In the Shadow of the Rockies: Diary of the Castle Mountain Internment Camp, 1915-1917

Louis A. Knafla is a history professor at the University of Calgary.

Historical landmarks in Banff National Park (such as the Bankhead Mine,
the Tunnel Mountain Road and the Trans-Canada Highway, the Spray River
Bridge, the Banff Springs golf course, the Cave and Basin Hotsprings,
and the Castle Mountain Chalets) have one common factor: they were
constructed, rebuilt, or extended by some 660 civilian immigrants from
the Austro-Hungarian Empire, who were interned at Banff/Castle Mountain
from 1915 to 1917. The War Measures Act and Orders-in-Council prescribed
that previous subjects of the then enemy states were liable to arrest
and imprisonment at the discretion of the Canadian government and at the
bequest of Britain. With the imprisonment of some 8579 individuals, the
internment camp at Banff/Castle Mountain was one of 24 that stretched
across the country. What made this camp unique is the existence of a
journal kept by several officers (now in the Glenbow Museum) and the
services the internees provided.

The editors (both of whom are experts on Ukrainian settlements in
Canada) have produced a very handsome transcription of that journal.
Their introduction places the camp within the larger context of Canadian
internment operations, and explores the interplay of ethnic and
socioeconomic discrimination, the suspension of civil liberties, and the
personal abuse of the royal prerogative. It also reveals how the
internment operation was used as a tool of the national parks policy.

The editors have provided a rich array of extensive explanatory
footnotes to the journal, but there is no attempt to resolve the riddle
of authorship. There is an appendix of the prisoners numbers and names,
but no index. The book is copiously illustrated, but some of the
illustrations are not very clear. Nonetheless, In the Shadow of the
Rockies is a successful, well-executed work. It provides fresh and
substantive insights into a not-very-pleasing subject, and makes an
effective link between past and present.