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Sports and Inter-Ethnic Relations at Camp Petawawa
ENRICO CUMBO

Sports and Ethnicity
Spring/Summer 1985 Vol. 7 No. 1 Pg. 31

Between June 1940 and the autumn of 1943, no less than 400 Italian-Canadian civilians were interned at Camp Petawawa, Ontario. These internees comprised the largest contingent of "enemy aliens" in the camp.1

Although they were generally well treated - the camp did not lack for basic amenities - these men suffered from a variety of physical and psychological deprivations.

The loss of freedom, the confusion attending their arrest, the uncertainty regarding the length of their confinement and the sudden removal from their families and place of business, created a sense of bitterness and frustration among them.

The routine and regularity of life at the internment camp, moreover, resulted in profound ennui, "a sense of boredom, of frustration with the monotonous, mind numbing dullness of Camp life."2

In his study of the camp, Mario Duliani observes, "there were days when I wished I could have grown an extra nose, or three eyes, days when I wished my face would turn inside out. Just to see a change in things. But I didn't change. No one changed. Nothing changed. Always the same passageway, the same camp, the same forest before us, . . . the same barbed wire ...."3

In an effort to allay the frustration and to avert the boredom of the place, the POWS at the camp created a variety of "distractions."4

Among the most popular of these distractions were the recreational and sports activities organised in the camp. "Unless assigned to specific duties," Duliani writes, "virtually all of the internees played games of one kind or the other from morning till evening."5

The games they played ranged from cards and Chinese checkers to ping-pong, bocce and hockey. The materials and equipment for these games were either "home-made," or acquired from the YMCA, the Red Cross and other philanthropic associations.6

The organisation of these activities was encouraged by Petawawa administration. Besides ensuring at least a modicum of physical exercise, organised sports served as "a means of letting off steam," an outlet for the bitterness and frustration that underlay camp life.7

The camp recreational activities - along with its social and cultural programs 8 - served, further, to make the internees feel that they had "a task to fulfill," that they were accomplishing something;9

Confinement did not necessarily mean the subjugation of will or the restraint of talent.10

Accordingly, the administration allowed the internees a large measure of freedom in this area. The recreational, social and cultural events in the camp were run by and for the inmates: "the guards rarely interfered with day-to-day routine inside the compound.''11

There were twelve large barracks, or huts in the camp, each housing sixty or more people.12

Games and sporting events were organised daily within each hut. As the residential distribution of internees was primarily along ethnic, national and ideological lines, social and sports activities differed from hut to hut. Thus, the Germans played volleyball and soccer and the French-Canadians played hockey to a far greater extent than any other group.13

Among the Italian Canadians the most popular recreational activities were morra, bocce ("the Italian national sport") and Italian card games (scopa, briscola, tresette).14

Sports and games in Camp Petawawa, however, also brought about a certain amount of intermingling among inmates from the various ethnic, national and ideological groups. This was in part because of the universal appeal of certain sports such as boxing, chess and even ping-pong and baseball. As Berlino Colangelo recalls, on occasion huts organising essentially "in-house" matches in these sports would ask for volunteers from other huts to fill the team quota.15

The younger internees, moreover, did not restrict themselves to sports with which they were familiar; they were interested in participating in a variety of sports.

Thus, for example, Italian Canadians B. Ferri and Berlino Colangelo first learned to skate and to play hockey at Camp Petawawa. The proximity of the barracks, the shared sense of misery and the informal, spontaneous dynamics of play also promoted interaction among members of otherwise distinct groups.

Thus, for example, in 1941 an annual Field Day was inaugurated in which groups and individuals met to determine the camp champions in a variety of sports and leisure activities. It is significant that the first Field Day was organised during the Christmas season, when the internees felt particularly homesick and dispirited.

The committees in charge of coordinating the Field Day spanned the entire range of groups in the camp. So the members of the entertainment committee included: J.M. Scott, Hughes Bouchard, P. Niklas, Enrico Sbragi and M. Lattoni (Camp Spokesman). For all the ostensible fellowship that such events fostered, however, the many ethnic, national and ideological groups remained largely insular. The communists, in particular, wanted very little to do with fellow inmates whom they viewed as "fascists" and ''Nazis.''16

"The intellectuals," Duliani writes, "separated themselves into a coterie all their own, where they found comfort in the exchange of familiar ideas in a language appropriate to their particular frame of mind. The other groups did the same thing. The sailors [Italians and Germans], above all, remained apart from the other internees and united among themselves as if they were still at sea."17

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In-hut habitation during the long winters exacerbated insularity, and even the daily and occasional sporting matches highlighted national and ideological divisions in the camp.

