Abstract
This chapter pairs P.S. Duffy’s fictional portrayal of Avon Heist, a German-born Canadian citizen and schoolteacher who is placed in an internment camp in Amherst in The Cartographer of No Man’s Land (2013), with an analysis of exquisitely carved wooden objects produced by detainees to argue for a model of ingenious citizenship that reconceives Canadian exceptionalism. Canadians’ lack of familiarity with the Amherst internment camp demonstrates their discomfort in acknowledging publicly a complex history of racism and classism that stains, especially in the case of the Maritimes, a folk culture that is essential to its economic survival. Duffy’s text rejects the positioning of Canada as a site of refuge for marginalized populations by depicting the existence of the Amherst internment camp and exploring its impact on the local community. The Cartographer of No Man’s Land offers a nuanced consideration of a chapter in Canadian history—the First World War—that has been primarily used to bolster Canada’s identity as a distinct country. Instead, Duffy’s book raises critical questions about how to understand the legacy of German immigration to the Maritimes and the ways in which this population has been both embraced and persecuted in the service of building a nation.
Thanks to Nicole Richard and Ray Coulson, curators at the Cumberland County Museum and the Royal Nova Scotia Highlanders Regimental Museum, respectively, for their knowledge, time, and generosity.
Figure 4.1 is from the Cumberland County Museum Archives. The miniature spinning wheel is one example of the fine-woodworking skills used by the prisoners to produce miniature objects they could trade or gift. The photograph, presumably taken by a guard, was part of the internment camp’s efforts to demonstrate that the prisoners were treated well during their time there. Author photos taken March 16, 2017.
Figures 4.2 and 4.3 are of the cello housed in the public exhibition about the regiment and the community at the Royal Nova Scotia Highlanders Regimental Museum. Author photos taken March 17, 2017.
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Notes
- 1.
See also Kassandra Luciuk’s graphic novel Enemy Alien: A True Story of Life Behind Barbed Wire for a compelling “Introduction,” which describes her discovery of a memoir of a Ukrainian Canadian man interned at the Kapuskasing Internment Camp between 1914 and 1917. In it she notes that “[i]nternment … was not a lone enterprise or isolated event; it was part and parcel of Canada’s longstanding and unjust treatment toward populations it deemed ‘undesirable others’” (2020, viii). Luciuk persuasively argues that “internment was not a regretful anomaly, but rather part of the regular functioning of nation building” (viii).
- 2.
The opening sentence of Lauren Berlant’s The Anatomy of National Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia, and Everyday Life states that “Nations provoke fantasy” (1991, 1). While Berlant focuses on the American dimensions of this argument, I argue in the “Preface” that this claim is readily imported to a Canadian context.
- 3.
See http://www.internmentcanada.ca/index.cfm for information about this organization, which “exists to support projects that commemorate and recognize the experiences of all ethno-cultural communities affected by Canada’s first national internment operations of 1914–1920.” It is funded by a ten-million-dollar endowment, which was the result of a 2008 agreement between the federal government of Canada, the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, and the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko.
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Andrews, J. (2023). German Internment Camps in the Maritimes: Another Untold Story in P.S. Duffy’s The Cartographer of No Man’s Land. In: Canada Through American Eyes. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22120-0_4
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