Key portions of article, focused on descriptions of the camps, are transcribed.
GEN. OTTER TELLS DAILY NEWS OF ARRANGEMENTS FOR INTERNING CAMPS
– This Paper Gets One of Most Extended Interviews the Distinguished Soldier Has Ever Given – Announces the Main Camps of Ontario – Is Here to Decide Upon Care of Aliens Registered in Port Arthur and Fort William.
General Otter…[is] a special officer in charge of the internment of aliens throughout the Dominion and is here to make arrangements for the care of the 1500 men and women of Austrian, Hungarian, German and Turkish nationality who have been registered
in Port Arthur and Fort William by specially appointed registration clerks during the past few weeks.
[…]
“How do the aliens seem to feel towards the registration and plans for their internment?” the Daily News asked. “I have not seen or heard of much, if any, resentment. A great many of them are more or less indifferent. There may be a few isolated cases
of hostile feeling having been expressed. The attitude of these people is one of the things I am studying.” [said Gen. Otter]
The Daily News told the general of the incidents in Port Arthur last week when a steamer near the government elevator was burned, evidently by an incendiary, and the firing upon a militia guard in the same vicinity the next night.
“Yes, those are the kind of cases I am interested in…Of course it is hard to tell sometimes just want they mean. They man who fired at the sentry may have wanted to kill him, or he may only have been trying to stir up some excitement for the fun of it.”
This, however, took the general into an explanation of the government’s reason for selecting remote points for the main internment camps, such as those along the N.T.R. The reason is, he explained, to get the men as far as possible from contact with the
general public and into places where any individuals with such hostile intentions…would have no opportunity of carrying them into effect.
“We will treat these interned aliens as actual prisoners of war…. We are bound to do that under our agreement at the Hague convention. They will have to work, but we will pay them, besides feeding and housing them. The pay, however, will not be much,
about twenty-five cents a day, or enough to keep them in tobacco.”
[…]
General Otter said it was not the present intention to use the prisoners of war in making roads. “That is work where they would enter into competition with ordinary labour…and it is not our intention to do anything of that kind. The clearing up of the
camp at Petawawa and the experimental farms is work that would hardly be done under normal conditions. Our principal reason for putting them to work is that while they are busy there will not be so much discontent.”
[…]
General Otter also explained to the Daily News the system under which the internment camps will be conducted. “As far as caring for and keeping the prisoners is concerned, the system will be purely military…Each camp will be in charge of a commandant
of the rank of lieutenant-colonel or major. The three principal departments, commissary, medical, and guard, will be military. The labor will be directed by foremen, chosen not as soldiers, but as being capable of having the work done in a way satisfactory
to the government, according to its purpose of using the land for experimental farm purposes.”
[…]
Women of the alien nationalities must also be taken care of when left destitute. Special provision will be made for them in the registration districts and they will not be concentrated at the large camps like the men.