As William Repka, a trade-unionist from western Canada who was interned in the camp, recalls in a retrospective on Camp Petawawa:

The Germans were very sports-minded, and they organized boxing matches among themselves. However, the Italian defeated the German champion and then challenged our group to a match.

The Italian was a muscular, hairy-chested barrel of a man, with a jaw like a cement block, arms like tree branches, and the neck of a gorilla. They wanted us to put a man to fight him. This posed a problem for our group of editors, writers and union organizers.

It so happened that there was a clean-cut Canadian youth, perhaps 25 years old, in our hut. He was constantly on the parallel bars and the rings, doing exercises for hours.... Some of our people immediately suspected him to be an RCMP plant.

After much discussion somebody had an inspiration. Why not put the cop against the Italian? The man agreed.... When the two stood in the ring, it was a clear illustration of the difference between a lightweight, fast moving athlete and a brawny gorilla.

If the gorilla had even swatted the cop once, he would have flattened him. But for all his lunging, the Italian could never get near the cop.... He kept jabbing and banging at the Italian until the bigger man became exhausted, stumbled and hit out blindly.... There was also a chess tournament in the camp. The Germans and Italians played each other and this time a German won.

The German was blond, 200 pounds, 6 foot 2 inches, and a perfect specimen of humanity and the master race. He challenged one of us to a match.

Here our problem was a good deal simpler. Saunders, our champion, weighed 110 pounds, was 5 foot 4 inches, and had thick glasses - clearly one of nature's inferior specimens.

The Germans were all chuckling that their super race, as exemplified by their champion, was going to mop up the floor with this Jew in the chess tournament. But to the amazement and chagrin of the master race, Saunders, a mathematician, wiped the floor with the blond giant.18

As these examples suggest, matches of all types often became national contests, pitting "Germans" against "Italians," or "Canadians" against "fascists."

Their shared fate as POWS did not suffice to override the bitter ethnic and ideological rivalries which divided Camp Petawawa inmates.

NOTES

1. Interviews with B. Ferri, B. Colangelo, G. Boccaccio and F. Zaffiro. Observe also, Mario Duliani, La Citta Senza Donne (Montreal, 1946), passim.

2. John Melady, Escape From Canada! (Toronto, 1981), pp. 4647, 76.

3. Duliani, La Citta Senza Donne, p. 218.

4. Ibid., p. 1 83.

5. Ibid., p. 185; interviews with B. Ferri and B. Colangelo.

6. Duliani, La Citta Senza Donne, p. 184; Melady, Escape From Canada!, p. 52; Eric Koch, Deemed Suspect (Toronto, 1980), p. 147; William Repka and K.M. Repka, eds., Dangerous Patriots (Vancouver, 1982), p. 147.

7. Interview with B. Ferri.

8. Among the various social and cultural events within the camp were theatrical and musical performances, language classes, public readings and handicraft exhibits. See Duliani, La Citta Senza Donne, passim.

9. Koch, Deemed Suspect, p.148.

10. Virtually all of the Italian-Canadian internees left the camp with carved mementoes of one kind or another. Amateur talent, as B. Ferri observed, was not only manifest in the sculpturing abilities of the inmates, but in the literary, dramatic and musical accomplishments of many internees.

11. Melady, Escape From Canada!, p. 80; Duliani, La Citta Senza Donne, pp. 295, 299; Koch, Deemed Suspect, pp. 146ff.

12. Duliani, La Citta Senza Donne, pp. 29. 42-43, 59-60.

13. Interviews with B. Ferri and B. Colangelo.

14. Duliani, La Citta Senza Donne, pp. 123ff.

15. Interview with B. Colangelo.

16. Repka, Dangerous Patriots, pp. 140, 146, 153-54, 155-56. Though interned as "enemy aliens," the majority of the Italian-Canadian internees were neither fascists - enemies - in the political sense of the term, nor aliens, judging by the length of their Canadian residency.

17. Duliani, La Citta Senza Donne, p. 242.

18. Repka, Dangerous Patriots, p. 155.

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