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Documentary reveals Fernie’s role in WWI internment operations

That Never Happened to screen on 100th anniversary of Morrissey internment camp closure
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Interned Austrians and Germans in Fernie. Submitted

World War One marked a dark chapter in Canada’s history when foreign-born men, women and children were branded “enemy aliens” and many were wrongfully imprisoned.

Of the more than 88,000 people forced to register, over 8000 were placed in internment camps across the country, including in Morrissey near Fernie, where they were stripped of what little wealth they had and forced to do heavy labour.

For decades the ugly truth of Canada’s first national internment operations was kept hidden, wiped from official records and lost through the generations.

On Sunday, Fernie will once again kickstart the conversation about internment as it marks 100 years since the closure of the Morrissey Internment Camp, which operated from September 28, 1915 to October 21, 1918.

Leading that conversation will be Canadian filmmaker Ryan Boyko, whose award-winning documentary That Never Happened will show at the Vogue Theatre as part of the WWI Internment Operations Day of Recognition hosted by the Fernie Museum.

Boyko’s family arrived in Canada from Ukraine around the early 1900s and he was born in Winnipeg and raised in Saskatoon.

Growing up, Boyko was reluctant to embrace his heritage, forced to take Ukrainian dancing and go to church and community events with his parents.

It wasn’t until he attended the screening of an early film on the internment operations that his interest in his culture and family’s history in Canada was piqued.

“It was my first experience of racism towards my culture,” he said.

After watching the film, Boyko asked his Grade 10 history teacher about the internment of Ukrainians during WWI.

“He said ‘do you mean the Japanese internment in WWII?’ and I said, ‘no I mean the Ukrainian internment during WWI’, and he looked at me and said ‘that never happened’,” he said.

“So that was really where it started for me.”

What started as a feature film project has evolved into a supporting documentary, a web series called The Camps and an educational film for classrooms.

By the time Boyko started filming That Never Happened in October 2015, he had already been researching the internment operations for five years, collecting the archive footage that appears in the documentary.

“I thought that was very important, getting my hands on it and getting permission to use it in whatever way I wanted to use it again in the future because there are lot of things that just end up in a shoebox and then eventually get thrown away,” he said.

“I felt like it was important to have that footage, never knowing what it would be used for and then when it came time to actually cutting a documentary, using some of the interviews we already had then creating new interviews, we found we had all of this archive footage that nobody’s ever seen.”

To Boyko’s knowledge, no one in his family was interned but that may change in the future.

“As you see in the documentary, there are many people who didn’t know their family members were interned until long after they’d passed away and found the records,” he said.

“So far as we know, there was nobody in my family that was interned but the likelihood of them having been affected by the registration is very high… both my mom’s side and my dad’s side, they would have been affected by having to report monthly to the police.”

Boyko spent 15 months filming the documentary, which delves into the internment operations from 1914 to 1920.

He said the biggest challenge was finding funding for the project and organizing the logistics.

“We shot all across Canada, from Nanaimo to Halifax, and so everything from booking transport, booking flights, making sure all of our equipment got from location to location, it was a big logistic nightmare that we were able to make work somehow,” he said.

Boyko spent several days in the Elk Valley, where he met with local descendants, three of whom appear in the documentary and one who appears in the Fernie episode of The Camps.

He said one thing he found interesting was the camps were all set up the same, especially in mountains, with a guard walk, barbed wire fencing and a secondary camp where the guards slept.

Boyko and his film crew became so good at spotting artifacts that they were able to identify previously unknown remains of a camp in places such as Monashee, B.C.

The filmmaking process has helped heal old wounds for Boyko.

“I think it’s tragic period in Canadian history but I think the most important thing is we’re talking about it now,” he said.

“I remember being a kid and going to Banff, and being so upset that nobody knew about the history of Banff, and all these people were there and they were skiing and having a good time and going to the bars and just enjoying themselves.

“That always bothered me because all of these people were using things that have been built by interned slave labour and now when I go there, I feel almost a sense of relief because we’re telling their story.

“So that period of history, which used to feel really dark and negative for me, I think through doing this film, it has lightened for me because I know that we’re telling these stories and that other people are aware and I’m not the only person that’s walking around Banff and Fernie that knows this history, and I think that’s a really good place to start.

“So the history is not so dark for me anymore. In fact, it’s more about the future and I think the future of this history is looking brighter because we’re getting more people looking and finding information than ever before, and we know there’s going to be more evidence that’s going to be found, we just don’t know where yet.”

Fernie is one of nine cities where the documentary will be shown as part of a cross-Canada tour ending at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg.

Prior to its Canadian release, That Never Happened was presented to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, as Canada’s contribution to the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on September 20.

“As a filmmaker, as an artist, as a person who is somewhat being an activist for change and recognition, it’s a pretty powerful moment,” said Boyko.

As well as addressing the internment operations, That Never Happened also sends a strong message about xenophobia, drawing parallels with current events such as the Syrian refugee crisis.

Boyko said that happened organically and the neutrality of the film was important to him.

“My ultimate hope was that people would take away a conversation,” he said.

“Whether they love it, whether they hate it, whether they’re for internment, whether they’re against internment, whether they think the government was just in doing this or whether they think the government was unjust in doing this, it’s having the conversation and making sure that people felt free to talk about it from any side, any angle that was true for them, so keeping it as neutral as possible was something that I felt was very important and something that I think we were able to successfully achieve while still getting the message out there.”

That Never Happened will show at the Vogue Theatre at 5 p.m. on Sunday, October 21, with doors opening at 4:30 p.m. It will be followed by a Ukrainian dinner and Q&A with Boyko at the Fernie Legion.

Tickets cost $25 or $10 for the movie only. The WWI Internment Operations Day of Recognition will also feature a walking tour, talk and panel discussion. Visit Ferniemuseum.com for more information.

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Director Ryan Boyko with descendent Jerry Bayrak during filming. Submitted
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That Never Happened will screen at Vogue Theatre on Sunday, October 21. Submitted
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Austrian internees at the Morrissey internment camp in 1918. Submitted