Those held at the Banff camps were forced to build roads and bridges and the Banff Springs golf course a number of men later worked in Canmore coalmines, as well.Ĭalgary novelist Pam Clark, whose great-grandparents were Ukrainian immigrants, reaches deep into this history – and the history of Ukrainian settlement of Western Canada – in her debut novel Kalyna, published by Edmonton-based Stonehouse Publishing. This was done under the War Measures Act as a means to control people whom the government thought might be inclined to assist the enemies of Great Britain and of Canada, namely Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.Īnd, despite being invited to come to Canada to settle the West, an offer sweetened by the promise of free land, Canada’s Ukrainian community suffered the most under this policy, with some 5,000 individuals forced into 24 camps, including two in Banff National Park – one at Castle Mountain and the other at the Cave and Basin. During the First World War the Canadian government rounded up people it perceived as enemy aliens and shipped them off to remote internment camps located across the country.
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