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During World War Two there were 40 Prisoner of War camps located in Ontario, Alberta, Quebec, and New Brunswick. More details can be read in this PDF. The Canadian National Film Board even produced an interesting 52-minute documentary on the subject.

Captured Allied soldiers had much less positive experiences at the hands of their German captors.

Your insightful reader tips are welcome, as always, in the comments.


45 Comments

I apologize to EBD for what have turned out to be my incorrect comments of last month:

http://cdn.pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/emptychair.jpg

I told him weeks ago that by imbuing the chair with human attributes that we risked provoking a sympathy vote for the chair, which could hurt Mitt.

With this stuff, it now appears that any self-respecting empty chair has got to be taking umbrage with being in any way associated with Obama -- next thing you know, it'll have internet ads endorsing Mitt.

So, my corrected view is that Ross Perot and the empty chair will join together on stage shortly to introduce Mitt Romney at some function or other...

Of all of those camps, only one German ever escaped. Maybe federal corrections could learn something.

Interesting. I lived near where the submarine commander was interned. I also worked with his nephew in Germany at a shipyard. How is that for six degrees of freedom?

It appears that the government learned something from the location of those camps. Prisons are or were still operating in Kingston, Bowmanville, Gravenhurst and Mimico. I believe the only one that has since closed is Bowmanville.

I live near gravenhurst and there are currently 3 walk aways who are missing. The Kingston pen was pre confederation. The one camp that should NEVER been closed was kapuskasing. You can try, but it is black flies and bears in the summer, freezing to death in the winter.

German prisoners returned to Ozada camp after escaping because of encountering a grizzly bear.

-

"Achtung! die Kurve! es ist zu verdammt gefährliche Grizzly Bear."

We go back camp,
eat Pancakes with Maple Syrup..

So, either Stephen Maher is trying to apologize to Stephen Harper for the robo-call nonsense, or the other shoe is about to drop (tell me, if a tree falls in the forest, does anybody hear?):

http://www.canada.com/Harper%2Bsets%2Bexample%2Bslashing%2Bpension/7419054/story.html

On the other hand, I'm not so sure that "my friend, Steve", as GWB liked to call him, is really going to suffer too much from the pension cut: if you're going to be prime minister for life, why do you, er, need a pension, anyway?

Cam from Canada, would that would be the Luftwaffe pilot Franz von Werra, would it not?

"if you're going to be prime minister for life, why do you, er, need a pension, anyway?"

My fondest wish.

There were of course, many more "Internment Camps" for the Japanese and Italians in particular.

They were not POWs per se but were considered a security threat. Surprising Germans of this group were on the whole treated better and many were on a form of house or farm arrest.

In a not too surprising development when analysts looked into the demographic spread of registered voters in North Carolina .... they discovered hundreds of voters aged over 112 years ... thousands over 110 years. After investigation, it turns out that it was the fault of the voter registry incorrectly listing the DOB in thousands of records.
How many centenarians do you know who can get to a polling station?

Yes it would. He got back to the US when it was a neutral in the war, and he made his way back to germany where he told the air force of the british techniques for interrogation, which hampered the brits for the rest of the war.

One fellow I met was a POW in a German camp. He declared the Germans were smidgenly better than the Japanese (forgive the phrasing) by virtue of the fact that at least the Germans fed him.

Small margin.

Verbal irony (intending your statement to mean the opposite of what you say) should only be employed by those who know what they're talking about. So Obama blew it on bayonets. I think he owes a few horses an apology too. http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/10/19/statue-of-soldier-on-horse-re-dedicated-at-911-memorial/

Read an old story about a POW camp here in Canada. It seems that the guards were older fellows, farmers and WWI vets etc. The young Nazis decided to kick up a fuss. The Canadians laid aside their weapons, formed up and marched into the camp. Their actions so scared the Germans that the riot ended in a second and never raised its head again.

I think that the Germans greatly understimated what would have happened had they escaped or rioted. The RCMP would have rounded them up in a hurry. If you were in a POW camp south of Lethbridge, Ab., you`d know that there wasn`t a lot of places to hide.

Here's a story about one of the Nisei internees in the US during WW II:

A photograph of a 93-year-old Second World War veteran casting what will likely be his last ballot has captured the hearts of tens of thousands of Internet users.

Frank Tanabe volunteered to join the Army from behind barbed wire at the Tule Lake internment camp in California.

http://news.yahoo.com/photo-second-world-war-veteran-casting-ballot-captures-082154483.html

More here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_service_in_World_War_II

I often hike in an area of the Kananaskis, Ribbon Falls/Lake, that used to be a POW camp for Germans during WWII.
They built a ski resort nearby to accomodate the '88 Olympics, but vage outlines of some of the camp cabins still persist here and there.

