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02:04que nós somos.
02:16Os pessoas que chegaram aqui primeiro, que não eram indígenas,
02:19basicamente, britânica e espanyol exploradores,
02:22foram cruzados do pacífico do Asia.
02:25Então, em porto, o seu avião era sempre
02:28chinês, pacífico islanders, nade-o-háweais.
02:35Então, no momento em que os britânicos começaram a se descançar aqui,
02:39então, no momento em que os britânicos começaram a se descançar aqui,
02:41eles também foram chinês aqui.
02:45Agora, não dizem que os britânicos são fundos para o britânicos colombianos.
02:52Não, eles eram todos não-indígenas pessoas
02:55de todo mundo em todo o mundo.
02:57Mas eles não eram reconhecidos em britânicos colombianos
03:01até que, muito mais recentemente, as pessoas se tornaram mais consciente.
03:04A partir do mundo do Brasil,
03:22a partir do Brasil,
03:26a partir do Brasil.
03:27foi visto como um lugar de oportunidade.
03:29Então há muita pobreza e desprezência em China.
03:33A lot de Chinas que vêm para norte-americanos
03:34para conseguir fortunes.
03:36E um dos primeiros momentos
03:38foi para chegar ao ponto
03:39onde você pode voltar para a cidade que você cresceu.
03:42Você pode voltar, literalmente,
03:43com um cheio full de coisas,
03:45vestir-se e começar a dar dar as festas.
03:48A ideia era não deixar sua família preocupada.
03:51Então, as pessoas aqui
03:52que eles falaram ou exageraram
03:55sua história de sucesso em todo norte-americano,
03:58que é conhecido como Gold Mountain.
04:00E então, geração depois geração
04:03para o Brasil,
04:04porque eram men que vêm para visitar.
04:08E foi claro que em Gold Mountain,
04:10eles foram fechados.
04:12Então, há muitos jovens dreaming.
04:14Eu quero ser esse cara.
04:16E então, a rua foi fechada.
04:21A rua foi fechada.
04:21As a rua foi fechada,
04:23as contratações responsáveis
04:24para acumularem a rua
04:26recrutam grandes números
04:27de trabalhadores de China.
04:29E eles chegam em grandes números,
04:32tens de mil,
04:33e tomam o trabalho
04:35mais difícil,
04:35mais difícil de construir a rua.
04:38A maior razão é porque
04:40você pode transportar grandes números
04:42de pessoas
04:43por船,
04:44para o Brasil,
04:45para o norte-americano
04:46para o norte-americano
04:47Muito bem.
04:51Muito bem.
04:51Se você forneceu
04:52por船,
04:53para chegar ao norte-americano,
04:55você basicamente
04:56iria ao mundo.
04:57Mas o chinês
04:58podem vir bem facilmente.
05:01Então, a razão
05:01que os chinês
05:02construíram a rua,
05:03porque até eles construíram,
05:04você não conseguiu
05:05grandes números
05:06de trabalhadores
05:07do norte-americano
05:08do norte-americano.
05:08do norte-americano
05:08do norte-americano
05:08no norte-americano
05:15do norte-americano
05:21A geografia aqui é muito trechante, você tem canyões, você tem montanhas, e você tem
05:25todos esses passos difíceis.
05:27E os chineses foram contratados porque eles estavam tentando um trabalho que era perigoso
05:30e eles eram considerados por a CBR como dispostosável.
05:37Porque o trabalho era tão perigoso, havia muitos casos e fatais, e muitos deles era
05:43porque eles foram mortos de rock.
05:46Lembrem-se, quando eles foram mortos de rock, eles foram mortos, eles foram mortos, não
05:49eles foram mortos, eles foram mortos, eles foram mortos e eles foram mortos.
05:53É não como se você era um jovem de um rúo vila de China e você era para ir
05:57para ir a vida de nitroglycerina e eu quero morar por morrer de nitroglycerina e eu quero
06:00morrer de rock que foram mortos de um clifo.
06:04Uma coisa que se você não é recrutada com a informação de ver como
06:10mortos é.
06:11Eles tinham que removiam grandes amantes de rock nas cidades de montanhas e montanhas
06:15ou por tunelos.
06:16Eles tinham que fazer isso através de montanhas passadas.
06:20Muitos de trabalhadores de China morreram.
06:23E foi porque eles tinham que construir uma railagem
06:26sobre o Fraser Canyon,
06:27que é extremamente perigoso.
06:30Eles eram mais rápidos para o C.P.R.,
06:33mas era mais barato para o Canadá-Pacific Railroad
06:37para perder a vida de Chinese de trabalhadores
06:39ao longo da construção
06:41do que eles estarem para estendendo a linha de railroad
06:43para ir ao longo da mountain.
06:47E aí, por cada quilômetro de C.P.R. Railroad,
06:50há seis pessoas que morreram.
06:52Estamos falando de milhares de pessoas que morreram.
06:57O custo de steel era mais caro do que o custo de seres humanos.
