Primarily immigrant settlers of Ukrainian origin, they were sent to prisoner of war camps—most located in the Canadian hinterland—where they would work on government public projects as military conscript labour.

As part of this relocation process, sixty-five internees were sent in October 1918 to an internment facility at Munson, Alberta where they laboured on the railway.

Growing resistance among the internees and lack of confidence in the military guard prompted authorities to abandon the Eaton siding location for more secure facilities.

On March 21, twenty-four days after the facility was initially established, the internees were transported by rail to a military installation at Amherst, Nova Scotia where they were to be processed for deportation.

In 2005, as part of a national campaign to seek official acknowledgement and redress for the World War I internment of Ukrainians and others, the Prairie Centre for the Study of Ukrainian Heritage, an academic unit at the University of Saskatchewan, in association with the Saskatchewan Railway Museum commissioned and unveiled on the original site a bronze and tindal-stone memorial.