Before The Age of the Donald - Part Fifteen by Dave Jaffe

   Before the Age of the Donald - Part Fifteen
     


    The wealthy people of B.C. hired many Chinese immigrants to work in their homes or at their companies. Yet they too didn't like the Chinese. "Their religion, notions of honour and rank, mode of thought, dress, amusement, and sense of beauty are not to our taste," said the famous judge, Matthew Baillie Begbie of the Chinese. "Their language appears to us ridiculous."
      The Chinese, Begbie said, despised the achievements of white people. "Yet they work more steadily, and with better success than white men."
    White working people and some small business people were far more racist than the judge. They hated the Chinese and felt threatened by these people whom they called 'Orientals'. Anti-Chinese riots broke out in Vancouver in 1887 and again in 1907. In 1907 white people also attacked the growing community of Japanese immigrants. But the Japanese, unlike the Chinese community fought back and routed the hostile mob.
     A racist Anti-Exclusion League was founded and lobbied the federal government to act against all Asian immigrants. It also found support among provincial politicians. The federal government slapped a head tax on Asian immigrants that soon climbed to $500 a person by 1903. This was an immense sum  at that time, worth thousands of dollars to-day. It surely discouraged many Asian immigrants from coming to Canada.
     White racism was also unleashed against Sikh immigrants. The Japanese ship the 'Komagata Maru' tried to stop in Vanouver in 1914 and unload its passengers. Yet with more than 350 Sikhs on board, this proved impossible to do. The officials at the port refused to allow the Sikhs to come on shore.
       The Sikhs quite rightly objected to this racist act for as they pointed out they came from India and were British subjects. After fights and violence between the Sikh passengers and police, the Canadian navy ship towed the 'Komagata' out to sea. It left Canada forever.
     In 1923 the federal government passed the Chinese Immigration Act and no more Chinese people came to Canada until the late 1960's, when Canada changed its immigration laws. By this time say the early 1920's, all immigration from Asia was stopped. It only started up again in the late 1960's. Yet more racist acts fell on the Japanese in the 1940's.