07:03A bulk da vida que foram perdidas
07:05na construção do Fraser Canyon,
07:09eles eram trabalhadores de China.
07:10Eles deram suas vidas,
07:12eles deram trabalho
07:14para que o Canadá
07:16possa ser o Canadá que nós conhecemos hoje.
07:21E aí, os trabalhadores que morreram
07:48ou do C.P.R. para realizar promissas do C.P.R.
08:00para realizar promissões de C.P.R.
08:03e nunca acontecia.
08:20Por que o C.P.R. surgiu, vemos uma grande transição em população aqui.
08:27De 1891 até 1911, a população vai de cerca de 300,000 pessoas.
08:34É um grande aumento.
08:35No início da época da confederação, a população é um terceiro, um terceiro, um terceiro, um terceiro, um terceiro indígena,
08:42um terceiro, um terceiro, um terceiro, um terceiro, um terceiro, um terceiro.
08:44Por 1901, that's changed. It's overwhelmingly a white settler community.
08:51Britain was making a new dominion of Canada out of colonies further east, and adding British Columbia to this dominion
08:58is really logical.
08:59And so British Columbia was bribed with a railway, and the railway transformed British Columbia totally.
09:04For the first time, you get the possibility for women, non-indigenous women, to turn up in British Columbia.
09:09And you get a whole generation of entrepreneurs, businessmen from central Canada, who come west.
09:17But suddenly, the families and people who have already settled here are replaced in good part by settlers who arrive
09:23with the railway.
09:25And for British Columbia, the change is phenomenal within a very short period of time.
09:30It's a transformative generation. It really is one generation.
09:34And it becomes the most Canadian place in Canada, in the sense that there are people here from all over
09:39Canada.
09:40Every province is represented in British Columbia.
09:43Outside of the Peace District, along the CPR line, there's no land scheme in British Columbia.
09:49There's no homesteading scheme as there is in the prairies.
09:51And so the population really does grow on the basis of the attractiveness of work and opportunity.
09:57People are coming here to set up shops, among other things.
10:00They're coming here to be merchants in small towns, because every town is going to need a general store or
10:05a baker or a butcher.
10:07One of the ways to understand Canadian history, in a new way, is that it wasn't empty trains going back
10:13the other way.
10:14In fact, the trains that were bringing European migrants and settlers out westwards, there was also Chinese riding the other
10:22way.
10:23And for them, the opportunities went all the way to the Maritime Provinces.
10:28The white settlers were also coming here in the hope of finding a job and holding a job that's going
10:32to pay very high wages.
10:34That was the attraction of the resource extraction sector.
10:38There are different ways to expropriate resources from people, and we're seeing a lot of them play out in this
10:43period of time.
10:45The Chinese were in industries already in the late 19th century, but now you had people arriving on trains, looking
10:52around, and asserting that the Chinese are latecomers and don't deserve to be here, and they're going to take away
10:59jobs from white workers.
11:01So there was very quickly the idea that they were very useful, the Chinese, for building the railway.
11:07But now we want to really disincentivize them coming, so we're going to charge this head tax.
11:22The head tax was essentially an effort by the government to stop the flow of people coming from China to
11:27Canada, and that came originally as a small sum of $50 per person.
11:35By 1904, the head tax was $500, and that was perceived as basically two years of one's salary.
11:46The amount of money collected from the head tax was $24 million.
11:50The CPR built the transcontinental railroad for about $24 million.
11:55The Chinese actually funded the completion of the railroad, and they paid for it more than just in the collection
12:00of head taxes, but also paid for their lives.
12:08The head tax was meant to discourage Chinese from coming, and yet almost $100,000 still came during that period.
12:16And it was because that despite this penalty, it was still worth it.
12:21Of course, the head tax, that didn't stop the flow of people coming from China because people were leaving, because
12:26the situation in China was pretty bad.
12:28And when politicians here realized that these Chinamen were still coming over to Canada in 1923, they decided to essentially
12:37stop the Chinese coming by having the Chinese Immigration Act.
12:46Chinese Immigration Act essentially stated that unless you're a certain class of people coming from the identified nation of China,
12:54students or business people, you are not allowed to migrate here.
13:00It's a way to maintain your whiteness.
13:03If you're saying that Canada or BC should be a white province or white Canada, then you don't want people
13:11that are non-white as citizens.
13:15The notion behind that was that whoever's here in Canada of Chinese ancestry will die off, and there will be
13:21no more Chinese people repunishing the population here.
13:24This is why the term bachelor society is used.
13:29It's not that the men truly were bachelors.
13:32They had wives, families back in China.
13:36They just couldn't bring them.
13:37So here you were, having all these men pining away for their families.
13:42They couldn't have them.
13:49When I grew up, there was a whole generation of elders, and they were all single men.
13:54They walked through Chinatown, and they would come pat you on the head and pull your cheeks because, you know,
14:00it's such a novelty.
