Tell all the stories of Kingston

In August 2014 over 100 plaques were simultaneously unveiled across Canada recalling Canada's first national internment operations of 1914-1920. Under the terms of The War Measures Act (that would be deployed again during the Second World War against our fellow Japanese, Italian and German Canadians and, in 1970, against some Quebecois during the October Crisis) thousands of Ukrainians and other Europeans were needlessly imprisoned as "enemy aliens," forced to do heavy labour for the profit of their jailers, and subjected to other state sanctioned indignities, including disenfranchisement and deportation. This all happened not because of any wrong they had done but only because of who they were, where they had come from. Kingston's own Fort Henry was the first permanent internment camp (of 24) established by Ottawa to jail these innocent "enemy aliens". Yet when the City was asked to unveil one of these plaques (provided free of charge) they declined, claiming an existing marker up in Fort Henry was sufficient. So our City became, ironically, the only municipality in Canada that refused the opportunity to recall this historic injustice (and the chance to remind people about the need to remain vigilant in defence of liberty and civil rights, particularly in times of domestic or international crisis, a chore of obvious contemporary relevance). In this discussion about historical memory I submit we need to tell all of the stories that relate to our City, and certainly what happened here in the Great War to "enemy aliens" is one story our City bureaucrats have, for whatever reason, basically ignored. Wonder why?