The memorial plaque is located in Dogwood Park along the Elk River in the town of Fernie, British Columbia. The plaque reads as follows:
Fernie-Morrissey Internment Camps
During Canada's first national internment operations of 1914-1920, thousands of Ukrainians and other Europeans were imprisoned as "enemy aliens" in 24 internment camps. Deprived of their freedoms, their wealth confiscated, they were forced to do heavy labour and suffered various other state-sanctioned censures, including disenfranchisement. This plaque recalls those held at the Fernie—Morrissey camps, 9 June 1915 to 21 October 1918.
Initially a makeshift internement camp located at the Fernie Arena, the operation was soon moved to nearby Morrisey:
"There had been no plans to establish a camp in Fernie. In early June 1915, however, Fernie saw miners turn against their colleagues of non-British origin and demand that single miners and married miners with families still back in Eastern Europe be interned. The miners’ threat of a major uprising and further closure of the mine forced civic, provincial and federal governments to react quickly. By June 9, a makeshift detention camp was created at the Fernie arena by the local government and supported by the Premier of BC.
The population of the camp grew quickly and the need for a larger and more secure camp forced the move to Morrissey. The economic downturn had left most of the town’s buildings, which were owned by the Crow’s Nest Pass Coal Company, empty and able to be repurposed. Prisoners were housed in the Windsor and Alexandria Hotels. By October 1915, Morrissey became an established internment camp able to house from 250 to 300 prisoners."
Source: tourismfernie.com/history/fernie-at-war accessed 9-Nov-2021 (
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More information on Morrissey, from Wikipedia:
"Morrissey is a ghost town located in the East Kootenay region of British Columbia, Canada. The town is situated south of Fernie. It was company town owned by a mining company, but the mine closed in 1909. An Internment camp was set up at rented premises in Morrissey from June 1915 to October 1918." Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrissey,_British_Columbia, accessed 9-Nov-2021; (
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The following excepts provide more insight into this particular internment camp, from "Remembering the Forgotten: Archaeology at the Morrissey WWI Internment Camp" by Sarah Beaulieu (reference provided below)
"Located in the Elk Valley, the Morrissey Internment Camp was in operation from September 28, 1915 to October 21, 1918 and is one of 24 internment camps that housed a total of 8,579 German and Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war (PoWs) on Canadian soil during WWI (Kordan 2002; Laycock 1994; Luciuk 2006; Norton 1998)."
"The Canadian government initially called Morrissey a concentration camp; however, following the aftermath of the WWII German concentration camps, Canada designated such locations “internment camps” to avoid the association with the German death camps."
"The Morrissey internment camp took over an abandoned coal-mining town, which included all of its buildings. The initial Austro-Hungarians were housed in what was known as the Alexandria and Morrissey hotels as it had been initially built as a hotel for local workers. Today’s equivalence would have been a hostel. There were in fact up to one hundred and fifty prisoners confined in the Morrissey Hotel with three to four men sharing a ten by eleven foot room."
"On January of 1917, the most notorious of escapes was prevented when guards discovered a forty-five-foot tunnel under the “Big Building” (nicknamed by the Austro-Hungarian second-class PoWs)just days before the getaway. Had the tunnel not been discovered, the majority of the PoWs would have escaped “under the wire”
"Reports note that upon the camp’s closure, it was immediately dismantled, leaving behind very little evidence of the structural foundations of the camp and the stories of those who had lived there for the past three years. Very few of the guards and prisoners spoke about the interment once the war was over (Norton and Miller 1998; Robertson 2005). There was an unspoken understanding that each side had done terrible things either on the battlefront or on the home front. There was such a strong fear of being re-arrested that many avoided joining groups that would provide the government further information about themselves."
Reference:
Remembering the Forgotten
Archaeology at the Morrissey WWI Internment Camp
Sarah Beaulieu
MA Archaeology Candidate
Simon Fraser University
December 8, 2014
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