Calgary & Southern Alberta

Italian Internees' Orchestra at Camp Petawawa
Courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada

Mobilisation increased the demand for labour in southern Alberta, easing inter-ethnic tensions accentuated by job competition during the Depression. The nationalistic pride and solidarity that the war fostered also helped diminish some ethnic-related animosities. Since it blurred political and class divisions, the war effort helped distance some Central and Eastern European groups from radical left-wing political and "lower class" labels that stigmatised them during the 1930s. Direct military contributions to the war effort won Chinese, Polish, and Ukrainian Albertans a level of mainstream social acceptance that had previously eluded them. Their war service record won Native Canadians the general support of veterans in their long-standing demand for the right to vote federally, which was eventually granted in 1960. The war also brought together John Laurie, a Calgary school teacher; John Callihoo, an Iroquois/Cree leader; and Malcolm Norris, a Métis soldier stationed in Calgary during the war. These three men challenged the arbitrary power of the federal government's Indian Affairs Branch through their joint activities within the Indian Association of Alberta.

Internment camps were not new to Canada. Austro-Hungarian Internees during WWI
Courtesy of the Glenbow Collection

At the same time, the emotional climate of the war exacerbated feelings of animosity towards other ethnic minorities. The Social Credit party provided a political platform for a vocal group of anti-Semitic nativists inspired by Major C. H. Douglas. This extremist element was not purged from the party until 1947.

German Albertans faced hostility, but not to the same extent as they had during the previous war, and mainstream enmity towards the German-speaking Mennonites and Hutterites increased. According to historian Howard Palmer, it was primarily the isolation of their communities and their pacifism that triggered the animosity. Mennonites were forced to close their German-language schools and libraries. In 1940, vandals burned two Vauxhall Mennonite churches. The region's Hutterite colonies also received threats of violence, allegedly because their status as conscientious objectors gave them unfair advantage in the land market. Alberta's 1942 Communal Property Act, not repealed until 1972, banned land sales to Hutterite colonies.

Japanese-Canadians working in sugar beet fields
Courtesy of the Glenbow Collection

The 2,600 Japanese and Japanese-Canadian evacuees from the British Columbia coast who were sent to work in southern Alberta's sugar beet fields in 1942 initially generated fear and indignation from people in nearby towns and cities. Local councils prohibited the new arrivals from living within city limits and restricted their travel. At the war's end, however, sugar beet farmers, who needed the evacuees' labour, together with various church groups successfully opposed both the Manning government's demand that the Japanese-Canadian interns be removed from the province, and the federal government's programme to deport the evacuees to Japan.