During the First World War, under the War Measures Act, internment camps were established at 24 locations across the country. Over the course of the war, more than 8,000 men, many of them Ukrainians and other Europeans, were interned as enemy aliens. Members of enemy militaries and merchant mariners were also targeted. All were considered a threat to Canada’s security at the time.

A number of these internment camps were located in the Rocky Mountain national parks or on lands now occupied by Parks Canada. The largest internment camp in the Rocky Mountain national parks was at the Cave and Basin/Castle Mountain in Banff National Park. Internees laboured in the national parks, improving facilities and increasing accessibility by developing the park system’s infrastructure.

In 2008, the Government of Canada provided $3.3 million to develop and present the national history of First World War internment operations and its legacy.

Through the National Historical Recognition Program (NHRP), Parks Canada is the federal entity charged with educating Canadians about First World War internment operations on behalf of the Government of Canada.

The central project is the creation of a new First World War Internment Exhibit Building, adjacent to the Cave and Basin National Historic Site. It is a 305 m² (1,000 ft²) building that includes mixed media, two-dimensional exhibits and five interactive touch-screen stations. The design of the building evokes the look and feel of historic internment camp barracks.

Inside, the new exhibit recounts the story of First World War internment operations in Canada. It begins in the years before the outbreak of the war in 1914, describing what Canada was like nearly 100 years ago. With the start of the war, and the passage of the War Measures Act, the decision was taken to intern “enemy aliens” - all of them men. The exhibit describes the experiences and hardships of life as an internee in a Canadian camp, until the last internment camp closed in 1920. Dramatic pictures capture the lives of the internees, quotations from people from that time convey the experience of internment, and touch-screens are filled with additional aspects of the national story of internment.

Since the 1990s, Parks Canada has worked cooperatively with representatives from community stakeholder organizations to install interpretive exhibits on war-time internment at Mount Revelstoke and Yoho national parks, and at the Cave and Basin National Historic Site in Banff. Parks Canada also supported the Ukrainian Canadian community’s efforts to install a permanent plaque and statue at the site of the Castle Mountain camp in Banff (1995) and permanent plaques at the Jasper camp (1996), Mount Revelstoke camp (2000), and Yoho camp (2001). A plaque was also erected at Fort Henry National Historic Site in Kingston, Ontario (1994), prior to acquisition of the site by Parks Canada.

June 20 is a symbolic day as it marks the anniversary of the end of Canada’s First World War internment operations in 1920.

The NHRP is also being used to create new web-based public awareness materials and exhibits about First World War internment operations at two other Parks Canada places that once served as internment camps: Fort Henry National Historic Site and the Halifax Citadel National Historic Site.

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News Release associated with this Backgrounder.

Government of Canada Opens Exhibit on First World War Internment in Canada in Banff National Park