Camp 30: A Prisoner's Paradise

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.

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 from 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: https://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.

Episode Transcript:

The Second World War. Sometimes it feels like we must have heard about every heroic deed, every tragic defeat, every hard-won battle on the Western Front. But this was a global war, and, as it turns out, some of the strangest and most overlooked moments happened in Canada. Like the tiny invasion of Newfoundland the Germans launched to set up a weather station, which no one even found until 1977. Or the 17 U-boats that prowled the waters of the St. Lawrence, or the Japanese bombs floating on weather balloons that fell on the Prairies.

We're here in unassuming Bowmanville, the site of the only clash between Axis and Allied powers to take place in rural Ontario.

This is Canadiana.

It's 1940, and things are not going very well for Britain. London is being devastated by German bombs. It seems entirely possible that England could be invaded and occupied, and that wouldn't just mean lost territory. Thousands of German infantry and officers are being held prisoner here.

Occupation would mean all those soldiers back on the field and, worse, a contingent of high-ranking officers able to command again. So the Allies decide to put an ocean in the way. It will be year before the United States joins the war. So it falls on Canada to scramble together

26 POW camps, including one here just outside Bowmanville, Ontario. It used to be a boys' reform school. But in 1941, it was frantically refitted into Camp 30 just in time for the first prisoners to arrive. Its past life as a school gave it some decidedly un-prisonlike amenities. In fact, life for German POWs in Canada was quite a bit more comfortable than you might expect.

They had an indoor pool, full athletic facilities including a basketball and tennis court that was flooded in the winter so they could play hockey. They formed a symphony orchestra and a theater troupe which put on Shakespeare productions. Camp 30 had also been built on fertile farmland, and the prisoners took advantage of it. They brought in enormous harvests.

Canadians in the surrounding areas, living under war rations, claimed the Germans were eating better than they were. And there was certainly a vast gulf between the treatment of these enemy soldiers and the thousands of Japanese Canadians rounded up into hellish internment camps.

The POWs even continued to receive pay from Germany, not to mention Christmas bonuses. from Hermann Goring, commander of the Luftwaffe, allowing them to buy from an expansive commissary. Even more incredible, they were allowed to spend their money on day trips. Ehrenwort is a German word for a culturally deep-seated sense of honesty and honour. The Germans took it very seriously, and the Canadians knew it. So they trusted the Germans to go shopping in nearby towns, swimming in Lake Ontario, or cross-country skiing,

knowing they'd honestly and honorably come back to Camp 30 for a round of tennis and an evening swim before bed. In fact, the POWs had to be disciplined by their officers because their letters home were so glowing, it bordered on treason. The guards, mostly Canadian veterans of the First World War, spoke fondly of the time they spent here. So deep was their sense of trust with their wards, they'd lend the prisoners rifles to go hunting. It was like a strange fairytale they were all living. And then, thanks to a Canadian brigadier half a world away, it all came crashing down.

August 19, 1942

0500 hours.

6,000 Allied infantrymen, mostly Canadians, pour onto the beach of the French town of Dieppe to take it back from the Nazis. One of them has made a fateful mistake. He's kept a copy of his operational orders with him. The assault is a disaster, one of the most notorious days in Canadian military history. 60% of the Allied force is killed, wounded, or captured, and among them our brigadier with his operational orders. The document is seized and makes its way up the German ranks, all the way up.

Buried deep within the document is a reference to the binding of Axis prisoners. And after the battle of Dieppe and a British raid, the Nazis allegedly find German prisoners who had been bound and then shot.

Hitler sees a propaganda opportunity. He falsely connects the dots.

The Allies, he says, are butchers on orders to tie up German soldiers and execute them. Soon, he issues the infamous Commando Order, declaring Allied Special Forces exempt from the Geneva Convention. They'll be shot on sight, even if they surrender. But first, Berlin announces that more than 1,000 prisoners from the Battle of Dieppe will be shackled, most of them Canadian. It's up to Canada to respond, and they decide to retaliate in kind. Back at Camp 30, the Germans' relative paradise is about to be shattered.

A Canadian guard approaches the ranking German officer and asks that he volunteer 100 of his men to be shackled. The officer refuses so, to his subordinates, negotiations break down quickly. None of the POWs show up for the next roll call. When the order comes to shackle the prisoners by force, the Germans barricade themselves in the camp's buildings.

The Battle of Bowmanville is about to begin. The largest concentration of prisoners is here in the mess hall, and the guards believe that if they can break through, the rest of the buildings will follow.

All day, they're at a standoff.

The Canadians arm themselves with baseball bats, the Germans with anything they can get their hands on: hockey sticks, beer bottles, jam jars. The Germans are itching for a good fight. They're treating the whole situation like a sporting match. But the aging members of the Canadian Veterans Guard have heard that 50 trainees are on their way from a nearby military camp, so they're content to wait. That evening, the young soldiers arrive, and the siege begins.

Over the next several hours of brawling, there are bruises and bloody noses. But the worst injury suffered from the Canadian side: fractured skull from a thrown jar of jam.

Finally, the prisoners in the mess hall are subdued, and, over the next two days, the other buildings follow, the siege aided by high-powered water hoses. At last, the POWs agree to lay down arms. In the aftermath, 126 prisoners are relocated to other camps. Those who remain must be shackled. But in a strange coincidence, the guards accidentally drop the keys to the shackles everyday right after roll call.

And then the war was over.

35,000 prisoners across Canada began the long process of returning to their homeland. But Germany was a blasted-out shell, a crumbling ruin of its former glory, drenched in the blood of fascism and with an uncertain future. For many returning prisoners, it was unrecognizable. And because of the kindness and trust they'd been shown here, the place that came closest to embodying that sense of home was now Canada.

More than 6,000 prisoners asked to stay here permanently as soon as the war was over, and even more would immigrate back later, citing the hospitality they'd been shown as prisoners. As a wife of one such man put it, his greatest piece of luck was being sent to Canada as a prisoner of war.

The Canadians probably shouldn't be too quick to pat ourselves on the back as great humanitarians of the Second World War. I'll talk a bit more about that in a second.

But first, I wanna thank you so much for watching. If you'd like to see more incredible stories about the history of Canada, you can subscribe by clicking that button below. You can also follow us on social media on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. We're @thisiscanadiana. We have many more stories to tell from all across this country, but to do it we'll need your help. You can become a regular supporter on Patreon, or you can just give us a one-time donation on PayPal. Every little bit helps.

Now, as I mentioned in the episode itself, while we were making our German guests very comfortable, Canadians of Japanese descent weren't being treated anywhere near as kindly.

Japanese Canadians had been facing racism for years all across the country, especially on the West Coast. And when the war began and Japan entered it, Japanese Canadians were rounded up, tens of thousands of them, and sent off to internment camps. There were no tennis courts or swimming pools, just exposure, malnutrition, and broken families. It's something we're definitely planning on addressing in a future episode of Canadiana. But for now, thanks so much for watching.

I'm Adam Bunch, and we'll see you next time on Canadiana.