HIST.MIL.GEOG.1915.20''.SPEN
Diary of the Castle Mountain Internment Camp 1915-17 edited and introduced by Bohdan S. Kordan and Peter Melnycky, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, The University of Alberta, Edmonton, 1991
Charge: Prisoner of War
Prison: Castle Mountain/ Banff (Map)
Canada's entry into World War I had dramatic consequences, not only for the hundreds of thousands who were mobilized, but also for the civilian population, especially in the Canadian West. During the previous two decades Canada had striven to attract immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe as a new source of homesteaders for the West and of labour to power the country's developing industries. The ensuing economic and social tensions made this large immigrant community the focus of considerable misgivings within Canadian society. When war broke out, the situation became particularly difficult for the approximately 160,000 Ukrainians who had immigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with which Canada was now at war. [...] The result was that thousands of Canadians, immigrant and non-immigrant alike, were made to spend the war as prisoners and guards in internment facilities scattered across the country.
The internment camp at Castle Mountain/ Banff is part of that story. There, more than six hundred prisoners and nearly two hundred guards were brought together through circumstances neither could control. ... (p.5)
[...] The diary of the Castle/ Banff camp reveals the daily routine of the post from the day it was created to the day it was ceased to exist. With entries faithfully recorded every day, it is the only surviving document that speaks dispassionately and at length about the internment experience, providing a running account of the inmates, troops, regimen and military policy of internment in Canada. It also provides an invaluable statement about a unique episode in the human history of the development of Canada's national parks. Since the log-book was written by several hands, some entries are descriptively weaker than others, testifying to the unequal talents of the many recorders. In the final analysis, the log was maintained consistently not only because this was standard military practice, but also because there was a sense among those living through it that the experience was unusual and warranted a careful record.
As for the meaning of the diary, it rests not only in what is said, but also in what is partially revealed. Understanding requires an exercise of imagination and human sympathy: one must try to fathom the emotions of the patrons of the Banff Springs Hotel as they looked down from on high at the scores the internees working under the threat of bayonet and rifle on the golf course below; the private thoughts of the men on both sides of the wire; the deeps sense of frustration. The diary provides only a glimpse of this remarkable story. (p.21)