okarchive the Okanagan at Vernon, Mara, Monashee and Edgewood. The Vernon Internment Camp opened Sept. 18, 1914, on the site of McDonald Park. Local aliens were visited in the night and taken to the camp with their families. Hundreds arrived from around the Valley, some having lived in Canada for 20 years. The ones that saw it coming escaped across the border or enlisted in the Canadian Army under names like Smith. Those listed as Austrian were kept in work camps in the hinterlands of BC and Alberta. General Otter, officer in charge of the camps, after hearing the internees described as “all foreigners of the class that work on the railroads and factories in the summer and nowhere in the winter,” stated in 1916, that those imprisoned just simply could not explain their heritage due to poor English. It wasn’t a case of disloyalty either. Otter also said, “The tendency of municipalities to unload their indigents caused the confinement of not a few.” Staff for these camps was chosen from Home Guard regiments, some of whom knew the internees as their former neighbours. There is no record of a single guard questioning why prisoners of war — as those caught in the actions of war against the allies — were interned with their women and children. On June 2, 1915, the Mara Lake work camp was opened. About 80 internees from Vernon were chosen to build the camp including their own quarters and to begin work on the Mara Lake Road. The workforce was to replace those who were off fighting in Europe, but it became a forced labour camp, contracted out to private companies. The camp was open for two years and left an adequate road to Sicamous. The Monashee camp ran at the same time, building the road
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okanaganlife.com november-December 2010
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