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Sunday, October 13, 2024
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The events that happened in June, 1940, changed forever
the life of the entire Italian community in Canada. On the night
of June 10, 1940, at 10:00 pm the Prime Minister of Canada, the
Right Honourable W. L. Mackenzie King, announced:
The minister of Justice has authorized the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to
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Italians during
the Internment WWII
oil painting of camp Petawawa.
Courtesy of the Windsor Star |
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steps to
intern all residents of Italian origin, whose activities have given
ground for the belief or reasonable |
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suspicion that they
might, in time of war, endanger the safety of the state, or engage in
activities prejudicial to the prosecution of the war.
The plans had been in official documents ever since the previous
September(1939), when one of the most influential civil servants
of the era, Norman Robertson,
had sent a memorandum marked “secret” to the head of the RCMP’s
intelligence section…. It included a list of several hundred names of Italian
Canadians suspected of being threats to the country and therefore eligible for
arrest and detention should war break out with Italy… Robertson said in
his report to the minister of justice that while some Italian Canadians were
zealous members of the Italian Fascist Party, and had taken its oath of allegiance,
most were not. (Kenneth Bagnell, Canadese: A Portrait of the
Italian Canadians, 1989, pg.73). |
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Almost overnight, a hard working, largely invisible
segment of the Canadian population suddenly found itself the target
of racial prejudice from neighbours and of close surveillance by
governments. In Toronto and Windsor, enemy aliens, even those not
interned, were fired from work. Windsor city council suspended ‘enemy
aliens’ employed by the city and the dominion Department
of Transport fired all ‘enemy aliens’ working on the
construction of Windsor airport. Italian Canadians who ran small
businesses became easy targets of physical violence and economic
intimidation. |
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( Franca Iacovetta and Robert Ventresca,
Redress, Collective memory, and the Politics of History, pg.391.
Enemies Within, 2000) |
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In
Ontario, from Sudbury and North Bay to Hamilton and Windsor, citizens
volunteered to assist the police, acting as drivers for cars that
took the men to the police stations. Here and there few rocks were
thrown and windows smashed, but for the most part, small crowds
gathered and contented themselves with shouts of: "Give it
to him” or “Take him away for good”. (Kenneth
Bagnell, Canadese: A portrait of the Italian Canadians, 1989, pg.81).
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The camp’s official designation was Internment
Camp No. 33. It was opened on September 23, 1939 at the Forest Experimental
Station located at Centre Lake with a capacity
of 800 internees. There were 28 different nationalities. The
majority were German and Italian. Over 600 men were interned in the
Prisoner of War Camp in Petawawa, Ontario. It took more
than three months |
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| Courtesy of the Windsor
Star |
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for families to learn about these men. There were twelve
large barracks in the |
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with 60 or more people each,
surrounded by two high barbed–wire fences. The internees were
men between the ages of 16 and 70. They were lawyers, doctors, candy-makers,
carpenters, bakers, pressers, wine makers, priests, contractors, postmen,
shoe shiners, bricklayers. The camp on the Petawawa River was founded
in 1904 as a training ground for the artillery. During the First World
War, the camp was a training ground for more than 10,000 soldiers and
an internment camp for more than 1,000 German and Austrian prisoners
of war.The camp was reopened in1940. The internees wore jackets with a
large red circle on the back for the guards in the tower to shoot if
any one tried to escape. The men were lonely and worried; they were guilty
of no crime. Some of them would stay for a few months; the others would
remain for years. Letters from home were censored, no family visits were
allowed. The loss
of freedom, the confusion attending their arrest, the uncertainty regarding
the length
of their confinement and the sudden removal from their families and place
of business, created a sense of bitterness and frustration among them.(Enrico
Cumbo, Sports and Inter-Ethnic Relations at Camp Petawawa. Polyphony,
Vol.7 No.1 Pg.31, 1985). |
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Kenneth Bagnell would call this chapter of the history
of the Italian community Days of Darkness, Days of Despair: In
every part of Canada, the Italian community knew the internment
as a historic
tragedy; it would not recover for two decades. Italians had been
on the verge of finding a sense of pride and a feeling of place
in Canada… Even worse, it was rife with confusion, discouragement
and even resentment, as young Italians, feeling fresh stigmas because
of the labels placed upon their elders, began to shy away from
any assertion of their culture. A minority within a minority would
never
fully forget. (Kenneth Bagnell,
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Canadese: A portrait of the Italian
Canadians, 1989, pg.96). |
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| Another phenomenon called “Italians
betraying Italians” out of greed, rivalry, or jealousy probably
resulted in the internment of the innocent Italians. This aspect of
internment remains a source of bitterness for those affected; the healing
must come also from within the community, not only from
outside. ( Franca Iacovetta and Robert Ventresca, Redress,
Collective Memory, and the Politics of History,pg.402. Enemies Within,
2000) |
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The
opinions and interpretations in this publication are those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of the Government of Canada. |
Copyright © 2005
Windsor Mosaic Website. All rights reserved. |
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