POW/Work Camp Vehicles in Canada
 

I was reading up on the big work camp at Whitewater Lake in Riding Mountain National Park during the War recently. It was a very interesting place. Set up for DAK troops which must have been quite a shock arriving there in mid February.

In any event, what got me thinking was the road trip from the rail head in Dauphin to the actual camp. What types of vehicles were used by these camps in Canada during the war? Commercial Pattern, Modified Commercial Pattern, CMP or a mix of whatever was available. And would they have been marked in any particular way? Might be an interesting restoration option for someone if the relevant information was available.

David

Interesting Tread Idea.
 

Hi David

Very interesting thread idea, be interesting to search the archives for photos to see what vehicles are in the back ground in various photos.

On a side point the apple orchards 1/4 mile from my house had German POWs mostly, U boat crews, picking apples they slept in the barn and it was considered choice assignment by the POWs The local stories go that they would be fed well by the local farmers.

The POWs came from the Portsmouth Naval Prison which is 75 Miles from here so they would come over for the entire picking season.

Picture below was taken this morning, I bought my land from the farmer who family owned the farm. He was a young man at the time an was given a deferment because his family owned one of three tractors in town. A Ford 9N he and the other two tractor owners worked their own farms as well as all the other farms in town during the war. He said that at times during the war the tractor ran 24-7 with changes in drivers. The tractor is still in his family here in town.

Attachment 92466

Picture was taken on my way to our big summer rally in Weare, NH.

Cheers Phil

Nice roadster......
 

Nice to see that you are wearing a coat that matches the paint job.....

.......but what is that urine collection bottle doing on the left hand side of the dash?????

Cheers

I was wondering the same thing, but I didn't dare ask the question. Maybe it extends the intervals between rest stops on long road moves? :wacko:

My boring guess is - the paint can pretending to be the coolant recovery tank isn't up to the task so a fully functional fluid recovery system was substituted....

Most of the vehicles would be civilian models and MCP's but it's more than likely the odd CMP was used.

I have seen two vehicles in person that were used in camps. One was a civilian Chev and the other was a MCP Dodge. The provenance for both was painted on the doors in the form of the camp numbers in typical DND domestic markings.

I'll see if I can find pics.

Here are a few pics.

The West coast internment of Japanese Canadians appears to have relied on Department of Labour Dodge civilian trucks.

The snowy picture of Petawawa shows what appears to be a pre-war Ford.

Not strictly a Camp vehicle but a neat shot of a private Ford with a load of Labour headed to the fields in 1942 from one of the Chatham camp.

CWM truck
 

This GMC is part of the CWM collection in Ottawa. It is from the Lethbridge Camp and has been restored with original markings. The tires aren't correct tho!

I couldn't resist this one!

Department of Mines and Resources operated the Alternate Service Work Camps for conscientious objectors. This looks like a civilian ford with a road crew.

Jason.

Great start with getting some photos up about these vehicles.

I had always assumed the Defence Department would have been in charge of POW Camps in Canada, through some branch or other. Interesting that the Lethbridge Camp, which I believe was military has no department ID but shows the camp ID and a marking pattern fairly consistent with markings for home front military vehicles. The other two camp vehicle options are from 'civilian' internment camps and have Department of Labour and Mines and Energy vehicles. Maybe that was a primary breakpoint of the camps in Canada: military jurisdiction for military camps and civil jurisdiction for civil camps.

Excuse my active mind here, but if that premise holds true, as you said, CMP's may very likely form some or all of the vehicle fleets for the military camps and not so much with the civil ones.

Poked about on the web a bit and found references to the ID System for the military camps. Looks like they started out in the war as 'lettered' camps and by 1943 switched to a number system. The one list I found was rather incomplete with the ID of some camps not known at all (Whitewater being one) and three camps from the Manitoba/Northwest Ontario area missing completely.

Whitewater was a POW Work Camp where they were cutting cord wood for the civilian market. The camp was set up where it was because (a) it was very isolated - no fences or guard towers were ever built for it - and (b) it was close to a burn area that was the initial area to have good wood harvested from before the selected area from the surrounding forest were worked. It was a National Park area so the timber work had to be carefully thought out. And a new park at that, less than 10 years old. The camp had to be dismantled as soon as the war ended as well. The site and original access road are now a major park hiking trail and overnight camp.