14:02Same thing with seeing a Chinese woman.
14:03My grandmother would tell me when she was younger, she would walk down to Chinatown, and these men would be
14:08so enamored by seeing a Chinese woman because they haven't seen a Chinese woman in such a long time.
14:17Within 12 months of its enactment, everyone had to be registered.
14:24If you did not register within that 12 months, you could be faced with a $500 fine and or imprisonment.
14:33My grandfather passed away in 1924.
14:36So imagine grandma, a widow in 1924, nine kids.
14:45You may be born here, but if you don't register, you've got to pay that $500 and or have 12
14:51months of imprisonment.
14:52If you're not able to work, how are you going to get the $500?
14:57We're talking about a patriarchal society.
15:02Women are not outside, out and about working.
15:10There was a lot of debate in the late 19th century about labor and immigration, and not just Asian immigration,
15:17but also the immigration of people like Italians and Irish and so on.
15:22And it becomes a sort of a dialogue between different ethnic groups about who's included and who's not, and ultimately
15:31who's included in whiteness.
15:36I always like to draw the distinction between being a bigot and being a racist.
15:41Being a bigot means you don't like something that some other culture does, but being a racist means you're going
15:47to do something about it.
15:48It means developing policies, and they start to apply this white supremacist language to policies.
15:57The term white supremacy is scary to a lot of people, but I think it really is important for us
16:03to think about how nations like the U.S. and Canada were built for some people to benefit from more
16:10than others.
16:10And sometimes the people that actually built those nations weren't able to benefit very much from that building.
16:17If you were an enslaved person, if you were a Chinese railroad worker, if you were an indigenous person, it
16:22was a vision of a white nation, a largely white nation.
16:26Chinese could vote in the first elections, but then that vote was taken away.
16:29And that was one of the key elements of building a political project that would, you know, base laws around
16:38white supremacy.
16:40You read some of our histories, and they'll tell you that the Chinese community liked to huddle together for safety
16:46and all of a sudden.
16:47No, they were just told they couldn't buy property outside of Chinatown.
16:49We're going to draw a line around you.
16:51This is where you can buy property.
16:52This is where you're allowed to reside.
16:53And that's how Chinatowns are formed in this period.
16:58They're ghettos that are invented by the settler society in the same way that reserves are created.
17:06Cumberland's Chinatown, if you go there, it's actually in a swampy area.
17:14People do not purposely live in swamps.
17:18It's because that's where they could live.
17:21And people seem to forget that there were pieces of legislation that restricted where people could live.
17:30You could say it takes political work, you know, to become racist.
17:38They had to convince a lot of people arriving from all around the world, you're white and you deserve more.
17:45You deserve to be paid more.
17:47You deserve to get land for free.
17:49These other people, they're not white.
17:51They don't deserve as much.
17:53In fact, they don't deserve anything.
17:54That is actually a radical notion to try to implement legally so that it's part of every law, morally, so
18:04that it seems right to people.
18:11My paternal grandfather arrived in 1895 and there were a series of anti-Japanese, anti-Asian policies and laws passed.
18:25Because he could not vote, he could not enter the professions.
18:31He was barred from becoming a lawyer, becoming a pharmacist, becoming a civil servant, because all those societies required that
18:44you be on the voters list in order to become a member.
18:48It meant then that you were relegated to being a laborer.
18:52And so, until 1949, that's what they had to do.
18:58They provided cheap labor to people who took advantage of them.
19:14In 1906, a ship called the Suen Maru left Sendai Miyagi-ken in Japan on August 31st and then didn't
19:24arrive until October 7th.
19:26Because it was a large group, it was very difficult during those days to get paperwork.
19:30So, as you can imagine, they arrived without visas and were promptly captured.
19:39The Japanese council had intervened and brokered a deal that would allow them not to be arrested if they agreed
19:47to spend at least a year working for the railroad, which had a labor shortage at the time.
19:54They had to purchase their own clothing, their own food, so in fact, they were already in debt for the
20:01supplies that they needed, and from their trip, too, because there was a fine imposed on them.
20:06It was like an indentured servitude.
20:12There was a league that was formed called the Anti-Asiatic League, and a lot of the rhetoric that you
20:18see around the posters was around competition for labor, competition for jobs.
20:23Anybody who was other at the time, so Chinese, Japanese, South Asians, even indigenous peoples, were seen as competition.
20:30The anti-Chinese political organizing that really dominated early BC history, it began to be spread onto other trans-Pacific
20:41migrant groups.
20:42So what was anti-Chinese organizing became anti-Asian organizing, creating a generic exclusion against all people from Asia.
20:52I think the crux of this was really the anti-Asian riots that happened in 1907, and it started in
20:57Bellingham.
20:58So just across the border from us, and that specifically targeted Sikh men only.
21:04I think it was 100, maybe more than 100, were physically driven out of the city through violence and beatings.
