Old Fort Point is a popular tourist attraction in the summer months for visitors, and a great spot to walk the dog year-round for locals. 

But the beautiful bend in the Athabasca River has a unique history that has gone through an array of strange changes over the past 100 years. It started out as an internment camp in February of 1916, then became a TB isolation hospital in the 1920s. After that it housed more workers during the Second World War in the 1940s, and finally, the area became the Jasper Free Camp in the 1970s. 

The history of the internment camp began on March 12, 1915 when Major General Sir William Otter, director of internment operations for the Government of Canada, met with J.B. Harkin, the first parks commissioner named in 1911. The two men had two specific needs – Otter needed a place to send a group of enemy aliens, and Harkin needed men to complete a growing number of physical jobs in Canada’s western national parks. 

When Canada went to war in August 1914, there were over half a million people with links to the enemy countries of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria. The majority were destitute Ukrainians from Galicia and Bukoryna in the Austro-Hungarian empire. The men had been brought to Canada before the war in large numbers to serve as temporary industrial workers. The men were needed for construction of the trans-continental railroad. They were willing to work cheaply in isolated regions for a short period of time, and then return to their countries. They were single, unattached and would not be bringing families with them.

When the recession hit in 1912, the workers travelled west in search of jobs. They lived a miserable existence in “filthy urban ghettos,” according to Bill Waiser’s Park Prisoners: The Untold Story of Canada’s National Parks, 1915-1946. The public feared the men would assimilate and tarnish the country’s British character. When the war hit, the men were fired from whatever jobs they held, and became alien enemies. 

The public began pressuring Prime Minister Robert Borden to address the situation, and although his government officially refused to act, they were forced to do so by growing public demand. The result was the establishment of a registry for enemy aliens. Those who failed to report, were considered a security threat or attempted to leave Canada illegally, were interned. The new law, evoked under the newly-established War Measures Act, saw 8,000 people interned in two dozen stations across Canada. 

“Their crime was who they were, not necessarily what they did,” wrote Waiser.

Then commissioner of the Royal NW Mounted Police, A.B. Perry, commented that the workers were no threat to the public in February, 1915. The British Foreign Office also reported that the Ukrainian labourers were no danger.

Regardless, the enemy aliens were seen as a threat to the public order, and a potential source of civil unrest. They were mainly unskilled, foreign workers that were jobless and homeless. 

Borden’s concern was less that they could be linked to their enemy countries, and more that so many of them had congregated in urban centres. 

The Canadian public was unhappy to see the enemy aliens simply imprisoned, and demanded they be working and contributing to Canada. This led to Otter meeting with Harkin. 

Harkin believed that the new national parks could soothe Canadians after the war, and the new automobile was the key to bringing in tourists. 

The first internment camp was established below Castle Mountain in Banff National Park in July of 1915. The men were tasked with constructing what is now the Bow Valley Parkway, and pushing a road into the Lake Louise glacier. Internees frequently escaped from the camp.

Jasper’s internment camp opened in Feb. 1916. It was commanded by Major A.E. Hopkins, who reported to Brig. General E.A. Cruikshank, Commanding Officer Military District No. 13, Calgary. 

In a report written by Hopkins to Cruikshank dated Feb. 14, 1916, Hopkins said there were 200 men in the camp, all of Austrian-Hungarian nationality. They had all arrived from the Brandon, Man. intern station. 

In another report dated the week ending Feb. 26, Hopkins detailed the men’s work in the camp. Jobs included digging the water main in Jasper, hauling water and chopping firewood within the camp, sawing wood, clearing around the camp, digging a large ditch in Jasper, building a fence and a gate to the camp, cutting fence posts, working on a pipe line in Jasper and constructing the Athabasca River bridge. They were also tasked with removing ice that gathered around the piers in the frigid winter air. 

The Edmonton Journal wrote a story about the Jasper camp on Feb. 19. 1916. The article stated that the “village” had sprung up about a mile from Jasper. There were 200 internees and 65 officers and men of the garrison, and the camp was running smoothly in its first week. 

“The institution is now running with a smoothness suggestive of a much longer operation,” the article wrote. 

The camp was described as a 14-building operation made out of wood, “in such a manner as to ensure comfort in any weather,” the Edmonton Journal reported. The camp was surrounded by a 16-foot high barbed wire fence.

The article went on to detail some of the future jobs the men would undertake such as putting in a water works system in Jasper, building telephone lines and roads, “and last but not least, construct an admirable golf course for the use of residents and tourists.”

Hopkins wrote to Cruikshank to say that the Edmonton Journal story was a complete surprise, as he had ordered that no photos of the camp be taken. 

“I have given strict orders and published it in my daily orders that, under no circumstances, is any one to take photographs on this camp or of the prisoners without special, written permission from myself,” Hopkins wrote. 

On the same day the Edmonton Journal story hit the press, Hopkins wrote to Cruikshank reporting that he had sent three guards who had returned from the war back to Edmonton because they were unfit for the work being done. 

“I find the duties for the men here rather hard, and the men will naturally have to be of fairly good physique,” Hopkins wrote. 

He also discussed his worry that the location of the flourishing camp could be prone to flooding.

“There is no doubt that this site will be a very good place if we don’t have any floods,” Hopkins said. 

Hopkins also reported that he had ordered better footwear for the men, who were wearing out the boots they had been provided with. 

See next week’s Fitzhugh for part two of this story.