The prisoners went on strike there for a few days. A large number of them had ordered pyjamas from the Sears Catalog and when the shipment didn't arrive as scheduled, they thought the guards had stolen them so they refused to work. The shipment arrived on the train in Dauphin a couple of days later, the prisoners were thrilled and all was OK.

David

Futile search
 

Seems that most smaller POW camp in Canada were just "numbered" but could not find a comprehensive Canadian listing.

The city jail in Hull, PQ was used as a POW jail..... also deserters and those running away from conscription and was just given a number.

There was a seasonal German POW work camp in the upper reaches of the Gatineau park around Lac Lapeche and although I found confirmation of it's existence no other details seem available......being remote trucks must have been used extensively for the 2 to 3 hour one way drive from/to Ottawa back in 1940.

Cheers

Our mutual friend Gilles who had a septic tank business tells a similar story about one of the summer sites he had on his rounds. There are some inescapable sensory clues to what a building was once used for.

Just a comment, without hijacking the Canadian thread, POW camps in Australia were a joke. The Italians captured in the desert were quickly put out into the farming community and integrated well (marrying a number of Australian girls)

The Germans on the other hand were a pretty tough lot, mostly Afrika Corps and Sailors. The Australian Guards were made up of Dad's Army and the Germans ran rings around them, It is an embarrassing story. There were so many escapes by blokes with no where to go in such an isolated country - just wanting to get out of confinement.

Two German ship engineers escaped, walked to Melbourne and got a job in an aircraft factory. They were doing well, ready for promotion before they were discovered!

The local police commander got so sick of the camp commandant calling for help in rounding up escaped prisoners told him "If they call in to the police station I will bring them back but the army will have to find them yourselves because I am taking my wife to a movie"


Lang

There certainly is no consistancy. Some of the camps in horticultural and agricultural areas were a very handy source for farm workers, which eventually saw many POWs reluctant to be repatriated, and even returning as post-war immigrants! Creative Italians, many from similar rural backgrounds as the locals, introduced Vino and Grappa to Australian palates.

Other camps were much more like punishment for recalcitrant escapees, like Nurina, affectionately known to the Commonwealth Railways crews, who were warned to look out for stowaways, as "F***all'sville". Although for the hardened-escapees types, Nurina was perhaps remakable as a POW camp in that it had no fencing of any kind and relied on it's location alone to keep the POWs close to home.

Found a couple of articles on the Whitewater Lake Camp with photos of some of the POW'S and buildings. But no vehicles yet.

Some of the descriptions suggest a vehicle maintenance shop may have been on site, but since this camp was gathering cord wood, this shop may have been primarily to service the available logging trucks. Indications are some horse teams may also have been active with the work.

Also some reports of POW's borrowing vehicles from the guards to go to dances in the towns just South of the park on weekends and to shop for piglets to raise for the camp menu.

And on the topic of food, it seems that in hunting season, both the guards and POW's would head out in trucks with rifles from the Guard House for deer, elk and moose.

Apparently as well, the German Medical Officer had access to a vehicle to take to Dauphin for medical supplies and for patient treatments he was unable to deal with at the camp.

It would not surprise me if some of these vehicles were disposed of at the end of the war, at the War Assets Depot which had been set up at RCAF Station Dauphin.


David

Google satellite shows the remains of the camp Bob refers to near Lac LaPeche at https://www.google.ca/maps/@45.62461.../data=!3m1!1e3 Although near Lac Lapeche, the camp has its own, much smaller, lake - Lac LeBlanc.


In the late 1970s I worked as a lifeguard at Lac LaPeche. The children campers from Camp Gatineau were frequent visitors to Lac La Peche so I assume Lac Leblanc wasn't considered fit for swimming, or perhaps the staff at the camp wanted to tire the children on the walk to/from Lac LaPeche. At that time we allowed an hour for the drive from Hull (now Gatineau) to the beach. I'm not 100% certain but believe the camp is still operating.


The thread Terry refers to is at http://www.mapleleafup.net/forums/sh...=camp+gatineau