21:12They were trying to drive workers who were in lumber mills in Bellingham out, and very explicitly to drive them
21:19out back into Canada,
21:21because many of those Punjabi Sikh workers had come from what was Canada across the border to work in Bellingham.
21:31There's this iconic picture in the Bellingham Herald of Sikh men sitting in a jail for their own protection.
21:39The men who were working in the sawmill industries were seen as a threat to people who wanted jobs within
21:44that same industry.
21:45And at that time, the sawmill industry was the biggest industry in all of British Columbia.
21:49So when this happened along the Pacific Northwest, soon eventually the message came to us here in Vancouver,
21:56or those here in Vancouver, that a riot has happened, and somehow it must have riled up energies to say,
22:02we can do the same.
22:04That was led by the kind of umbrella group for a lot of labour unions, and they organised a march
22:11and a parade and speeches.
22:14The speakers, some of them can come from as far as New Zealand, to foment against Asians and the need
22:20to implement exclusion.
22:34That riot was led by the mayor of Vancouver at that time, so it was actually a municipal-led anti
22:39-Asian riot,
22:40pushing people out of their businesses, wrecking businesses, and not just South Asians, like I said, all Asians.
22:47City Hall at the time was located at Hastings and Main, where the Carnegie Community Centre is right now.
22:55There was a huge crowd, overflow, because there wasn't capacity in City Hall, and so if you can imagine that
23:03corner, and just filled with people.
23:05And a lot of people brought different banners and placards stating that it was a white Canada.
23:12The crowd then decided that they would go to the area where the Japanese Canadians lived.
23:18This was a very violent mob. They were yelling out horrific slurs.
23:23They were using terms like, kill the Japs.
23:27People were actually fearing for their life, the lives of their family, their wives, their children.
23:33Unfortunately for the Chinese Canadian community, which was right next door to City Hall,
23:38the mob started going through and looting and rioting through the Chinatown area first,
23:44before making their way to the Powell Street area.
23:49During the time that they were busting up Chinatown,
23:52the Japanese Canadian community had time to organize, and calling people from Steveston and Marple to come and help defend
23:58the businesses of Japantown.
24:02Because they did get some notice, the Japanese community armed themselves with stones and rocks, and they took them up
24:10to the rooftops.
24:11They did arm themselves with bats, and there were, I think, some few knives or swords, and they barricaded the
24:17street.
24:18So there's actually less damage in the Powell Street area. There was damage, and damage to businesses and homes and
24:24things like that.
24:24But there was less damage because literally, the Japanese Canadian residents were able to organize and fight back.
24:30And fight back effectively enough to actually defend over the several days of the riots.
24:38The mainstream newspapers tended to focus on the actions of the Japanese Canadian community to fight back, but it was
24:46viewed as a negative,
24:47that the Japanese Canadians were being vicious and had swords.
24:52But there's one photograph that always stands out for me. It's a photograph of the broken shop windows of one
24:57of these shops.
24:58On the far left side, there is a Palk Asian police officer. In the center, there's this Japanese woman. And
25:05on the far side are these South Asian men.
25:08And that picture is always so evocative because it illustrates that the history of communities never takes place in silos.
25:17And so to tell one community story about one particular incident, by necessity, involves other communities as well.
25:23They're always interrelated. They're always involved in these stories.
25:28In 1907, after the race riots, William Y. Mackenzie King comes out to Vancouver.
25:33Ray's a young, climbing, ambitious politician. And he's standing on a street corner, Carol and Pender, outside an opium den
25:41and thinks,
25:42Yeah, I could probably do this. I could take this on. And he launches the war on drugs in 1907.
25:47So Chinese people who hadn't been criminals before, because opium wasn't illegal, are now criminals.
25:53And that's a different kind of attack on race.
26:00There's a book in the city of Vancouver archives that's this thick, full of mug shots of people who have
26:05been arrested.
26:07And that's where you find the visual history, for the most part, of people of color, of Chinese Canadians and
26:13African Americans, and some South Asians too,
26:15are arrested and put on trial and sentenced to hard labor for stealing a purse or stealing a hat or
26:21writing a bogus check.
26:23Some African Americans who are arrested for playing a piano in a house of ill repute, and instead of being
26:30put in jail, are asked to leave the country.
26:34A lot of those stories exist there. And also, not just of the men, but of the women too.
26:39A lot of these marginalized people show up in this book of mug shots.
26:42You'll also see mug shots of a lot of these people of color, but sometimes with no story attached. Just
26:49that they were arrested.
26:51And that's fascinating too, because it speaks to the silence of the archives. It speaks to the silence of the
26:56history.
26:56That story has been silenced, negated from the archive, negated from the story of our country. So how do we
27:03tell that story?
27:07One of the things I think that's important about that moment in 1907 is what happened afterwards.
27:14There was a commission that looked into what caused the anti-Asian riot in Vancouver that recommended to basically limit
27:22all Asian migration.
27:30These conversations were taking place in our federal House of Commons saying, what are we going to do about these
27:35people? What are we going to do to stop it?
