Niagara Camp
A military training camp in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario
Contents: About the Collection | About the About Page | Tech
About the Collection
Shortly after Confederation a military reserve for the defence of Canada was established in Niagara. Niagara Camp in Niagara-on-the-Lake was used as a summer training grounds for infantry, cavalry, and artillery. At the start of World War I the Camp was used to train the Second Division of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. In 1917 a group of expatriate Poles and Polish Americans recruited to serve in the war trained at the camp. Over 22,000 volunteers of the Polish diaspora from across Canada and the United States trained at Camp Niagara, known to them as Camp Kosciuszko.
Postcards of Niagara Camp were common. This collection features postcards from the early years of World War I. Residents of the camp would keep postcards as souvenirs, or write to their family and friends and provide them with a glimpse of their surroundings. One postcard reads “Here is where we live. Are getting along fine. Is…better than we thought it was. We are learning something that is of some good to us. Will write later. My hand is shaky so my writing is frightful. From Edwin”.
Technical Credits - CollectionBuilder
This digital collection is built with CollectionBuilder, an open source tool for creating digital collection and exhibit websites that is developed by faculty librarians at the University of Idaho Library following the Lib-STATIC methodology.
This site is built using CollectionBuilder-gh which utilizes the static website generator Jekyll and GitHub Pages to build and host digital collections and exhibits.