A statue of a Ukrainian-Canadian internee circa 1916, entitled Why?, was installed at the Castle Mountain Internment camp site, in Banff National Park, on August 12, 1995. It was sculpted by John Boxtel, and was the first statue erected in Canada in memory of those imprisoned during Canada’s first national internment operations of 1914 – 1920. Both the statue and trilingual historical marker were paid for by the Ukrainian-Canadian communities of Banff and Calgary, in cooperation with the Ukrainian-Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCCLA), and no federal assistance was received.
The public unveiling of the statue and accompanying trilingual historical marker commemorating the unjust internment of Ukrainian-Canadian’s as “enemy aliens” took place in Banff National Park, at Castle Mountain, on August 12, 1995. The Castle Mountain Internment Camp in Banff, Alberta, which was built in 1915 at the base of Castle Mountain, was a Canadian internment camp which held immigrant prisoners of Ukrainian, Austrian, Hungarian, and German descent. Internees did a variety of work, including constructing roads and clearing land. Through their labour, the internees played an important part in building Canada’s western national parks.
