KANANASKIS-SEEBE, POW-Camp, ALBERTA
...Within a few miles of Ozada is the Kananaskis-Seebe site which was used first for alien internees and pacifists and later German officer personnel in the Second World War. The site is at the crowded edge of rock and trees on the north side of Mount Barrier. The poplar trees are now invading the POW site. The University of Calgary has an environmental center here and the Province of Alberta, a forestry station and nature walk. A few tired photos show a more barren, sunburnt, windblown frost touched site that hemmed in people behind Canadian barbed wire. 'The location is breathtaking in its beauty and grandeur' - the old monotone, narrated, Technicolor travelogue from Moveitone films would have stated, and it would have been right. Over the main road and down a short rocky path, Barrier Lake delivers its startling color impact of Robin's egg blue/green. The lake was not there when the prisoners were there. The prisoners felled the timber and brush below the present water line and the lake was dammed and flooded after the POW travelled the Atlantic Ocean back to war blasted Germany.
Perhaps Barrier Lake should be renamed Prisoners' Lake - and yet their imprisonment was indeed a 'barrier' to their freedom.
The prisoners referred to Barrier Mountain as 'Old Baldy'. On September 12, 1984 at my request, the Alberta Historic Sites Board renamed the mountain as 'Old Baldy'. When I announced this at a prisoner of war reunion in Wurzburg, Germany in 1996 some of the ex-prisoners had tears in their eyes.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. NoNonsense English offers this material non-commercially for research and educational purposes. I believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, i.e. the media service or newspaper which first published the article online and which is indicated at the top of the article unless otherwise specified.