23 Enemy Alien - A True Story of Life Behind Barbed Wire

This graphic history tells the story of Canada’s first national internment operations through the eyes of John Boychuk, an internee held in Kapuskasing from 1914 to 1917. The story is based on Boychuk’s actual memoir, which is the only comprehensive internee testimony in existence.

The novel follows Boychuk from his arrest in Toronto to Kapuskasing, where he spends just over three years. It details the everyday struggle of the internees in the camp, including forced labour and exploitation, abuse from guards, malnutrition, and homesickness. It also documents moments of internee agency and resistance, such as work slowdowns and stoppages, hunger strikes, escape attempts, and riots.

Little is known about the lives of the incarcerated once the paper trail stops, but Enemy Alien subsequently traces Boychuk’s parole, his search for work, his attempts to organize a union, and his ultimate settlement in Winnipeg. Boychuk’s reflections emphasize the much broader context in which internment takes place. This was not an isolated incident, but rather part and parcel of Canadian nation building and the directives of Canada’s settler colonial project.

Kassandra Luciuk is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. Her work explores how changing notions of Canadian citizenship interacted with ethnic identity during the Cold War. In a broader sense, her research interests include Canada, migration/ethnicity, state formation, and nationalism.

nicole marie burton is a comic artist and children’s book illustrator living in Ottawa, Ontario. Her published works include The Boy Who Walked Backwards, The Beast: Making a Living on a Dying Planet, Enemy Alien: A True Story of Life Behind Barbed Wire, and Coal Mountain, part of the comics anthology Drawn to Change: Graphic Histories of Working Class Struggle. She is a founding member of the Ad Astra Comix publishing collective.