There never were any walls or fences.
It seems that riding a train that took about a week to get to Calgary then trucks that took a day to get to the Kananaskis was as awesomely discouraging to the German POWS as the landscape was beautiful.
Many of them stayed after the war and made Alberta their home.

The UofC research station at Barrier Lake in the Kananaskis, is built on the site of a WW2 POW camp. At one time there were pictures and maps of the camp in the Lodge.

I worked a couple of summers at the Kananaskis camp in the early seventies (Canadian Forestry Service) and met former prisoners returning with their families showing them the beautiful place they were "imprisoned". Apparently after the War when they were sending the POWs home, they had to look under the buildings to find them all because some of them didn't want to leave.

Neys Prov Park in Ontario was one. A trucker that I was working for pointed it out to me one day as we ran along Hwy 17. Supposedly two POWs tried to run from there and died from exposure.

The one south of Cochrane is a Youth Facility now, IIRC.

I recall reading on www.pinetreeline.org where some radar folks from Armstrong ON would go use the old POW Forestry cabins in their off time recreation.

The German POWs doing woodcutting in the forests were very important to keeping the Ontario pulp and paper mills in business
during the war because Canadian newsprint and fine paper sold to the USA was one of the biggest earners of foreign exchange.
After the war their places were filled mostly by tough men from the Azores and Italy who had to contract for a two year stint in
the woods to get into Canada!

The lefties wouldn't have minded POW and Japanese interment camps so much if the government of the day had just called it Social Housing.

I recall a while back watching a BBC documentary...."The Ones We Kept"....German POW who stayed in the UK and didn't get repatriated.

No.....it wasn't "Stockholme Syndrome". A vastly different society.

The thing that stands out about this documentary about the Canadian POW camps was the former POW recalling the Canadian officer briefing them about what to expect to find returning to Germany.

That they had changed...their relatives had changed...their country had changed and the world had changed...and their place in it.

I recall back in the day....getting the very same talk...even though we had not been POWs....time does that y'know.

I recall Dad telling about the fertilizer plant in Ingersoll having Japanese POWs....there was a bit of unpleasantness....swiftly resolved by....a large delegation/committee of locals. Much behaviour after that....

This is published by a Israeli jewish newspaper:

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/survey-most-israeli-jews-would-support-apartheid-regime-in-israel.premium-1.471644

Rightist people need to open their eyes to want happen in Israel. they need to face the reality.

OMG I am agreeing with Obama and LAS on this one. He may not have put it well, but one modern nuclear sub can do the job of at least 100 WW2 vintage subs, in terms of the amount of sea it can dominate. The Germans could have done what they did in the Atlantic in WW2 with a couple of modern subs. Yes, bayonets are still militarily useful (even rifles killed an almost statistically insignificant number of people in WW2). When military people talk of bayonets (don`t know whether or not O actually knows this) - its like saying "boots" - its referring to troop numbers. There are times when you need lots of troops, but in general with modern transport, surveillance and firepower you need way fewer of them.

What is not discussed minuteman is the cost of one of the new ships versus the cost of the old ships. The fact is it costs a lot more to build the new ones so sequestration is going to hurt the modern navy much more than a similar budget cut of yore. Ships were always expensive to build and put to sea but a modern aircraft carrier with a full compliment of aircraft, radar, missile defense etc makes them exponentially more costly.

QNDPS, your article is behind a paywall. Nobody cares to pay good money to Israel's branch office of the MSM to read liberal propaganda. The Toronto Star is still free.

If that poll is at all accurate, I'm not actually surprised about the result. They've learned the hard way, just like the white South Africans, that living with the savages is impossible. If you ask me, apartheid would have proven better than nothing in Lower Canada. If your tribe had been willing to accept a "homeland" in Nunavut or somewhere, and leave the good land for the Englishmen, Scotsmen and Irish Protestants who earned it with their blood (just as Britons earned South Africa with theirs), I could have lived with that.

All I'd ask is that the Queen's Canadian ministers make every effort to make sure you stayed there. No "guest workers." Apartheid failed at last because white South Africans came to depend on African labour rather than encourage Commonwealth immigration. The spoiled rich women of Cape Town and Pretoria were too lazy and proud to cook or clean the toilet or their husbands' underwear, and didn't want to pay a white woman what a Christian needed to live on. The results are different from every evening's headlines on the local news in Canada only by degree.

