An Internment Camp in Vernon, BC was established to hold enemy aliens and POWs during the First World War. Once Canada entered World War I, fears of enemy aliens on the home front began to arise. To combat this, the Canadian Government implemented The War Measures Act which gave them the authority to intern and disenfranchise enemy alines living in Canada. Approximately 8,500 enemy aliens were interned across Canada, with majority of the 24 camps located around the Rocky Mountains and large population centres in Ontario. Vernon housed the permanent camp in British Columbia, operating from September 18th, 1914 to February 20th, 1920.
History
Immigration and culture
Before the onset of the First World War, the German Canadian population consisted of German-speakers from various parts of Europe other than the German Empire, the United States, and Eastern Canada. Consequently, the German Canadian population in Western Canada could hardly be denominated in a cohesive cultural or national identity. German-speaking immigrants were heterogeneous in origins, cultural practices, religions, social classes, and professions; their only similarity is their language and desire to prosper in British Columbia.
The first wave of German immigrants started in 1858 during the height of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. This flow of people continued through the periods of the Cariboo Gold Rush and other British Columbia Gold rushes throughout the 19th century. By 1911, 4.5% of British Columbia’s population were people of German or Austro-Hungarian ancestry. Approximately 11,880 people of German ancestry were British subjects by birth or naturalization; only 25.7% had been born in continental Europe.
Since the first wave of immigration, the majority of German Canadians were more or less naturalized with the settler population in British Columbia. Many German settlers encountered few difficulties in adapting to their social and economic life in British Columbia, with many married into Canadian families. Many middle-class immigrants from southwest Germany arrived in the newly settled Vancouver, establishing various services and retail businesses. Some German immigrants from the United States, adapted their language and cultural norms, found some difficulties integrating with their Canadian communities.
Trade and money
The German language was used as a tool language for economic and political influence. Attracted by high wages, German immigrants in British Columbia consisted of two main groups: a large group of skilled workers and small merchants and a smaller group of well-educated upper-middle class entrepreneurs. Unlike their less-educated and less-skilled Austrian-Hungarian counterparts, German immigrants were generally well-received by British Columbians. Even though Canadians still perceived naturalized German citizens as ‘foreigners,’ German immigrants were viewed in a more positive light. Concurrent with the prevalent racial theory and pseudo-Darwinian view of nations during the 19th century, Canadian immigration agents believed that Germans would easily assimilate into Canada’s “Anglo-Saxon Civilization” due to their cultural kinship with the British. Germans were admired for their scientific, industrial, and artistic traits; they were also seen as industrious, rational, and orderly.
Religion
German Lutheran Missionaries have been a historical part of the culture and values that shaped British Columbian society. German speaking immigrants gathered around 'auslandsdeutsche' - German congregations abroad. Local Lutheran leaders did not ask for help from their churches back in Germany and they autonomously raise their own money, train their own pastors and set up their own institutions. Compared to Germans that migrated to South American regions such as Rio de la Plata and Argentina, North American immigrants were given more freedom and laissez-faire. This is because there was no perceived threat of conversion to catholicism. Yet, North America was not the least threatening to the conservation of German culture and language. However local German-Canadians did not show eager interest in keeping ties to the Empire and to Weimar Germany. This autonomous and protestant influence is apparent in the nature of English Canada. Nonetheless, it is to be noted that German and Lutheran are not unitary categories and that these groups overlap but can differ.
In terms of numbers, between 1880 and 1930, 5 million German speaking peoples entered Canada. A majority of them were Lutheran but exact records that correlated language and religion were not kept.