Camp 30 in Ontario appears to have been saved from demolition after Clarington council agreed to allow the organization that has fought to preserve the site to shoulder the responsibility.
The former prisoner-of-war camp in Bowmanville, Ont., was the only site of fighting in North America when prisoners of war at the camp revolted against Canadian guards in 1942.
On Monday, Clarington council voted unanimously to allow the Jury Lands Foundation to take on the preservation project and fundraise the money to save the camp cafeteria building that was at risk of demolition.
“Jury Lands is adamant that raising the funds to get this done is not going to be an issue and that helps us,” said Clarington Mayor Adrian Foster. “We want to preserve the history.”
Jury Lands in a news release called it a “major milestone.”
“We were thrilled, just thrilled and relieved,” said Marilyn Morawetz, the chair of Jury Lands, in an interview with Global News.
To date, Marawetz says Jury Lands has already secured about $1 million in funding.
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Morawetz has been working for months to preserve the land, building an organization of volunteers, gathering thousands of signatures and offering to help in assessing the property.
The cafeteria has deteriorated over time and saw a partial roof collapse in May 2025.
The municipality has been putting hundreds of thousands of dollars into the structure over the years.
An initial engineering report conducted in 2024 found it would cost about $4.5 million to stabilize the cafeteria.
Five of the heritage buildings at the site and surrounding lands currently belong to Kaitlin Corp., except for the former cafeteria building, which Clarington took possession of in 2022.
In October, the corporation made an offer for the remaining heritage buildings to go under the municipality’s responsibility and, in exchange, the lands of Camp 30 would be deemed parkland.
That same month, the municipality allowed Manorville Homes to take a look at the building.
“They had outrageous numbers for some of the things that were going on and even some of the things that they had listed in those reports really didn’t even make any sense,” said JJ Maclellan, project manager for Manorville.
Manorville says abatement work and a roof restructure are needed. The first phase of the project will involve rehabilitating the building’s shell.
“I think the building looks a lot worse than it is,” Maclellan said.
The work is not done yet, however, as it still needs to raise $1.6 million by December to cover the first phase.
Morawetz said she believes the council’s confidence in her group will help them attract more donations.
“A site like this gives people another dimension to think of how important Canada is on the world stage,” Morawetz said.
— With files from Global News’ Germain Ma
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