Angler POW escape In April 1941 , inmates at the Angler POW Camp near Neys Provincial Park on the north shore of Lake Superior planned the largest escape from a Canadian POW camp during World War II . The escape was the largest of its kind in Ontario , Canada . Angler Camp background . The Angler Camp was designed to hold prisoners who were a threat to Canada . As a result , several German POWs were held there ; however , the Angler Camp held not only enemy soldiers but also innocent Japanese Canadian citizens ( who were not placed in the camp until about a year after the escape attempt ) . There were over 650 people of Japanese descent in the camp by the summer of 1942 . Though they stayed in a camp with people who had threatened safety of Canadian citizens , the innocent Japanese Canadians had done nothing but been born into a Japanese family . They were not alone , however , as many other Canadian and American prisoner of war camps of World War II also held innocent citizens of foreign descent . Plan of Escape . The prisoners ’ plan to escape included tools made from whatever they could find at the camp . For example , compasses were made from magnetized needles , prisoner uniforms were modeled to look like civilian clothes , and candles were made from tin cans filled with fat . A radio was obtained by blackmailing a guard and hidden inside a model of the German battleship , " Bismarck " . A tunnel was dug 45 m ( 150 ft ) long that reached outside the wall , with side tunnels entering some of the barracks . The ground under and around the camp was mostly sand , making it easier for the prisoners to dig a tunnel . This , however , also made the ground less stable , and the prisoners faced the challenge of supporting the tunnel . They made reinforcements from wood braces taken from under the barracks . Unfortunately , three days of rain began to fill the tunnel with water . By noon on April 18 , 1941 , the day of the escape , the tunnel was already filled with 30 cm ( 12 inches ) of water . That night , 80 prisoners attempted to escape ; 28 made it outside the walls . The initial intent was for 100 prisoners to escape , but the escape was interrupted , when a guard heard noises made by the prisoners and alerted the rest of the camp . Killed or Recaptured . Five of the escaped prisoners were found sleeping in a construction site , and were shot . The original report stated that they had rushed the two Canadian soldiers who found them , but later research indicated that four had been shot while still lying down , killing two of them , while the fifth had run into a nearby forest , where he was quickly captured . Four others boarded a boxcar on a freight train , but were arrested by Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers riding on board . Most of the others were quickly apprehended . However , two prisoners , Horst Liebeck and Karl Heinz - Grund , boarded a westbound freight train and made it to Medicine Hat , Alberta before being recaptured and returned to the Angler camp . Though they were given 28 days of solitary confinement at the Camp for their actions , they were asked to sign autographs in Alberta before returning and were greeted upon their return by the Commandant who said , “ As a sportsman , I congratulate you … ” Horst Liebeck was sent back to Germany after the War with the other POWs , but he later returned to Canada and got a job there . Remembering the Escape and Camp . Doug Mackey of Community Voices wrote an article called " Prisoners of War : Lest We Forget " that talks about the Gravenhurst Camp and Angler Camp , telling how important it is to remember the camps and the treatment of the prisoners in them .