Lesson: New Lives

Objectives

Students learn about the release of the internees from internment, their subsequent contributions to Canada and, through video, their perspectives on internment today.

Links to Historical Thinking Concepts:

Use Primary Source Evidence – Students analyze documents related to the release of individual internees, and video of former internees reflecting on the significance of their internment.

Take Historical Perspective – Students consider how internees view their wartime experiences today.

Understand the Ethical Dimensions of History – Students consider whether Canada’s wartime internment of refugees was justified.

Release Documents

Let students explore this page of the website or pre-assign Reading: Release.

Students examine the documents in Dossier: Release. In pairs or small groups, examine one of the documents closely and respond to the following questions:

• Who created the document?
• Who is the document about? What information about the individual does it provide?
• What insights about the conditions of release does the document provide?

Allow students to browse, or briefly summarize for them, the content on the following web pages: “Publicity,” “The War Years” and “The Legacy of Internment.”

Video Screening: Postscript

Let students explore this page of the website or pre-assign Reading: Remarkable Achievements.

In pairs (or, as computers permit, individually or in groups), students view Video: Postscript, which features four chapters in which internees discuss the following themes:

• Justice
• Identity
• Legacies
• The Holocaust

Students can watch all four themes, or focus on a single theme. Groups then present on one theme to their classmates, responding to the following questions:

• What are the key points or ideas expressed by the former internees?
• What comment struck you most and why?
• What question of your own would you ask to the former internees?

The class debriefs about the internees’ reflections as a whole, using the questions above as a guide. Additional prompts for each chapter include:

• Justice: Do you think Canada’s wartime internment of refugees was justified?
• Identity: How do the former internees’ comments about their identities, Canadian and otherwise, relate to your own feelings of identity?
• Legacies: How were the individuals affected by their internment experiences?
• The Holocaust: What are your thoughts about the individuals’ comments on the relationship between internment and the Holocaust?

Research Project: Internees Today

Students select one of the internees featured in the videos on this website and write a biographical sketch, highlighting their postwar accomplishments.

Extension: Other Histories of Internment

Students write a research paper about another episode of Canadian internment. Second World War examples include: the internment of Japanese Canadians, the internment of Italian Canadians and the internment of German Canadians. An example from the First World War: the internment of Ukrainian-Canadians, refugees from the Austro-Hungarian Empire who were interned as “enemy aliens.”