(The Rhodesians of Westmount you're still bitter about? They were doing a favour to some inbred French imbecile from the country who couldn't put two words together in English---that would be your sainted memere---to come in to clean the toilet. If it weren't for them Montreal would be an English city still.

You know why they did it at all? They were too cheap to hire a Protestant.)

That, by the way, is why the rich liberal Israelis are blubbering about the "apartheid wall"---they can't get cheap help any more. If their wives are too proud to clean the toilet or their underwear (they didn't come from New York or Toronto or Paris to clean filth off a toilet bowl!) the husbands have to do it themselves or pay a Russian woman to come in and do it, and she'll demand real money.

If you're a normal Israeli who can't afford help, on the other hand, and couldn't just swan back to New York or Toronto or Paris if things got ugly, you're a lot safer, and grateful to God for the wall. Richer too, if you're a woman just arrived from Moscow wanting to clean houses in Tel Aviv.

I wonder if there is a domestic angle to the Progress-Petronas refusal? Has the obnoxiousness politicking by the premier of BC against Alberta and Harper finally been responded to in kind?

This week:
B.C. energy minister mystified after Ottawa nixes key takeover for province’s natural gas strategy

"A last-minute decision by the Harper government to reject a takeover of Canadian gas producer Progress Energy by Malaysian state-owned energy giant Petronas pulled the rug out from under B.C. Energy Minister Rich Coleman, who viewed the $5.9-billion deal as one of the catalysts for B.C.’s multi-billion-dollar liquefied natural gas strategy."

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/2035/energy+minister+mystified+after+Ottawa+nixes+takeover+province+natural+strategy/7429756/story.html#ixzz2A8QzijU4


The previous week:
Take that, Alberta: Christy Clark says B.C. will be Canada's number one economy

NANAIMO, B.C. - British Columbia Premier Christy Clark took aim at Alberta Tuesday in an election-style speech where she boasted her province doesn't need oil to be the country's top economic generator...Clark said her government's year-old jobs plan, which focuses on increasing trade with China and Asia

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/2035/energy+minister+mystified+after+Ottawa+nixes+takeover+province+natural+strategy/7429756/story.html#ixzz2A8TXdzWy


Nah, purely a coincidence. "Petronas and Progress have 30 days to convince Ottawa that the deal is a net benefit to Canada, both companies said in a news release Monday." It might be interesting to see what happens in the next 30 days regarding pipelines, inter-provincial co-operation and such. If nothing else, Ms. Clark might be encouraged to tone down the rhetoric.

In his fall 2012 report released Tuesday, Auditor General Michael Ferguson concluded the Department of Finance Canada often does not take into account the impact of tens of billions of dollars of spending and tax measures on the government’s long-term fiscal sustainability.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/23/conservative-government-approves-billions-in-spending-without-knowing-consequences-auditor-generals-report/

Death Comes to Red-GreenAGW.

...-

"Poor Solar Market Chases Out Siemens"

"German conglomerate Siemens AG (NYSE: SI) said today that it will exit the solar business by offering its solar assets for sale. The company said in a statement:

This is just the latest in a long line of failed German solar companies. Solar Millenium AG, Q-Cells, Solar Hybrid, and Solon SE have already filed for bankruptcy protection or closed their doors. Another German solar makr, OC Oerlikon AG today received approval from Chinese regulators to sell its solar business to Tokyo Electron Ltd."

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/poor-solar-market-chases-out-siemens-2012-10-22

Mao Stlong* Lepolt.

>>> "Battery shortages, reduced supply and weak demand were to blame for weak domestic sales, Axel Krieger, co-head of McKinsey's Automotive Practice in Greater China, said."
...-

"China Sells Just 235 Electric Cars in Second Quarter, Report Says"

"Battery shortages cited as one of the reasons domestic consumers are not embracing the environmentally friendly vehicles"

http://english.caixin.com/2012-10-23/100450985.html

...-
"Electric Car Battery Maker A123 Systems Files Bankruptcy - Bloomberg
www.bloomberg.com/.../​electric-car-battery-maker...bankruptcy.html

2012-10-16 · A123 Systems Inc. (AONE), the electric car battery maker that received a $249.1 million federal grant, filed for bankruptcy protection and said it would ..."

*Ex-Liberal leader Bob Rae's uncle, c/o Red China.

"One fellow I met was a POW in a German camp. He declared the Germans were smidgenly better than the Japanese (forgive the phrasing) by virtue of the fact that at least the Germans fed him.