27:37So it became an ensuing kind of rhetoric of let's try to stop it while we can so that more
27:43don't come.
27:44The continuous journey legislation in 1907 was one of those attempts. And what that legislation stated was that if you
27:51were coming from India, you had to come directly via ship.
27:55You couldn't stop in between.
27:57And because there's no direct passage from India to Canada at that time period, it's an indirect way of saying
28:03no Indians can come to Canada.
28:05The tricky thing was India was part of the British Empire.
28:09Punjabi Sikh troops who fought for Britain, who fought in the regiments that helped put down the Boer Rebellion in
28:16South Africa, who fought with the British all around the world.
28:19They were British subjects. They were, in their minds, part of this empire.
28:26A larger context, people of the empire are supposed to have the equal rights of citizenship.
28:32So a South Asian is supposed to be able to travel to England and the English person will travel to
28:37India.
28:38So I think it's this ironic moment of, we are not wanted here, but we will take you as our
28:44soldiers to fight.
28:45Punjabi Sikhs very quickly saw what an insult this was and tested it.
28:51A man named Gurdit Singh, who was a Malaysian businessman, decided he was going to challenge that 1908 continuous journey
28:58legislation.
28:59And he said, I'm going to show the British Empire that we are not dogs.
29:03And that challenge was to say, I am going to charter my own ship, bring men into Canada and abide
29:10by the continuous journey legislation.
29:12And so that's exactly what he did.
29:14He sold the tickets, he got 376 passengers in total to come aboard the ship, the Kamageta Maru.
29:21And they made the three month long journey.
29:24The moment that the ship left Hong Kong, British spies who lived here were saying that there's a horde of
29:32these men coming.
29:34This narrative of being flooded by the hordes of Asia is a consistent one throughout the history of that early
29:41part of British Columbia.
29:42Sometimes called the Yellow Peril.
29:44And all of a sudden, there's a narrative that emerges that was percolating for some time,
29:48which is these South Asians are coming to steal our jobs.
29:51And this idea of scarcity, there's only finite resources and beasts.
29:55There's only finite things people can have here where it's not enough for everybody.
29:59We have to shut the doors. We have to keep people out.
30:03So there was this rhetoric that was taking place within the media in those exact three months.
30:11So it's like one month left. They're coming. They're almost here.
30:14So the hyperbole or the kind of overdramatization of they're here led to that moment in 1914 when the ship
30:22arrived and they were detained.
30:24They were detained by the provincial government, which was supported by the federal government.
30:29They were detained and they were denied for three months access to water, access to food.
30:40People take pleasure boats from the harbor out towards the ship and gawk at the passengers in the middle of
30:47summer and hurl racial slurs at them.
30:49It was a major spectacle.
30:52While they were stopped in Vancouver, the community pooled together here in British Columbia and they called themselves the Shore
30:58Committee.
30:59And they hold this big rally at the Dominion Hall in Vancouver, where they raised close to $60,000 for
31:05the legal fund of the Kamakadmu passengers.
31:09When you think about how much people are being paid on an hourly basis, to raise $60,000 is an
31:16immense amount of money.
31:18They raised as a community that much money so they could bring food onto the ship and so they could
31:23hire the lawyer to advocate for them.
31:25For three months, this went on.
31:27One of the major moments that happens during this episode is something that's called the, quote, Battle of Burrard Inlet.
31:35Canadian immigration officials go to the Kamakadamuru in the middle of the night and try to force it to leave.
31:42Now here's the problem.
31:44The Kamakadamuru is a huge ocean liner and the ship that the Canadian immigration officials have are small little tugboat
31:49sized boats.
31:50So during the Battle of Burrard Inlet, the Kamakadu passengers rained down these bricks and stones on these immigration officials
31:59who are trying to disrupt them in the middle of the night.
32:01And they have to retreat.
32:02And the government response was, this can't happen.
32:05We have to get this boat out of our harbor.
32:08So a Canadian naval ship from Esquimau was dispatched to Burrard Inlet to make sure that the Kamakadamuru left.
32:16It was said that if the Kamakadamuru did not leave on the appointed date, it would be blown out of
32:22the water, it would be sunk.
32:23And so the choice there wasn't much for the passengers.
32:29There are crowds of people lining the water who are there to see a spectacle, who are some of them
32:35hoping to see the ship blown up and sunk.
32:39The Kamakadamuru takes up anchor and is escorted out of the harbor that day.
32:47Eventually, I think only 20 passengers were allowed to come into Vancouver because they had proof that they had already
32:54been here.
32:55The rest were all sent back to Kolkata, where British soldiers were waiting with guns pointed at them.
33:01No one says how, but a gun is fired.
33:05And in the melee that happens afterwards, a couple dozen of the Kamakadamuru passengers are killed.
33:11And the media portrayal of the shooting is seen in a positive light as a positive end to the Kamakadamuru
33:20story.
33:20This was a real catalyst moment for South Asians because to them it was such a slap in the face,
33:28such a dishonoring of who they are and how they serve.
