"Dangerous Enemy Sympathizers"

Auteur

Andrew Theobald holds degrees in history from Mount Allison University, the University of New Brunswick, and Queen's University. He is the author of The Bitter Harvest of War: New Brunswick and the Conscription Crisis of 1917, "Dangerous Enemy Sympathizers", and numerous scholarly articles.

Texte du rabat

Hidden away in the woods of central New Brunswick lie the remains of Camp B, one of several internment camps that were administered by the Canadian government during the Second World War. A dark chapter in Canada's history, sites like Camp B housed hundreds of individuals deemed to be "dangerous enemy sympathizers," many imprisoned with little or no justification.

In the first year of its operation, Camp B incarcerated German and Austrian Jewish refugees dispatched from Britain. Fearful that the refugees were agents of the Nazis they'd fled, the British government sent thousands of men to Canada to be interned. After most of the refugees were released in 1941, Camp B held Canadians who were suspected of opposing the war effort -- including homegrown fascists and men of German and Italian descent -- as well as captured enemy merchant mariners.

In this illuminating account, Andrew Theobald examines the conditions of the camp and the lives of those imprisoned. He also scrutinizes the troubling circumstances that led to the internment of both refugees and Canadian nationals, the debates over the ethics of internment inside and outside the camp, and the role of the camps in shaping government policy towards immigration and the post-war powers of the Canadian state.

"Dangerous Enemy Sympathizers" is volume 26 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.