Ten years ago the City of Fernie placed a plaque on a huge rock next to the river by Dogwood Park. I was privileged at the time to fill in for the Mayor in unveiling the plaque that had several dignitaries present including MP Inky Marks and Professor Lubomyr Luciuk.

The event was to recognize the spot that once served as an internment camp for persons branded enemy aliens.
2015 marks the 100th anniversary of the 24 camps established across Canada under the War Measures Act of 1914 to 1920. Ukrainians and other Europeans were the majority of the civilian internees in the first war. People were forced to do heavy labour, subjected to separation of family members, to loss of personal property and exposed to other government endorsed humiliation not because they had done anything wrong but only because of their ethnic background although some were born in this country, some right here in Fernie. This act used during the First World War was deployed again during the Second War against Canadians of German, Italian and Japanese heritage and in 1970 against some Quebecois.

As Morrissey was also designated an internment camp Fernie and Morrissey are considered to be one of the 24 camps recognized in Canada.

This past August an Internment Camp Symposium was organized in Fernie by curator Ron Ulrich and the Historical Society of the Fernie Museum that included Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk whose research as a graduate student from Queen’s University initiated the Ukrainian Canadian movement for recognition of Canada’s first national internment operations. Also author Wayne Norton with books on a variety of topics such as the Vancouver Women’s Hockey team of 1914-1919, patriotic sheet music published in BC, coauthor of historical stories about the Elk Valley and the Crowsnest Pass and close to finishing a book on the history of Fernie during the First World War also presented.

I am honored to have a chapter in one of Wayne’s books about this area. Daniel St. Marie is a retired RCMP with experience in the anti-drug unit, the war crimes section specializing in the Rwandan genocide and immigration and Passport section investigating immigration corruption cases, human trafficking awareness and also as intelligence analyst among other work. Lawrna Myers has been researching genealogy, heir tracing and cemetery list reconstruction and media. Steve Malin was the project lead for the National Historical Recognition Program Internment Exhibit project and the Cave and Basin National Historic Site Renewal project. Today he is responsible for the protection and conservation of the cultural resources for Banff National Park, Cave and Basin National Historic Site, Banff Park Museum National Historic Site, Rocky Mountain House National Historic Site and the Sulphur Mountain Cosmic Ray Station National Historic Site among other responsibilities with Parks Canada.

Rounding out the speakers was Sarah Beaulieu, a PhD graduate student at Simon Fraser University working in the field of historical archaeology. While working on her masters program she studied the shifting awareness of the Morrissey internment camp over the past span of time and is continuing her doctoral research with the Morrissey camp in relation to the daily lives and happenings of the detainees and guards during the camp’s operation. Andrea Malysh, program manager for the Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund also attended as did other interested individuals. This group made for a very interesting presentation of information as until recent times little was known about this topic and even less about the Morrissey camp.

Dr. Luciuk’ s story of how it all began was riveting. He spoke of “Mary from Spirit Lake”. As an adult Mary told her children of how she was taken prisoner, her story wasn’t believed because that name couldn’t be found on any map. When Mary heard of the work Dr. Luciuk was doing that she called him. He was able to confirm the reason why Spirit Lake couldn’t be located on the map because the name had been changed and all information erased by the government people of the day.

Norton said that Italians in Fernie entered the war preceded by a parade on City streets. The camp was moved from Fernie to Morrissey in October by order from the Province. Beginning in Coal Creek and then Natal /Michel they began gathering data on people. August 1914 brought a proclamation and War Enemy Aliens Act. The mines were working and miners weren’t to qualify to be interned. The mine manager tried to stop the internment of married men so they could return to work to no avail. Some of the miners decided they didn’t want to work with enemy aliens so all those designated as such and all unmarried miners had to report for internment.

St. Marie said that mistreatment that occurred at the camp was due to the poor quality of the guards. Barbed wire, disease and captivity psychosis was prevalent. Insanity happened to some as well as suicides. Families suffered from being separated and not knowing and not hearing any information about loved ones. Families back in the home country weren’t even aware of their family members being detained in camps. And bored guards suffered with suicide and temporary insanity as well. It was thought later that Morrissey was chosen because business stood to gain as they supplied the camps, the railway transported the goods needed and the federal government gained because they didn’t have to build the camps.

In a book prepared by the Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund for Parks Canada it speaks to “Acknowledging An Injustice”. That is “the internment of enemy aliens as a result of their social-economic status, and the exploitation of interned civilian enemy aliens as conscript labour, and the abrogation of Canada’s responsibility for those who consequently endured state sanctioned indignities including imprisonment, the confiscation of their wealth and disfranchisement, not because of any wrong they had done but only because of where they has come from,who they were”.

To show the thoughts of some individuals at that time, in 1919 Herbert S Clements, MP Kent West, Ontario said, “I say unhesitatingly that every enemy alien who was interned during the war is today just as much an enemy as he was during the war, and I demand of this Government that each and every alien in this dominion should be deported at the earliest opportunity, Cattle ships are good enough for them.”

I abhor discrimination of any kind, this was pure discrimination based on nothing but someone’s idea of what made a person an enemy alien.

It would be great if in this enlightened age of information and technology humans could say that humanity had evolved to the degree that instead of inflicting pain and humiliation to others to the point of insanity and suicide that instead this horrendous behaviour had disappeared altogether. But one has to only turn on a TV, computer, radio or cell phone to see and hear that this behaviour seems to have taken on longer and stronger roots in this world.

Still with people and organizations like the above there is always the hope that brotherly love will prevail one day.