Tucked along Highway 9 and the Canadian National Railway corridor, Munson sits roughly 13 kilometres north of the well-known Town of Drumheller in central Alberta. The village occupies a modest land area of 2.56 square kilometres, giving it a population density of approximately 66.4 persons per square kilometre as recorded in the 2021 census. That census counted 170 residents living in 74 of the village’s 82 private dwellings, reflecting a decline of about 11.5 percent from the 192 people recorded in 2016. The 2016 count itself represented a drop from 204 residents in 2011, indicating a gradual and ongoing reduction in the local population over successive census periods.
Munson carries a significant and sobering piece of Canadian history. Before the end of World War I, the area served as the site of a Ukrainian Canadian internment camp, where non-citizen immigrant prisoners were put to work labouring on the railway. The camp was a collection of makeshift shelters constructed from railway cars, and it remained in operation until March 21, 1919. This chapter places Munson within a broader national reckoning with wartime policies that affected thousands of people of Ukrainian and other Eastern European heritage across Canada.