Canadian government planned to arrest, intern peace activists

Historian uncovers secret prison camp:

The federal government had detailed lists of political activists and subversives it planned to arrest in the aftermath of a nuclear war or other national emergency, keeping such plans on the books until at least the early 1980s, according to new records obtained by an Ottawa historian.

Anywhere from 700 to 2,500 people, including babies, would have been held in internment camps before being shipped off to more permanent detention facilities.

Cold War historian John Clearwater obtained the records through the Access to Information Act while researching his book, Just Dummies: Cruise Missile Testing in Canada, which is being released today.

Clearwater said the federal government was shaken by the widespread opposition to cruise missile testing.

Although he knew the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service kept close tabs on peace groups during that period, Clearwater said he was surprised by the extent of the government's plans during the Cold War to round up citizens it saw as subversive.

Even level-headed countries like Canada can get carried away in their reaction to internal critics. The headline is wrong--no camp was operating, they were just planned. And the list of names was drawn up.

Technorati Tags: civil liberties, dissent, history, Canada

Comments

[prying1]

Came by through Blogger News Network/Leonardo Link - Good story there as this one is. -

What I find more distressing than the Canadian Government looking at lists of names of people that it might consider to be troublemakers is that the newspaper would print such a misleading headline.

Does Canada.com's OTTAWA CITIZEN © The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) have an editor or not? -

Perhaps they don't realize that attention grabbing headlines that prove themselves to be of dubious nature when the story is read can have a tendency to cause distrust amongst it's ultimate customers. The readers.