Georgia Straight: Asian-history anniversaries begin to coalesce
Published by Patrick September 22nd, 2006 in News / OpEd, Racially Visible Tags: oped, Racially Visible.via BC Human Rights Committee
History is never neutral. Framing is everything. Take Vancouver’s anti-Asian riots of 1907.
On September 7 of that year, the Asiatic Exclusion League led a parade to City Hall at Main and Hastings streets, calling for an end to Asian immigration to British Columbia. More than 8,000 people, including local politicians, labour leaders, and members of fraternal organizations, rallied with banners reading Stand for a White Canada.
Only 2,000 could fit in City Hall, so crowds drifted to Chinatown, a block away. A rock thrown through a store window touched off a rampage of smashed signs and glass, and looting that continued into neighbouring Japantown, where the crowd faced some resistance before police showed up to quell the violence.
In the following days, Chinese and Japanese armed themselves with guns, preparing for another siege. They held a general strike, refusing to go to their jobs in homes, restaurants, and mills.
William Lyon Mackenzie King, then federal deputy minister of labour, held hearings on the riot. Almost a year later, damages were awarded: $26,000 to the Chinese, $9,000 to the Japanese.
Henry Yu, an associate professor of history at UBC, sees 2007 not just as the 100th anniversary of the 1907 riots but marking three other key years in the history of Asian immigration to Pacific Canada: 1947, 1967, and 1997.