A New Brunswick museum sheds light on a former internment and prisoner-of-war camp

In the 1930s, an estimated 70,000 to 80,000 Jews fled Nazi Germany, plus occupied Austria and Czechoslovakia, for the safety of Great Britain, where most were admitted as legitimate refugees. In 1940, with Britain facing a possible German invasion, and paranoia about fifth columnists and spies running rampant, newspapers reported that Winston Churchill gave an order reported to be “Collar the lot.”

The result was that 2,300 Jewish men and boys, with the consent of the Canadian government, went to internment camps in Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick. In 1940, 711 of them ages 16 to 60 arrived at Camp B/70 in the tiny community of Ripples, (near Minto) New Brunswick, where they were treated as prisoners of war (POWs) for more than a year before officials let them leave.

This was what was known as Phase 1 of Camp B/70, which had originally been constructed as a work relief camp for unemployed men during the Depression.

At the start of the Second World War, workers converted the recently abandoned camp to a prison with the addition of guard towers and a fenced perimeter with five rows of barbed wire. The camp opened in August 1940 with 52 buildings on 24 hectares and 350 guards. New Brunswick Rangers, members of the Veterans Guard of Canada, comprised mostly of First World War vets deemed too old to serve in this new war, staffed the camp.

By 1941, the Canadian government finally realized that these prisoners were neither a threat nor an enemy and let them leave the camp, with the option of staying in Canada if they could find a sponsor. With the help of the Canadian Jewish community and others, many did stay and went on to have illustrious careers as academics, architects, scientists, and musicians. The accomplishments of some of these men interned at Camp B/70 are explained in more detail at the New Brunswick Internment Camp Museum.

After the Jews left the camp, it briefly closed and reopened as a true POW prison, which it remained until the end of the war. This is described, by the Canadian government that always ran the operation, as Phase 2 at Camp B/70. The great majority of the POWs in this phase were captured German and Italian merchant mariners, interned here until the end of the war.                                    

However, some Canadian citizens also became internees, such as Adrien Arcand who the Canadian Encyclopedia describes as “A fanatical and shrill-voiced follower of Adolf Hitler.” Others were held simply for having an Axis-sounding name, such as Fritz Zeigler, who had been a citizen since 1913 and was a well-respected chocolatier on the West Coast. Osveldo Giocomelli was a Canadian citizen of Italian descent who was interred at Camp B/70 for almost the entirety of Phase 2 and spent the rest of his life unsuccessfully petitioning for compensation for the unlawful imprisonment.

After the war, government decommissioned Camp B/70 and sold the buildings. It was largely forgotten about until Minto school teacher Ed Caissie became fascinated by what had transpired only a few kilometres from where he taught. In the 1993-94 school year, he tasked his middle school students with building a model of the camp from plans he found. Up to 60 students participated and the model became the impetus for the New Brunswick Internment Camp Museum. The students built the model and explored the site of Camp B/70, finding many artifacts that are now on display in the museum.

Word of the project spread and soon relatives of people who had worked at the camp, and even some relatives of internees, began donating items to the project. In 1997, the museum opened in the basement of the Minto municipal building. Today there are nearly 600 objects on display, including the model that started it all.

The items include a substantial number of paintings, drawings, and cartoons by the German and Italian POWs, plus models, carvings, and even a wooden knife (which seems a strange thing to let a prisoner create). Also on display are wooden replicas of four crosses that once stood in the Fredericton Rural Cemetery, marking the graves of four German POWs who died at Camp B/70.

The New Brunswick Interment Camp Heritage Committee runs the museum, with Griffin Mountan, a Minto school teacher, as the curator. “This museum contains a reminder that while Canada has often found itself on the good side of history, we’re certainly far from perfect,” Griffin says. “For Canadians, taking the time to visit a museum such as this one creates more public awareness of our past mistakes, perhaps preventing negative history from repeating itself.”

When you visit

  • The New Brunswick Internment Camp Museum is at 420 Pleasant Dr. in Minto.
  • Contact: 506-327-3573, nbinternmentcampmuseum.ca.
  • Open from early July to late August, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays, noon to 5 p.m. on weekends.
  • Free admission.
  • Travelling from Fredericton on Hwy. 10, you’ll pass the site of Camp B/70, although there’s now little to see.