Castle Camp

On the night of July 14, 1915, sixty prisoners were taken from a Canadian Pacific train just west of here and escorted to a barbed wire compound at the end of the unfinished Banff–Laggan, now Lake Louise, road, beginning the first internment camp operation in Canada's national parks. Camp life was hard, with prisoners clearing and grubbing roadbeds with axes, picks, and wheelbarrows under sometimes brutal treatment from guards. Although the daily routine called for eight hours of labour, marches to and from the work site could turn this into a thirteen-hour day, and escape attempts were frequent. Rest came on Sundays or when extreme cold, rain, or snow made work too difficult or prisoner security too risky. The demands of the war effort and the remoteness of the site often interrupted supplies, making life more desperate for all. Between 1915 and 1917, more than six hundred men worked to build roads and bridges in the national park, including about ten kilometres of the road here, and they also constructed part of the original Banff Springs golf course. Beginning in 1916, economic recovery and the war's demand for men created a labour shortage, and many prisoners were paroled to fill it, with some returning to the same jobs they had held before the 1913 depression and the war. On July 15, 1917, the remaining prisoners were moved to the internment camp in Kapuskasing, Ontario. In Canada, this remained a little known story of indignities and hardships imposed on new immigrants; for many internees it remained an untold part of their past, as some never recovered, others returned to their homeland, and most overcame the experience to build a new life in Canada.

Alberta · Canada