14
Spirit Lake Internment Camp - Prisoners returning from Sunday morning parade1915
Spirit Lake - near town of Amos, Quebec
Credits:Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario
15
Spirit Lake Internment Camp - POWs at work clearing the forest1915
Spirit Lake - near town of Amos, Quebec
Credits:Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario
16
Spirit Lake Internment Camp - one of the military guards1915
Spirit Lake - near town of Amos, Quebec
Credits:Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario
17
Why was Sallows there?There is no explanation for the presence of Sallows at Spirit Lake. The only hint that appears in the Goderich papers of the time is the following notice:
The Signal - February 24, 1916 - "Mr. R.R. Sallows will leave next Tuesday for the Lake Abitibi region to do some photographic work for the publicity department of the National Transcontinental Railway. He will be away about two weeks."
The Spirit Lake Internment Camp photographs are hardly publicity shots. They may have been taken for documentation purposes. This particular collection of photographs was donated to Library and Archives Canada by Ernest Scrase of England. They offer a glimpse at a time in Canadian history that has been largely ignored and forgotten.
Sallows, so clever at capturing the abundance of Canada's agricultural lands and the wildness that still existed in the north, documented, in his style, a cold treatment of the European people his photographs had earlier been contracted to entice to this land. His signature imprint in the lower right corner of the photoraphs reveals he was there, but it was not a story he talked about to his hometown newspaper editor.
18
Spirit Lake Internment Camp - POWs at work1915
Spirit Lake - near town of Amos, Quebec
Credits:Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario
19
Spirit Lake Internment Camp - POWs at work1915
Spirit Lake - near town of Amos, Quebec
Credits:Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario
 |
 |
 |
 |