as we all know too well. Use of concentration camps now, rather than internment camps, has a different connotation.
Not that the internment camps were pleasant places to be, or that the internees were well treated, but they were not comparable to the conditions in the concentration camps, which were essentially industrial in scale, were based on slave labour, those who could not work were killed, in addition to the generalized killing factories like Auschwitz.
This does not diminish the experience of the internees or their dependents but using the label concentration camps diminishes all those who died, starved and were otherwise abused under the WW2 concentration camps.