In the middle of the second World War, while massive armies clashed on the Western Front, an overlooked battle took place between Axis and Allied forces… in the most unlikely place imaginable.
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*A VERSION WITH DESCRIBED VIDEO CAN BE FOUND HERE: • Camp 30: A Prisoner's ...
Closed Captioning and Described Video provided by Described Video Canada. www.describedvideocanada.com/
Camp 30 was a prime spot for a POW camp for a few reasons. The land had originally been donated to the government by John H H Jury so they could build a correctional facility for, in his words, ‘unadjusted boys who were not inherently delinquent’. It functioned more like a school than a prison, trying to reform 'unadjusted' youth by teaching valuable skills. But it was still under the auspices of the department of corrections, who also oversaw the POW camps. So when the sudden need arose for more camps, it was trivial for them to just rebrand the school.
This also explains why Camp 30 had some of the most luxurious perks for the prisoners. Things like the indoor pool weren’t built for them, just carried over from the buildings’ past lives. Which is not to say the German experience there was an outlier - sports teams, orchestras and shakespeare troupes were a staple of POW camps across Canada.
The school had also been set up to be totally self-sustaining, making it easier to keep a closed ecosystem with the prisoners - when they weren’t off on day trips.
Despite the posh conditions in the camp, prisoners considered it their duty to escape. They never abused their ‘word of honour’ but there were near-constant attempts and even an ‘escape committee’ set up by the German officers to field and approve plans. Mostly, they dug tunnels, which could become quite elaborate - they patched into the electrical grid to light them and had trolley systems for carting out excavated dirt. The most extraordinary attempt involved a soccer riot, a zipline, a dummy, and a mad dash across three provinces. It’s a story we plan to tell in a future episode.
The escape efforts ended before the war did, though. News reached the camp from Europe that a group of allied POWs had been caught trying to escape - and Hitler had ordered them all executed. Horrified, the German prisoners disavowed him and his actions. They agreed that after the humane treatment they’d received they owed it to not cause any more trouble for their Canadian captors, and resolved to just wait out the rest of the war.
After the war, Camp 30 reverted to being a Boys Training School though the correctional edge soon softened and it became more of a trade school. It lasted until 1979, after which it hosted several more academic institutions. First it became a school for Malaysian students, then the campus of St Stephen’s Catholic School. Finally, an Islamic university took over until 2008, when they moved out rather abruptly, leaving behind furniture and supplies - apparently due to an issue with building codes and sewage treatment.
The buildings were left to the elements and soon became a popular urbex destination, the walls filling up with graffiti, the ground carpeted in broken bottles. They continued to deteriorate as heritage organizations like Clarington Museum & Archives fought to preserve them. In 2013 the camp was placed on Heritage Canada’s ‘top 10 endangered places’ list which expedited the process - later that year, it was declared a National Historic Site.
Kaitlin Group, the current private owners, had intended to demolish the structures and develop the land. They’re now working with heritage organizations to preserve and restore the most historically significant buildings and incorporate them into development plans. The final granting of heritage status to some of the buildings happened only last year.
If you’d like a more in-depth look at the experience of a German POW, the NFB produced a documentary in 2003 called The Enemy Within. Director Eva Colmers tracks her father’s story as he is brought to Alberta as a prisoner of war. You can watch the whole thing here: www.nfb.ca/film/enemy_within/
Disclaimer: Stock footage of the war isn't precise, we are left to pick from what's available to us to use-the footage isn't necessarily accurate to the specific story we are telling, more so representative.