The History of
Racism in Canada
The First Nations lost their land and rights to
Europeans over the last few hundred years.
• Slavery was legal and common practice in
Canada until the British Empire banned it in
1834.
British North America Act (1867)
• The British North
America Act
recognized certain
rights for religious
groups and for
linguistic groups, but
nothing for equality
of gender, race or
colour.
The Indian Act (1876)
"A person means an
individual other than an
Indian."
Section 12 of the Indian Act (1880).
• The Indian Act - was a series of racist social control laws
enacted by the Federal government of Canada to place
Aboriginal Peoples of Canada in the position of a colonized
people.
• Assimilation – the process through which a person or group of a
minority culture is absorbed into the majority culture, losing the
distinct features of the minority people.
– Examples: The Canadian government assimilated First Nations people
by putting them on reservations, which were often too small for traditional
hunting. The government also put the kids into residential schools.
• The Indian Act regulated and controlled virtually every aspect of
Aboriginal people’s life, including Sundance and Potlatch
gatherings, which were the major social, economic and political
institutions of the First Nations tribes.
• It wasn’t until 1951 that Parliament repealed the laws
prohibiting potlatch.
Chinese Head Tax
• 17,000 Chinese workers came to Canada to build the
Canadian Pacific Railway through the Rockies to the
Pacific ocean, 1,500 of which died in the process.
• Chinese who wanted to immigrate to Canada were
forced to pay a head tax of $50 in 1885 after the
completion of the CPR. From 1886 to 1894, 12,197
Chinese people immigrated to Canada and paid the tax.
• In 1901, responding to public pressure about a
continuing influx of Chinese, Ottawa doubled the head
tax to $100.
• The head tax was then increased to $500 in 1903, which
was approximately the same as two years wages.
• From 1886 to 1923, the Canadian
government collected more than $22
million in head tax payments.
• Ethnocentric: a belief that one’s own race
or culture is superior to others.
Anti-Asian Riot in Vancouver (1907)
• September 8th, 1907 – The Vancouver Trades
and Labour Council formed the Asiatic Exclusion
League, which organized a giant antiimmigration rally at city hall to protest against
giving jobs to Asian immigrants.
• After anti-Asian speeches about the "yellow
peril," a riot took place where a mob of 7,000
people marched through the streets of
downtown Vancouver, smashing windows and
destroying signs on Oriental businesses.
• In Chinatown, they looted and burned thousands
of dollars worth of Chinese property.
Chinese Exclusion Act (1923)
• The Canadian Federal government replaced the Chinese
head tax with Chinese Immigration Act or Canadian
Chinese Exclusion Act, which had the effect of barring
Chinese immigrants from the country altogether.
• The Chinese Immigration Act wasn’t repealed until 1947,
and it wasn't until 1967 that the final elements of the
Canadian Chinese Exclusion Act were completely
eliminated.
> July 1, 1923, is known as "humiliation day" in
the Chinese Canadian community.
Komagata Maru (1914)
•
In 1908, the Canadian government imposed a "continuous passage rule"
which forbid immigrants from making a direct journey to Canada. This
measure was directly aimed at India immigrants, since there was no direct
voyage from India at that time.
•
In 1914, a group of 376 Sikh’s from India challenged this restriction, arriving
in Vancouver on board the Komagatu Maru. After two months in the harbour
and an unsuccessful court challenge, they were forced to return to India.
•
The boat sailed back to Calcutta where it was met by police, and 20 people
were killed as they disembarked while others were jailed.
Canada’s response to the Holocaust
•
Canada’s record for accepting Jews
fleeing the Holocaust was among the
worst in the Western world.
•
Canadian policy towards Jewish
refugees was summed up in the words
of one official: "None is too many."
•
As Nazi-inspired hatred spread
through Europe, many Jews tried to
head to safety in North America.
However, Prime Minister MacKenzie
King and Immigration Director F.C.
Blair kept the number of Jewish
refugees small.
> Between the years 1933 and
1945, less than 5,000 Jews were
accepted into Canada.
S.S. St. Louis (1939)
• In May 1939, 907 German Jews left Hamburg aboard the SS St.
