Locked in the Citadel

This wonderful early photo of Halifax was taken from the grounds of the Citadel looking north towards the naval yards. Those naval yards are still there today, and Halifax is the homeport of Canada's Atlantic fleet. There is a good chance that if you are standing on this spot today, you can see some of the Halifax-class frigates or Kingston-class coastal defence vessels, which form the backbone of Canada's navy. The ship whose superstructure appears in the above "now" photo is the MV Asterix, a Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) supply vessel.
These naval yards furnish an explanation for why Halifax exists today. In 1749, the British founded this settlement as a naval base and supply centre that could contest French control of Canada's eastern seaboard. As soon as they arrived, they built the Citadel to dominate the harbour from a great height and protect Halifax from assault on the landward side.
The history of Halifax is relatively unique in Canada in that the city was founded primarily upon military-strategic grounds. The site was well chosen. In the last 250 years, the port's strategic location has helped it play a critical—some would argue occasionally decisive—role in the Seven Years' War, the American Revolution, the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and the two world wars.

This photo from the end of the 19th century shows British artillerymen in front of the Citadel loading their field guns to fire a salute. The fort visible behind them is the same fort that exists today and the fourth to be built on this spot. The first was little more than a wooden palisade, part of a network of five forts and city walls built around Halifax in the 1750s to protect from Mi'kmaq raids.
The second and third citadels were built shortly thereafter, as Britain sought to rapidly scale up Halifax's defences during the American Revolution and then again during the French Revolutionary Wars. Construction of the fourth citadel, which still stands today, was prompted by fears of American invasion. If Americans were to seize Halifax, they could cut Canada off from British support and make its defence impossible.
The fourth citadel was built over a 28-year period starting in 1828, and it was far larger than its predecessors. It represented the peak of star fort design, an art and science that had been evolving since the introduction of gunpowder and cannons in Europe in the 15th century, and which culminated in the mid-19th century.
The concept behind star forts is not difficult to grasp. Cannons had rendered the walled castles of the Middle Ages obsolete. In response, castles were sunk into the ground and surrounded by gently sloping walls of earth that could easily absorb the blows from cannon balls. They were shaped like stars so that attacking troops could be raked by fire from multiple directions.

This image shows the Town Clock, which was built at the start of the 1800s. Beyond it is the harbour, today obscured by proliferating high-rise buildings.
Halifax's harbour remained critical in the British Empire's next major war: the First World War. In the decades leading up to this global conflict, the British gradually ceded control of Halifax's military facilities to the Canadian government, although when war broke out, British warships were rebased in this port. Those ships then ranged out into the Atlantic and down south to the Caribbean to hunt for German merchantmen, commerce raiders, and U-boats. If they captured German ships, the crews were often interned here. As Roger Marsters writes in his study of the internment camp at the Citadel, "Internment operations in Halifax were part of a broader effort to dismantle German naval power and overseas empire in the Atlantic basin."¹

In this photo, a unit of the Halifax Rifles marches out of the Citadel during the Second World War. During the First World War, most of the internees housed at the Citadel were German sailors who had been seized overseas. They were prisoners of war according to the legal definition, unlike those in other camps in Canada where the Canadian government struggled to find a passable legal justification for classifying interned civilian immigrants as prisoners of war.
Many of these sailors were seized on German merchant vessels, but the Royal Navy also had a habit of stopping and searching neutral vessels and arresting any German (or sometimes Austrian) reservists that they found aboard. Another group of internees came from the crew of the German auxiliary cruiser Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse.
As Marsters writes about the prisoners taken at sea, the "biographies of internees detained at Halifax… offer a remarkable snapshot of a highly mobile, interconnected world suddenly disrupted by the outbreak of war."¹

In this photo, guards stand before the gate of the imposing stone Citadel. When Canada entered the war, there were hundreds of thousands of German- and Austro-Hungarian-born immigrants living in the country. A number of them had been trained as reservists in the armed forces of their homelands. Thus, any who were caught trying to return to their Fatherlands to fight in the war were arrested and interned—and many were sent to the Citadel.
Simultaneously, Canada was swept up in a wave of mass hysteria about potential spies and saboteurs amongst the immigrant population. The War Measures Act reclassified anyone born in an enemy nation as an "enemy alien" and severely curtailed their civil rights. Any whose loyalties were deemed suspect were interned too, even if they weren't reservists and were following regulations.
The legal boundaries around who could be interned were continually expanded throughout the war, sweeping up more and more people on increasingly arbitrary and cruel grounds. In the end, most of the victims of Canada's internment operations were Ukrainians who had been born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Their stories are covered in great detail in tours at other camps across the rest of Canada. In Halifax, however, most of the internees who were Canadian-resident "enemy aliens" were either reservists in enemy armies or accused of disloyalty to Canada.

As one of the few active military facilities in Canada in 1914, the Citadel was an obvious choice to hold internees. The Citadel's internment camp went on to operate for two years starting that October.
In addition, Melville Island (a misnomer for a small, rocky peninsula south of Halifax) also served as an internment camp from September 1914 until January 1915, a role it had previously fulfilled in the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. In 1916, the Citadel's remaining internees were transferred to a purpose-built camp established at Amherst, which would remain in operation for almost a year after the end of the war.
In total, 253 internees passed through the Citadel, including 195 Germans, 25 Austrians, 4 Turks, and 29 classified as "Other". Of those, 161 were sailors captured at sea, and a further 51 were enemy aliens living in Canada before the war. There were also 26 internees who were captured in transit.¹

This photo shows a military band at attention in front of the Cavalier Block (right), which housed the internees. One particularly tragic group of internees kept at the Citadel were those "enemy aliens" who had dared to enlist in Canada's armed forces. Some were able to get past initial screenings and got as far as training camps in England before they were denounced as enemy aliens. These Canadian soldiers were then arrested and returned to Canada in chains. Twenty-three of them were interned at the Citadel.¹

This photo shows a view of the Cavalier Block when it served as the main habitation block for the internees. A number of men lounge on the second floor balcony as others pace inside the wire, which was the only physical activity to which they were entitled.
The internees at the Citadel lived in extreme isolation and under a regime of military discipline and security that surpassed most other internment stations. The fact that the internment camp was inside an active military facility meant that camp authorities were reluctant to ever let the internees out of their tiny barbed wire enclosure for any reason. The years of strictly enforced boredom and rigid routine took a serious toll on their mental health.

This image shows a garrison unit outside of the Cavalier Block. Unlike more remote internment camps, the Citadel was close to active military operations and therefore also close to the attentions of senior commanders and to the prying eyes of the public. This generally meant that the guards adhered to military regulations, and there are apparently no reports of cruelty or torture occurring here. Nevertheless, sanctioned punishments were meted out to those who showed insubordination or tried to escape.
Since the prisoners had so much time on their hands—almost to the point of driving them mad—it is no surprise that there were some breathtaking escape attempts.

This photo shows the view of Halifax's harbour from the ramparts, a view which was denied to the internees for the duration of their years in captivity here.
From May 1915, the Citadel's internees were all officer-class internees, and therefore merited better treatment and conditions according to the laws of war. The 146 enlisted men (second-class prisoners) were transferred to the new camp in Amherst, Nova Scotia. This left 80 officer-class prisoners in the Citadel (78 Germans and two Austrians) until October of 1916. Finally, as part of a policy to consolidate the camps, those prisoners were also sent to Amherst, and the Halifax Citadel Internment Camp was closed. By that time, the 24 internment facilities across Canada had been reduced to four.