33:31So it's not just the rhetoric of the boat, it's the rhetoric of what that boat symbolized and what it
33:36symbolized in terms of who is the undesirable in this country.
33:40It was legislated racism, it was institutional racism.
33:43But despite all that, communities thrived.
33:46So I think those original roots is why our community presence to this very day is so strong and so
33:53influential and so significant.
33:55The community feels like this is their home, there is comfort here, there is peace here as well.
34:08In 1908, right after the Vancouver riot, the British and the Japanese government negotiated ways in which to limit the
34:20number of male immigrants to Canada.
34:24But there was no limit placed on women.
34:28And so the young men who did not have the means to go back to Japan to actually meet the
34:35bride would send photos of themselves and then there would be this photo exchange.
34:41A picture bride was a system where basically a matchmaker would send pictures of potential brides.
34:48So pictures of women in Japan who would be willing to meet an appropriate man and get married come to
34:54Canada.
34:56Unfortunately, some of the women were duped.
34:59But apparently some men would send a picture that either wasn't themselves a handsome young man or a younger photo
35:07of themselves.
35:08And then when they arrived, they see someone who was a lot older and perhaps even in rags.
35:15So it was sad for some, but I think many of the marriages were quite successful.
35:24I don't think we give them enough credit for helping in the development of BC.
35:32There were many Japanese Canadian families like my own who came from Japan in the 1800s.
35:39They settled in British Columbia.
35:43They raised their families.
35:47These were thriving communities.
35:50There were shops and hotels and boarding houses and restaurants and department stores.
35:59So everyone's living their normal lives, working, going to school, playing.
36:16Then Pearl Harbor was bombed.
36:20Canada declared war.
36:23And then there was the announcement that Japanese Canadians are considered enemy aliens.
36:29Japanese nationals are considered dangerous, are being interned at once.
36:37Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December the 7th.
36:43By December the 8th, all fishing boats owned by Japanese Canadians were called into port.
36:52They brought the boats down to be impounded.
37:031,137 boats owned by Japanese Canadians that were impounded, confiscated and sold off.
37:13They didn't realize that they would be sold off, but that's what happened.
37:19Everything was taken from them.
37:23Fishing boats, farms, businesses, vehicles, personal property.
37:28And then the actual internment.
37:31It's the forcible uprooting of 22,000 Japanese Canadians from the West Coast.
37:46I didn't know anything about my family history until I was at UBC as a student.
37:53And I came across an article describing the internment.
37:58I went home and I said to my parents, why didn't you tell us about this?
38:04And they said, well, we didn't want the children to grow up bitter about events that they had no control
38:13over.
38:14And so my reaction is, why didn't you do something, right?
38:18And my father said, I did.
38:20I went to the wharf in Siefson and tried to get on my boat to go out fishing.
38:26And I was stopped because the sailor who was on guard pointed the rifle at my chest.
38:34I was 18 months old. My brother was six months old.
38:39They were given 24 hours notice.
38:42They were told they were going to be moved out.
38:45They didn't know exactly where or for how long.
38:49They would be given a specific day and time to be at the train station.
38:54And how much baggage they could bring.
38:57If you did not turn up at the designated time, they would come looking for you.
39:04They were shipped to Vancouver.
39:07Then they went to Hastings Park.
39:10Many of us know Hastings Park as a peony.
39:14Those grounds were taken over by the federal government.
39:18And Japanese Canadian families were shipped there.
39:22Once they got there, families were separated.
39:27Men were housed in one building.
39:30And then the women, the moms with the little children or the older women, the grandmothers, were housed in the
39:36livestock barns.
39:37What would hit them as soon as they walked into the livestock building, of course, would be the smell.
39:44So that's where my mom's side of the family were sent.
39:48They were put into cattle stalls where they would try to hang up whatever they brought.
39:54Blankets, sheets, to create some privacy for themselves.
40:00Their facilities was a trough and there was a board.
40:04And I talked to my uncle about it and he said that you basically pull down your pants, put your
40:10bum over the board and you did your business.
40:12But everyone would see it as it's going through this trough.
40:16My mom said that for breakfast we had to go to some sort of mess hall, I guess.
40:20So you had to line up.
40:22On the other side of the fence she would see people, I guess there was a streetcar during those days,
40:28or there's people she say that would look at them.
40:30And she said she felt like she was in a zoo that people were looking at them as if they
40:34were animals.
40:35Some of them stayed there for months before they were relocated to the interior.
40:41The government called it evacuation centers, right?
40:45As though it was an emergency and it was to help the people.
40:51They sanitized it.
40:53That's the thing we need to guard against even in 2019 is euphemisms and the way sometimes things are presented.
41:02Most people wouldn't have known even the conditions.
41:05They just knew people were moved out.
41:08That's the other importance of knowing the stories is so that people really understand the trauma.
41:23There were ten internment camps. Some were refurbished in coast towns like Greenwood.
