Camp T – Trois Rivières

Date Opened: July 1940
Date Closed: August 1940
Capacity: 700
Type of POW: Civilian Internees and Refugees

Description:

One of Canada’s shortest-lived internment camps, Camp T was a temporary internment camp intended to hold Civilian Internees transferred from the United Kingdom. Following the Allied withdrawal from continental Europe in June 1940, the United Kingdom appeared to be the next target of the German advance and the British government thus prioritized the transfer of its POWs and internees to safe locations across the Commonwealth. Canada agreed to a British request to accept POWs and, in late June, the first internees and POWs arrived from the United Kingdom.

Camp T was set up on Trois Rivières exhibition grounds which were rapidly converted into an internment camp with the addition of barbed wire fences, flood lights, and guard towers. As the grounds were also needed to house Canadian soldiers, the camp only a temporary solution and the prisoners were to be transferred once a more suitable camp was built. Security was initially provided by guards from the Three Rivers Regiment (Tank) but No. 4 Company of the Veterans Home Guard assumed responsibility soon after.

Some 350 Category A internees and thirty-two combatant prisoners arrived at Camp T in early July 1940 but these prisoners were transferred to Camp M (Mimico) and Camp E (Espanola), respectively, and subsequently replaced by over 700 civilian internees in mid-July. It was soon discovered that the majority of these “prisoners” were actually Jewish refugees originally from Germany and Austria and, of them, some 280 were boys between the sixteen and eighteen.

In August 1940, Camp B near Fredericton, New Brunswick was ready for occupation and the internees at Trois Rivières were transferred there. Camp T, having served its purpose, closed and the exhibition grounds were taken over to house Canadian troops.

Location:

Pictures:

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Further Reading:

• Posts about Camp T (Trois Rivières)
• Interview with Joseph Lazar, Montreal Holocaust Museum. https://refairesavie.museeholocauste.ca/fra/internement-au-camp-t-en-1940

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