A Professor at St. Thomas More College feels today’s official dedication of the Eaton Internment Camp Memorial represents reconciliation with a dark part of Canada’s history and brings it close to home.

Dr. Bohdan Kordan  says the ceremony honours the memories of the 80 people imprisoned in the Saskatoon area camp in 1919.

Kordan  says the new immigrants who were struggling to start new lives didn’t understand why they were taken from their homes to work on the railway outside the city.

They were considered prisoners of war simply because of their countries of origin. The immigrants came from overseas countries that Canada considered its enemy during the war, like Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria.  Approximately 8,500 immigrants were placed in camps across the country including 5,000 ethnic Ukrainians.

The dedication at the Saskatchewan Railway Museum which is on the camp site, takes place at 11 o’clock this (Fri) morning.