Enemy Aliens Arrive in Canada

Canada agrees to Britain's request to aid the war effort by taking in “enemy aliens” and prisoners of war. Among the men are 2,284 refugees, most of them Jews, who had fled Nazi persecution and found asylum in Britain, only to be arrested due to their German or Austrian citizenship. They are deported to Canada and imprisoned in New Brunswick, Ontario, and Quebec alongside political prisoners and, in some camps, Nazi sympathisers.

Black-and-white photograph of a man, with his back to the camera, pushing a wheelbarrow in a yard. There is a bench in the foreground, and a building in the far background. The man wears a uniform with a big circle on his back.

An internee in a camp uniform, taken by internee Marcell Seidler at Camp N in Sherbrooke, Quebec, circa 1940-1942. Seidler secretly documented camp life using a handmade pinhole camera. (Library and Archives Canada/Eric Koch fonds/PA-143492)