41:29Then there were other hastily built shack towns with rows and rows and rows of tar paper homes.
41:36There weren't any barbed wires or sentries, but they had RCMP posts that you had to report to.
41:49My father was at road camp or lumber camp.
41:55And my mother and my brother and I and my maternal grandparents went to Greenwood.
42:06That's where they sent the women, children and the elderly.
42:11She said, we never knew if we would ever see each other again.
42:16So that was the sense of helplessness that I felt when they told me that.
42:23My other relatives were just scattered all over BC, Alberta and Manitoba.
42:29And some even went to Ontario.
42:33They were part of that unfree labor.
42:37Their labor was used. They didn't get compensated.
42:41They lived in conditions that were not humane.
42:591945 came. Japan has surrendered. They thought, oh, finally we can go back to the coast.
43:05Japanese Canadians actually didn't have their freedom until four years after.
43:09The War Measures Act was extended to keep them in those camps.
43:14My grandfather on my father's side actually died during internment, so he never did see his freedom.
43:21My parents tended to shield us.
43:24They wanted us to have happy memories of our childhood.
43:29There was silence about what happened.
43:32It was very common that Japanese Canadian families didn't talk about the story.
43:37Nobody talked about it.
43:38And so that's the danger. We don't know that history.
43:41But if you did know the history, then maybe when people hear some of that rhetoric, they would think and
43:47say, didn't that happen before?
43:49Wasn't it wrong when we treated people like that?
43:52And not repeat it. Or at least speak out.
43:57Very few people spoke out in 1942.
44:05My uncle mentioned that it was very harsh times when they were in the interior.
44:10And before they were able to start a garden, they didn't have access to fresh vegetables.
44:16He said that he does remember the kindness of the Dukabor community, that they would come and they would bring
44:23fresh vegetables and that.
44:24He mentions that quite a lot.
44:27Because they grew fresh vegetables and Japanese diet included a lot of vegetables, the Dukabor would take vegetables to sell
44:37to the Japanese Canadians who were interned.
44:40And they sold us the vegetables cheaper than what we could get in the internment camps.
44:47So yes, there's a lot of good feelings between the Dukabor and the Japanese.
44:54Probably because there was a lot of sympathy for the Japanese Canadians and how they were being treated.
45:00The Dukabor were persecuted in Russia and so they came to Canada to escape persecution.
45:06And here the Japanese Canadians were being treated as enemies.
45:21The Dukabor was the largest group of utopian people to come to BC and set up what we call intentional
45:27communities.
45:29They were a Christian sect that felt the priests weren't necessary, the church wasn't necessary, even the Bible wasn't necessary.
45:38This attitude didn't make them very popular with the established church, of course, because they were basically saying that it
45:44was unnecessary.
45:45And they got sort of booted around Western Russia for several hundred years and basically mistreated quite badly.
45:52So in 1908, 6,000 of them moved to BC and bought several thousand hectares of agricultural land in the
46:02West Kootenays, around Grand Forks and in the Slocan and Kootenay River valleys.
46:11They wouldn't be conscripted to fight in wars. They wouldn't send their children to school.
46:16They were opposed to anything that had to do with militarism and they were opposed to the government telling them
46:23what to do.
46:25They just wanted to be left alone to do their own thing. So they weren't very popular with the government
46:30either.
46:33I think we should differentiate between the Dukkabors who were members of the basic church and the Sons of Freedom,
46:39who were a group of Dukkabors that were kind of like the community conscience.
46:45If they felt that the community was becoming too worldly or materialistic, they would object to that.
46:51They would have marches and protests and they found that public nudity was an incredibly dynamite way of getting some
46:59attention.
47:01And I think they were kind of surprised that the people reacted so strongly.
47:06So whenever there was a problem, they would have these nude marches.
47:11Of course, the newspapers just loved this stuff. They couldn't get enough of it.
47:16At one point in the 30s and 40s, when the government started putting pressure on the Dukkabors to conform, they
47:23became more active.
47:25And in the 30s, the government arrested 600 of the Sons of Freedom and imprisoned them on an island just
47:32off Schwartz Bay, Piers Island, for a three year period.
47:36They took all their kids and institutionalized them.
47:40But that kind of activity actually just encouraged the Sons of Freedom to step up their agenda.
47:46There were bombings.
47:49They bombed power lines and trains.
47:53They started setting fire to houses.
47:57People were killed.
47:58They basically terrorized the people of BC in the 1950s and 60s.
48:04Eventually, the government arrested about 600 of the Freedomites who were involved with arson.
48:10They built a special fireproof prison for them at Agassiz.
48:16Hundreds of Dukkabors camped outside that prison for years and years.
48:22And then they kind of just disappeared. It all just went away.
48:26They sort of gave up their nonconformist behavior, except for a very small number of people.
48:32They just started living like everyone else lived.
48:42Dukkabors also participated in Vietnam War protest marches, and then the Quaker community was of a like mind.
