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1907:
At a meeting of 400 strong, the Asiatic Exclusion League is born in Vancouver, with the blessing of a number of city churches, prominent politicians on both sides, and the Trades and Labour Council. Its stated aim: “to keep Oriental immigrants out of British Columbia.”
“After the most thorough examination that the Little Brown Man and his yellow cousins have yet received since the agitation against them, they were unanimously rejected as ‘undesirables’ at Labour Hall last night,” reports the Vancouver Province, gleefully, “their friendly opponents forming an Asiatic Exclusion League, the first in Canada. From every point of view ‘the Jap’ particularly was considered, and from every point of view found wanting in the qualities required in a white man’s country, just because he is ‘a Jap’, and the yellow can never assimilate with the white. Upon this all were agreed.”
The League, which quickly drafts a petition to the federal government in Ottawa, has a number of high-profile supporters, among them Vancouver MP R.G. MacPherson, and Attorney-General William Bowser.
“It is unnecessary for me to tell you that I am in full accord with your ideas of a league,” Bowser writes, in a letter expressing his regret at being unable to attend, “and only hope your efforts will be successful.”
“Let me urge every one of you to become a missionary to preach this gospel of British Columbia as a white man’s country,” MacPherson tells the assembled crowd. “I have been called an agitator. Well, if to strive for that which is in the best interest of one’s country is to be an agitator, then put me down as an agitator.”
“There was,” the Province notes, “an enthusiastic wave of applause.
IMAGE: Kids at play in Vancouver’s Japantown circa 1927. Photo: M. O. Hammond
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Unbelievable that such intolerance was practiced! Makes you wonder about what is happening in London and other parts of Europe right now.
I really think that there is little connection. A quick trip to London would show the writer that immigrants have been permitted to enter in large numbers, and a little research will inform him that they have been given the many benefits of the welfare state.
Undoubtedly there have been racist attitudes on the part of some in England and Europe, but not as far as I can tell in the official government policy to those who have entered.
All nations must exercise some control over immigration when millions of people would like to enter and this would overwhelm a society’s resources. Immigrants must be able to fit in to society if Balkanization is to be avoided.
People from Asia are making great contributions to society in British Columbia, and there would be no excuse for the kind of sneering attitudes to them that were evident in 1907.