I've been carrying the Repka book about the internment of Canadian leftists during WWII upstairs and down with the computer for a week or so. Physically it's not very prepossessing. Dun cloth covers and sadly yellowing paper: published by a small BC Press nearly a quarter of a century ago. I've been trying to figure out what to say about it. It's both fascinating and annoying.
Annoying first: since it's basically an oral history, it's missing some of the apparatus you'd find in more formal studies: indications of how the accounts were collected and how much editing was involved; framing text placing the people and events in the social and political context of the time; or a consideration of the strengths and gaps in the accounts.
It's not so much that I want to know if the memories were one-hundred percent accurate. No memory is. But I wanted a greater sense of their experiences--something a bit bigger in scope. There's not much to be found online and it's hard to imagine myself immersed in military history. But you never know where curiousity leads.
The barbwire-surrounded cabins of Kananaskis where they stuck one Canadian anti-fascist in with eleven fascists are long gone but this is what the camp looked like at war's end.
(source)
Camp 33 at Petawawa housed German PoWs, Italian-Canadians, Japanese-Canadians and Leftist-Canadians. It has a long history as an internment location.
(source)
The Camp 32 (the source for this bit of philately) was in the Hull Jail which probably was pulled down when the Ottawa River's edge shifted from industrial to bureacratic.
The men in these camps wore uniforms made by these war workers.
If you're still interested in internment stuff check out Enemies Within edited by Franca Iacovetta and Roberto Perin, UTP.
Posted by: Michelle | 11 June 2007 at 03:17 PM