Racism in Canada

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many people believed that Canada “belonged” to the white people who lived there. The people believed people who live in such countries as Japan and China should not enter and live in Canada. They would take jobs and businesses away because they would work for lower pay. Many Americans believed the same thing.

An Anti-Oriental movement was formed in 1905. They were known ad the Asiatic Exclusion League. Their goal was to remove all Asians from North America. In 1907, this group moved north to Vancouver, Canada. About 9,000 white people who were protestors attacked Asian businesses. Destroying signs and smashing windows. The next morning, many Asian store-owners bought guns and lots of ammo for protection. Five days later, after the group formed in Vancouver, it disbanded. The ideas that created it still remain in talk in some places in Canadian society. Even today, some people still talk about limiting immigration, so that there are enough jobs for “real Canadians”. This was only one of the protests of Asians.

Here is a list of racist acts that happened in Canada from the 1950’s to the 1980’s:

• A Black carpenter and veteran of WWII was hated until he was eventually forced to leave Dresden, Ontario because of his leadership to unite local restaurants and barbershops
• In the 1950’s, Joe Drummond, a Black resident of Saint John, New Brunswick, could not get a haircut anywhere in his own city.
• In 1954, the Prime Minister of Barbados, Grantly Adams, was denied a room in a Montreal hotel due to “policy”.
• First Nations children were regularly taken from their families and put into residential schools to “unlearn” their culture and language.
• In the 1960’s, anti Semitic slogans were painted on buildings in Montreal and carved on objects at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto
• In the spring of 1975, a 15 year old black child was shot to death by a white attacker. The shooting itself was not necessarily racially-motivated, but the words “no more nigger meetings” were written on a wall at the church funeral.
• The Federal Government continued to refuse to provide equivalent compensation to Chinese-Canadians for the Head Tax their ancestors were obliged to pay to enter Canada as cheap labour earlier in the century.
• In 1984, in a small town near Toronto, swastikas were painted on windows and the front door of a synagogue and posters of Hitler were attached to utility poles.
• Early in 1977, a young man from Guyana was knocked down by several white men who called him a “Paki”. They responded violently when he attempted to explain that he was not from Pakistan. This also occurred in Toronto.