Louis with visas allowing them to enter Cuba. But when they arrived
in Havana harbour, Cuba denied the refugees entrance. The St.
Louis was then turned away from Panama, Argentina, Colombia,
Chile and Paraguay.
• Canada was the last hope for the refugees aboard that ship, but the
Canadian government refused them entry. The St. Louis sailed back
to Europe. Very few of the refugees survived the Holocaust.
The Japanese Canadian Internment (1942)
• During the Second World War, 22,000 Japanese
Canadians were expelled from within a hundred miles of
the Pacific.
• Thousands were detained, and at the end of the war,
"repatriation" to Japan was encouraged.
• 4,000 people left, two thirds of them Canadian citizens.
Japanese internment camp in British Columbia during WWII
Who is Rosa Parks?
 On December 1st, 1955, an African-American
woman named Rosa Parks refused to obey an
Alabama bus drivers order to move to the back of
the bus to make room for a white passenger.
 Her courage helped spark the American civil rights
movement.
But who is Viola Desmond?
Viola Desmond
(The Canadian Rosa Parks)
• On November 8th,1946, successful African-Canadian
businesswoman Viola Desmond refused to sit in the balcony
reserved for blacks at a theater in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
• She was forcefully removed from the theatre, arrested, and thrown
in jail overnight.
• She was then tried without counsel for attempting to defraud the
Federal Government as she hadn't paid a 1-cent tax to sit
downstairs, despite her offer to pay the difference. The theater
owner would not sell it to her because she was black.
• She was convicted and fined $20 and ordered to spend 30 days in
jail.
• She took her case to the Supreme Court of Canada, but lost.
First Nations right to vote
• It wasn’t until 1960 that First Nations
people got the right to vote in Canadian
federal elections.
• This was the first time that the government
acknowledged citizenship for Aboriginal
Peoples without the condition of the
assimilation into the Canadian white
society.
Immigration to Canada
• Canada adopted a “merit system” in 1967 and
removed all references to race and ethnicity,
which had limited admission of people from
Asian, African and Caribbean countries.
Residential Schools
• Attendance at residential schools was made mandatory by
the government in 1920 for Native Canadian children
between the ages of 7 and 16.
• The "aggressive assimilation" program was dedicated to
eradicating the languages, traditions and cultural practices
of native Canadians.
• Children were forced to leave their parents and were
harshly punished for speaking their own languages or
practicing their religions.
• The Canadian government forced about 150,000 First
Nations children into government-financed residential
schools where many suffered physical and sexual abuse.
• The residential schools have been linked to the
widespread incidence of alcoholism, suicide and family
violence in many First Nations communities.
A time of healing…
Constitution Act (1982)
• The Constitution Act of 1982 included the
Charter of Rights and Freedoms that guaranteed
fundamental freedoms of conscience, thought,
speech and peaceful assembly, official language
rights and equality rights without discrimination
on the grounds of race, ethnic origins, religion,
sex, age or disability and official language rights.
• On September 22nd, 1988, Prime Minister Brian
Mulroney made a speech in the House of Commons to
acknowledge the past injustices suffered by Canadians
of Japanese ancestry.
• A $21,000 per person settlement was reached with the
National Association of Japanese Canadians for the
internments and abuses of World War Two.
• Prime Minister Harper made a full apology
to the Chinese-Canadian community in
2006 for the head tax imposed on Chinese
immigrants who came to Canada between
1885 and 1923.
• In June 2008, Prime Minister Harper made an official apology at the
House of Commons for the governments treatment of children in
Indian residential schools, stating "Today, we recognize that this
policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm and has no
place in our country."
• The federal government agreed to pay $1.86 billion to surviving
residential students, and to establish a truth and reconciliation
commission to document the experiences of children who attended
the schools.
• Prime Minister Harper apologized in September 2008 for
the 1914 Komagata Maru incident while speaking to a
crowd of about 8,000 people in Surrey, B.C.
• But members of Sikh community and an organization of
the descendants of victims of the 1914 tragedy rejected
the apology, demanding that the Prime Minister do the
same in the House of Commons.