guest curated by Galt Museum & Archives intern Benjamin Weistra
During the First World War, Canada interned 8,579 people identified as “enemy aliens,” across a network of 24 camps. This special feature, Escape!, focuses on the Lethbridge internment camp.
Lethbridge Daily Herald, August 17, 1914.
The Lethbridge Internment Camp
In the first month of the First World War, Canadian military officials began planning for an internment camp at the Exhibition Grounds in Lethbridge. The camp was designed to house so-called ‘enemy aliens’—citizens of states at war with the British Empire who were living in Canada at the time.
Renovations were completed to convert the horse stables and poultry building into living quarters, and to add a barbed wire fence. The facility was opened on September 30, 1914. In mid-1915 it became a first-class camp designated for non-working prisoners who were primarily German or German-speaking Austrians.
Lethbridge was one of 24 camps in Canada, which together housed 8,579 prisoners. Of the four camps located in Alberta, Lethbridge remained open the longest at 769 days. It closed on November 7, 1916 due to an increased number of escapes relating to its close proximity to the neutral American border, and as part of a broader move to consolidate the number of camps.
Camp Conditions
The Lethbridge Internment Camp had a reputation for providing fair conditions for its prisoners. Sources note that the camp had luxuries such as proper sanitation, baths with hot and cold water, waste receptacles, and wash houses.
Prisoners also had a degree of freedom. Letters from the camp note instances where they were able to enter town under supervision and go to bars or movie theaters. Within the camp, they could participate in football (soccer), quoits, gymnastics, skating and lawn tennis. These activities were reported in the Calgary Daily Herald and the Lethbridge Daily Herald, which were highly critical given the wartime restrictions other citizens faced.
However, there were also cases of poor treatment at the Lethbridge Internment Camp. In a 1915 Chicago Tribune article, a man named Caserai, who claimed to be an Austrian prisoner interned in Lethbridge, alleged that guards had used torture in the camp. Officials dismissed the claims as “ridiculous.”
There is also mixed evidence about prisoners working. On July 15, 1916 American consul Harold Clum reported that prisoners in the Lethbridge camp “do not work,” but just two days earlier the Lethbridge Daily Herald had reported the escape of a prisoner named A. Ellisky from a road gang near Raymond—suggesting that at least some prisoners were required to do manual labour.
Lethbridge Daily Herald, November 4, 1916.
Lethbridge Exhibition grounds showing poultry building at far left, ca. 1920–1930.
Galt Museum & Archives, 19991012038.
Photograph of William Perchaluk’s grave marker in Calgary’s Union Cemetery.
Courtesy of Union Cemetery.
A Prisoner’s Story
William Perchaluk was one of 8,579 individuals interned in Canada as ‘enemy aliens’ during the First World War. He was born in about 1890 in Dereniowka, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and likely immigrated to Canada between 1911 and 1914.
On May 26, 1915, the Lethbridge Daily Herald reported that William had turned himself in to local police, asking to be interned in the local camp in order to receive soft work. He was among the first 191 prisoners transferred to the Castle Mountain Internment Camp, where he remained until June 26, 1916. During that time William was assigned contract work with the Canmore Coal Company—despite having a breathing ailment that made working in coal mines difficult.
While on leave in Calgary, William enlisted with the military in order to escape the coal mines. Two days before William was to leave for France, a former guard at the Castle Mountain Internment Camp recognized and arrested him for being an escaped prisoner. In full military uniform, and faced with a return to the internment camp or mines, William died by suicide in his jail cell on December 5, 1916. He was buried in Calgary.
Lethbridge Daily Herald, June 19, 1916.
Escape!
During the two years of the Lethbridge Internment Camp’s operation, there were seven reported escapes involving 16 prisoners. The largest and most ingenious escape occurred on the night of April 26, 1916, when six German prisoners escaped through a 34-metre tunnel they built. The six men, identified as (Theodore) Ohlsen, Utterman, Spahr, M Schulse, Watz, and Klots, were never seen again.
To create the tunnel, the prisoners used tools fashioned from scrap materials at the camp such as tin cans, string and scrap wood. They built digging tools, an auger, a wooden mallet, truncheons, a fake handgun, a tamper and a tunnel ventilating fan. All of these tools were built in secret except the tunnel fan, which one prisoner, a former coal miner, convinced the guards was just a hobby to pass the winter months.
As the tunnel progressed, the prisoners transported earth out of the tunnel with a sled, disposing of it over the dirt foundation of the poultry building. Once the tunnel was complete the six prisoners coordinated their escape. Their disappearance was not discovered until morning, by which time they had made their way to freedom.
Shovel
Handmade shovel used by prisoners to create escape tunnel from detention camp in Lethbridge.
Collection of Glenbow, Calgary, Alberta, C-12346.
Fan
Handmade fan built by prisoners to circulate air through escape tunnel.
Collection of Glenbow, Calgary, Alberta, C-12338.
Pistol
Handmade model of a pistol built by prisoners to facilitate escape from detention camp.
Collection of Glenbow, Calgary, Alberta, C-12339.
Club
Used by prisoners as tool to facilitate escape from detention camp in Lethbridge.
Collection of Glenbow, Calgary, Alberta, C-12340.
Daring prisoner escapes — Hollywood's bread and butter for psychological thrillers — happened in Southern Alberta too. Many mirrored or even surpassed the classics of the genre.