Small margin."

Anglo American mortality rate in German POW camps was 4%.

In Japanese captivity it was 27%

Big Margin

O'one. Yup.

Votes keep coming in.
...-

"DuPont to Cut 1,500 Jobs as Profit Misses Estimates on Pigment Demand Drop"

"European Stocks Decline to Seven-Week Low on Results"

"Dow Drops Most Since June on Earnings Reports"

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Toronto Star headline: U.S. election: Mitt Romney struggles against cool, calm Barack Obama in foreign policy debate

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/uselection/article/1275679--u-s-election-mitt-romney-outplayed-by-barack-obama-in-foreign-policy-debate

What debate were they watching? Obama was anything but cool, calm, and collected.

Mitt Romney was playing the long game here and, IMO, he did it brilliantly. Sure, I was disappointed at the time that he didn't smash Obama with the facts of his failures for the last four years and, in particular, his colossal Benghazigate failures and coverups -- but what would that have proven? That Romeny's right and Obama's wrong? Where would that have got him, seeing as Obama's a lying snake?

Obama's die-hard supporters wouldn't have been swayed by Romney's hammering away at Obama's failures. Romney's die-hard supporters would probably have liked him to have hit back harder at the lying jackass across the debate table from him but they're not going to be swayed to vote for anyone but Romney by his laid-back performance last night.

But, what about the undecided voters? I suspect when Romney didn't launch a nasty, negative attack-laden diatribe against Obama (unlike Obama) -- which, with justification, he could have -- and came across as measured, knowledgeable of a great many details about the Middle East and America's foreign policy, and delivered his message in a presidential way, there would have been more than a few viewers who would have asked: Who would I rather be in charge in a crisis?

Obama punched well except that much of what he said was pure lies and drivel and he did nothing to defend his indefensible record over the past four years -- and his attacks on Mitt Romney were puerile and lacking in substance. Obama was playing a short game, looking for a dramatic punchout which, by the way, he never delivered. He seemed desperate, as opposed to Romney who was calm, cool, collected, polite, generous -- he often said he agreed with certain of Obama's policies -- and measured.

As David Southam puts it, Mitt Romney's performance was masterful. Slow and steady wins the race. He's the tortoise to Obama's hare.

"Vestas Announces Mass Layoffs in U.S. - Cites Wind Tax Credit "Uncertainty"

http://www.powerpulse.net/story.php?storyID=26532

Why Are Refineries Running From California?

In this downstream portion of the energy industry, a trend to keep an eye on will be refinery sales in California. Strict environmental codes are scheduled to be enforced over the next couple of years that could cost these individual companies hundreds of millions of dollars in plant renovations. The latest company to announce its preference to leave the market is Valero Energy.

O'one. Yup.

Votes keep coming in.
...-

"Dow Chemical cutting 2,400 jobs, closing plants"

"Dow Chemical Co., the largest chemicals maker in the United States, said on Tuesday it plans to cut 5 per cent of its workforce and shutter 20 plants as part of a restructuring program aimed at countering a slow global economy.

Dow and other chemical companies face slipping demand for products around the world. Rival E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. slashed its earnings forecast and announced 1,500 jobs cuts."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/dow-chemical-cutting-2400-jobs-closing-plants/article4632813/

Just in. More votes for O'yup.

...-
"Zynga Cuts 5 Percent of Staff, Will Close Offices, End Games"

"Zynga Inc. (ZNGA), the social-game maker that held an initial public offering last year, is cutting 5 percent of staff, shutting offices and ending more than a dozen titles to compensate for slowing sales growth.

San Francisco-based Zynga is closing a studio in Boston, trimming staff in Austin, Texas and proposing the closure of studios in Japan and the U.K., Chief Executive Officer Mark Pincus wrote in a memo obtained by Bloomberg. The cuts affect about 142 of the 2,846 workers Zynga had at the end of 2011."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-23/zynga-cuts-5-percent-of-staff-will-close-offices-end-games-1-.html

minuteman - with full respect, can a modern nuclear attack sub patrol in 100 separate locations simultaneously?

That is the sub's purpose, and you can't sink a combatant, or launch a missile strike if you are on the wrong side of the world when trouble happens.

In this downstream portion of the energy industry, a trend to keep an eye on will be refinery sales in California. Strict environmental codes are scheduled to be enforced over the next couple of years that could cost these individual companies hundreds of millions of dollars in plant renovations. The latest company to announce its preference to leave the market is Valero Energy.

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