Memorial garden to offer education on internment camp

A year of remembrance began on Friday with an official dedication of the Eaton Internment Camp Memorial Garden, including a reflection area and plaque.

In 1919, 65 people were relocated from a camp in Alberta to a railway siding at Eaton, Sask., where the Eaton Internment Camp was built. The original site is now on the grounds of the Saskatchewan Railway Museum, where the CN tracks intersect with the Pike Lake Highway west of Saskatoon.

“Approximately 100 years ago, people were brought to this site and detained. These individuals were called enemy aliens. They were arrested and taken to various camps across Canada. (And) for multiple reasons a lot of it had nothing to do with security but had economic reasons behind it,” said Bohdan Kordan, director of the Prairie Centre for the Study of Ukrainian Heritage at the University of Saskatchewan.

Eventually, the site will be a place for education about what happened at the camp, he said.

“We’re hoping ultimately to have in the Saskatchewan Railway Museum, who is also a partner in this project, a permanent display and interactive museum program that allows students to come from Saskatoon and visit this place of internment.”

The Prairie Centre for the Study of Ukrainian Heritage partnered with the Ukrainian Canadian Congress of Saskatchewan, the Saskatchewan German Council and the Saskatchewan Railway Museum to take on the official dedication, which included a shrubbery planting of kalyna, or high bush cranberry, and an elder tree.

The kalyna has special significance to the Ukrainian culture. It acted as a symbol of resistance to foreign domination and political oppression. The elder tree was present in ancient German folklore as the home of the ‘Elder Mother’, a forest spirit.

“This commemoration of this site, the memorial gardens and the monument that’s here is really trying to reclaim that historical memory of what happened and use that as a guide for the future, how we treat people. We need to be mindful of their rights and civil liberties, and use that as a measure of our own behaviour,” Kordan said.