The Spirit Lake Internment Camp Cemetery Project

Nikki Simon

June 7th 2025

If you are a Canadian, you are probably very aware that, during World War II, Japanese Canadians were detained in various internment camps across Canada alongside other "enemy aliens" and prisoners of war. Less known is that the same occurred during World War I. Throughout the war, a total of 24 internment camps operated across Canada, with many of those detained in the camps, mostly Germans, Austro-Hungarians and Ottomans, made to participate in hard labour public works projects that helped to further develop Canada.

One of those camps, Spirit Lake, was located in western Quebec. Spirit Lake Internment Camp was in operation for just over two years from January 1915 until January 1917. At the beginning of that time, the camp held over 1,100 prisoners, no Germans and primarily Austro-Hungarians, including women and children who were voluntarily interned. The Spirit Lake and Vernon internment camps were the only two camps where this occurred. The primary task of those interred in Spirit Lake was to clear and develop the land to make way for an experimental farm, which would be used after the war.

A photo of some of the prisoners of Spirit Lake Internment Camp clearing the land of trees. (Library and Archives Canada)

The land on which the Spirit Lake Internment Camp was established was forested and rocky. In addition to the strenuous task of clearing the land of these obstacles, the prisoners had to contend with building the camp itself and the extremely cold winters that characterize Canada. At one point, newspapers of the time reported temperatures in the winter as low as 41 below zero with three feet of snow on the ground.

As we often see in these types of adverse living conditions - large numbers of people living closely in highly variable and extreme weather conditions, undertaking manual labour day after day - illness is sure to follow, and Spirit Lake is no exception. By the time the camp closed and disbanded, 22 individuals had died, and many of those deceased were placed in their own cemetery 1.2km from the camp. The cemetery was consecrated in 1915 by a Ruthenian bishop, and two children were among the very first interred there.

A contemporary photo of the Spirit Lake Internment Camp Cemetery (Facebook-Camp d'interprétation du Camp Spirit Lake)

After the camp closed in 1917, the Department of Agriculture owned the land. It is my current understanding that, during this period, the cemetery was largely maintained by a group of local nuns. In 1936, the land was sold by the Department of Agriculture to the Quebec government, and later sold again to a farmer in 1988. Over the last couple of decades, the cemetery has fallen into a state of disrepair, and access has been limited due to its location in the center of the farmer's land. This has caused an increasingly tense situation between those of Ukrainian descent, who wish to introduce interpretive signage, hold annual visitation and minister for their dead, and the farmer who worries for the impact that large numbers of individuals will have on this farm and, by extension, his family's livelihood.

With all that said, I have had the privilege of being part of a team sent to the Spirit Lake Cemetery site, at the behest of the Taras Shevchenko Foundation and with the cooperation of the landowner. For the past week, and with just under another week to go, our team has been employing various methods to explore the location of specific burials and to ground truth those potential locations. The purpose of this project is to provide clarity regarding the actual number of interments that took place in the cemetery, which is speculated to be 19 individuals, the number of those individuals that remain interred here, and the condition of the remains. This information will help all of those associated with the site to determine the best next steps in the life history of the Spirit Lake cemetery.

This fall, I will be entering my PhD program in Anthropology at the University of Victoria, and, beyond these two weeks, this site will be the focus of my research and life for the next four years. Through this blog, I will document our daily work, the methodologies we are using, and the context they provide, as well as all the new and interesting things we uncover. I hope you'll join me here on my journey to uncover the life of the Spirit Lake Internment Camp Cemetery and all those souls interred there!