Description of Historic Place

Midway, Greenwood and Christina Lake are three small communities connected by Highway 3, the Crowsnest Highway, in the Kootenay-Boundary region of British Columbia. Midway has a border crossing into the U.S., Greenwood is a former copper mining and smelting town, and Christina Lake is a resort community located at the south end of the eponymous lake.

Heritage Value

Connected geographically in the Kootenay-Boundary region of B.C., Midway, Greenwood and Christina Lake together have historic, social, cultural and educational values for being three places of Japanese Canadian internment during World War II when families were uprooted, their rights as Canadian citizens removed, and their possessions taken and sold, and for demonstrating both similarities and differences as sites of Japanese Canadian detention. The three sites are significant for functioning as detention centres for Japanese Canadians after their expulsion from the 100-mile Protected Area along the B.C. coast.

One of the first internment sites to receive Japanese Canadians, in April 1942, Christina Lake is significant because it was a self-supporting internment site, one of several selected sites organized so that family groups who had the financial ability to support themselves could work and live together. A scenic former 1920s summer resort town with a population of only 109 in 1942, Christina Lake is important for its re-use of its abandoned Alpine Inn hotel and surrounding cabins to house interned Japanese Canadian families, part of the B.C. Security Commission strategy to utilize abandoned towns across the province.

It is notable that Japanese Canadian boat builders and their families, such as Saeji Kishi from Steveston in Richmond, were able to continue their traditional boat building businesses at Christina Lake, shipping completed boats to the coast by rail. While the family returned to the coast in 1950, the Kishi boat works in Christina Lake operated until 1968.

Greenwood is particularly significant for its association with the Catholic Franciscan Sisters and Friars of the Atonement in both Vancouver's Powell Street area and Steveston, in Richmond. These organizations were devoted to their Japanese Canadian parishioners, playing a key role in collaborating with Greenwood's mayor to welcome 1,200 Japanese Canadian internees to this former booming mining community, now in decline due to falling copper prices. With Japanese Canadians housed in abandoned hotels and residences, Greenwood is important for the integration of the internees with residents to create a thriving community, with many Japanese Canadians remaining in the town after internment ended in 1949. Their labour force in the local sawmills and their creation of businesses such as groceries, bakeries, shoe repair and others was a major contribution to the resurrection of Greenwood's economy.
Educational value is found in the focus on Japanese Canadian history in the Greenwood Museum and Visitor Centre.

Another mining boom town in decline in the 1940s, Midway is notable as a lesser-known internment site that accommodated internees from Kaslo after the closure of the internment site there, and which has particularly significant economic values. Locally operating sawmills, local stores and other enterprises provided employment for the relocated men, while buildings such as the Spokane Hotel and the pioneer elementary school were quickly re-purposed for the incoming Japanese Canadians.

As with all of B.C.'s internment sites, Midway, Greenwood and Christina Lake represent the forced removal, internment and dispersal of Japanese Canadian citizens, the suspension of freedom and civil rights, and the loss of their livelihoods, possessions and former way of life.

Character-Defining Elements

Not applicable.