Date Opened: June 1940
Date Closed: April 1944
Capacity: 500
Type of POW: Civilian Internees and Enemy Merchant Seamen
Description:
Accepting its first prisoners on June 25, 1940, Camp M was situated on the grounds of the Ontario Reformatory (Mimico). The reformatory opened in 1913 and, over the following decades, detained civilian inmates arrested in Toronto and the surrounding area. But when war broke out in 1939 and Canada was in need of internment camps, the Mimico Reformatory was a natural choice. The Department of National Defence entered into an agreement with the Ontario Government to use the site for the duration of the war and, over the course of a month, was quickly modified to hold German civilian internees and Enemy Merchant Seaman (EMS) rather than civilian inmates.
Camp M was renamed Camp 22 in late 1941 and, despite being within Etobicoke, the camp’s location was interchangeably given as either Mimico or New Toronto. However, as the camp was closer to New Toronto, the official location was ultimately designated as New Toronto. The presence of an internment camp within an urban industrial area – especially one producing essential materials for the war effort – prompted significant security concerns but the need for an internment camp outweighed most of them. Trying to ease concerns, the Department of National Defence ensured that only non-combatant POWs would be interned in Camp 22 as these individuals were deemed a lesser security risk than their combatant counterparts.
The civilian internees in Camp 22 came from diverse backgrounds and had either been arrested in the United Kingdom or in British territories around the world. They included a representative for German auto manufacturers in West Africa, the owner of a British textile factory, a professor from Oxford University, and an aircraft engineer. Some were Nazi Party members while others were anti-Nazis. The EMS had been captured in the United Kingdom, India, the Caribbean, South America, Mexico, or Canada when their ships were seized in port after war broke out or when Allied naval forces captured their vessels on the high seas.
Like prisoners in other camps, the internees and EMS soon busied themselves with various forms of recreation and entertainment. A seventeen-piece orchestra was assembled with the help of the War Prisoners’ Aid while other POWs busied themselves in art and handicraft. Merchant Seamen Engineers and Officers offered technical courses to seamen looking to advance their skills in languages, mathematics, engineering, physics, navigation, meteorology, and law while other educators offered courses on English, French, Spanish, Italian, and mathematics. Prisoners played football and skated in a recreation field connected to the main enclosure but they also had access to a boxing ring, tennis court, and parallel and horizontal bars. Camp staff also permitted the prisoners to farm a thirty-acre plot adjacent to Camp 22 where they grew tomatoes, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, beets, and onions.
As time progressed, more and more prisoners requested opportunities for work. Some found employment in camp maintenance but these jobs proved few and far between. A solution came in May 1943 with the Canadian government’s approval the use of POW labour in select industries. While this had primarily been intended to reduce labour shortages in agricultural and forestry, some urban industries expressed interest in hiring POWs; among them New Toronto’s Donnell & Mudge Ltd. One of the largest sheepskin tanners in Canada, Donnell & Mudge had a tannery just five minutes from Camp 22 and, after careful review, authorities permitted the company to employ selected POWs in the tannery as of September 1943. Although there were some security incidents, the internees and EMS greatly valued the opportunity to leave the confines of Camp 22 – even if only temporarily.
In early 1944, overcrowding at Guelph and Burwash detention facilities prompted the Ontario Government to request the Department of National Defence return the grounds of the Mimico Reformatory in March. An agreement was reached and Camp 22 closed at the end of April 1944. The remaining POWs were transferred to Camp 23 (Monteith) while those employed by Donnell & Mudge Ltd. were moved from the enclosure into the camp’s former guardhouse as it was not needed for the Reformatory.
The Mimico Reformatory reopened immediately following the military’s departure and the site would remain operational as the Mimico Correctional Centre until 2011. It was subsequently replaced by the Toronto South Detention Centre, which opened on the same grounds in 2014.
Location:
Labour Projects:
Camp 22 provided POW labour to several labour projects, most notably to the Donnell & Mudge tannery south of the camp, the Erie Peat Company near Welland, and the International Paper Co.’s bush camps in St. Faustin, Quebec.
Pictures:
Do you have a picture of this camp and are willing to share? Please get in touch.
Further Reading:
- Posts about Camp 22 (New Toronto)
- Goodlet, Kirk W. “Number 22 Internment Camp: German Prisoners of War and Canadian Internment Operations in Mimico, Ontario, 1940-1944.” Ontario History CIV, no. 2 (Autumn 2012): 90–115.
POWs in Canada 