Plaque Recalls Lethbridge Internment Camp for “Enemy Aliens”

(Lethbridge, Calgary, Ottawa) - Oct. 29, 2013 UCCLA – On Tuesday, 29 October 2013, at 1:30 pm, a commemorative plaque recalling the internment of Ukrainians and other Europeans during the First World War was unveiled at the Lethbridge Exhibition. One of 24 camps set up during Canada’s first national internment operations, most of the prisoners were civilians who had immigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The camp was in operation from 30 September 1914 to 7 November 1916. Other camps remained open until the spring of 1920. Internees were forced to do heavy labour for the profit of their jailers and suffered other state-sanctioned indignities, not because they had done anything wrong but only because of who they were and where they had come from.

The commemorative plaque was placed by the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, in cooperation with the Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund and the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation. This is the 22nd such plaque placed by UCCLA. Just two more First World War-era internment camp sites remain to be memorialized: Montreal and Halifax.

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L. to R.:Don Young, President, Lethbridge Exhibition Park, Mayor Chris Spearman, Mayor of the City of Lethbridge, Fr. Taras Krochak, St. Vladimir’s Ukrainian Orthodox Congregation, Calgary and he serves Divine Liturgy at Lethbridge’s Holy Trinity Ukrainian Orthodox every other week, Borys Sydoruk, UCCLA, Maria Shysh, Vice President National Executive CYM/UYA of Canada, Bohdan Romaniuk, President UCPBA of Calgary, Halya Wilson, UCCLA, Rudy Friesen, General Manager, Lethbridge Exhibition Park