48:50They were an earlier generation, but they still formed part of that kind of nucleus of countercultural, if you will,
48:57in Nelson and the Slocan Valley.
48:59They were real soulmates with the draft dodgers.
49:04Where I live in Summerland, I have two neighbors that are draft dodgers.
49:09One of them came as a 16-year-old, and his mother said, my sons are not going to Vietnam.
49:17So she unilaterally took these two boys, who were not even draft age yet, and moved to Canada.
49:25The other neighbor was actually in the military and went AWOL and went across the border in the trunk of
49:32somebody's car.
49:40In the 1960s, all the contradictions that are the United States kind of came to the head and the illusions
49:47dropped away.
49:48Cut! Cut!
49:49At the time, there was a draft that meant that the government could conscript young men to fight.
49:56And I decided that I wanted to be a conscientious objector.
50:01There was a huge protest at the induction center in Oakland, California.
50:06There was thousands and thousands of people there, and probably a thousand cops.
50:13And there was a black woman. She was carrying grocery bags in her arms and couldn't really see that she
50:20was walking straight in front of all these very angry cops.
50:25She stepped in front of them, and they took their clubs, and they smashed this woman into the plate glass
50:30window.
50:32And she bounced off, and groceries spilled out, and they picked her up and kept on beating this woman down
50:39the street.
50:40I kind of was swept along, like in the vortex of this violence.
50:45I kept stepping closer, but I was impotent to take action.
50:52And she collapsed.
50:54And they stepped over her.
50:58And then I ran.
51:02My wife and I just thought,
51:05I can't raise kids here.
51:07And we decided that we had to leave.
51:10So we packed up a pickup truck and drove to Canada.
51:17I was in San Francisco, and on the way up, it was kind of like a modern version of the
51:22Underground Railway.
51:24There were military resistance support groups in Portland, Seattle, and in Vancouver.
51:30So it just made sense to come north to Vancouver.
51:35Some really good people in Vancouver who were helping the anti-war movement taught us how to answer the questions
51:43and go through the process.
51:46Draft dodgers were allowed to come to Canada.
51:49It wasn't illegal to dodge the draft because there was no draft.
51:52We didn't even get any questions about our draft resistance.
51:58And so the interview lasted for hours, and finally they said, you can live here.
52:06That was a wonderful thing.
52:10I think the story of war resistors tells us the way that people thought about Canada.
52:17Canada was seen as a safe space.
52:19Of course, Canada wasn't entirely a safe space.
52:22Once they got here, they discovered there was racism, there was inequality.
52:26Even Gallup polls of the time will tell you that most Canadians, although they support the right of people not
52:37to go to war, are still concerned about accepting too many American immigrants to Canada.
52:43There was mixed feelings.
52:45There were some people who said, welcome, I agree.
52:48And there were other people who thought, war resistors, they shouldn't be here.
52:53Vancouver also had a mayor at that time, Mayor Campbell, who was anti-hippie and anti-war resistors.
53:00He didn't like the influx of Americans and the influx of war resistors.
53:04They are parasites on the community.
53:07If they were in their homeland, they'd be in jail.
53:09Now, if we were in trouble, if they wouldn't fight for their mother country, what do you think they'd do
53:13for their adopted country?
53:14Nothing, which is exactly what they're doing now, nothing.
53:17But I felt hugely lucky.
53:22Probably like generations of immigrants to Canada, like, this country let me in and now my job is to try
53:31to be a value to this country.
53:40Within a month, we had a place to live.
53:44In fact, our first home was in Kitsilano.
53:49I didn't know it at the time, but 50,000 draft resistors came to Canada.
53:55That's a huge exodus.
53:57It's the largest political exodus in the history of the United States.
54:01About 20,000 of those draft resistors came to the West Coast.
54:05They were people with skills, so it did have a huge impact on British Columbia and Canadian culture and politics.
54:14There is a huge intersection of activism in British Columbia at the time.
54:19You see the rise of the women's movement, the women's liberation movement, the environmental movement, the war resistance movement.
54:26Really, what the draft dodgers did is they connected with existing movements and just gave it a bit more of
54:33a push.
54:34It isn't like they started something brand new, but they helped give energy and impetus to movements that are already
54:42there.
54:43They start communes, they are part of the Back to the Land movement that becomes increasingly popular in the 1970s
54:50in Vancouver.
54:52They also moved to Castlegar.
54:54Nelson, in particular, is quite famous for the number of war resistors who end up in the region.
54:59Geography defines a part of who we are.
55:03This is the place where the government of Canada decided to put most of the Japanese people that they took
55:09out of the Sunshine Coast in Vancouver.
55:12This is the territory that the Dukabor people chose to come to when they were essentially made unwelcome in Saskatchewan.
55:20Folks who were pacifists tended to come to the West Kootenay.
55:24I represented this region, the legislature, for 14 years.
55:30And at one point, there was a ship of immigrants, I think was aiming for the United States, and got
55:37lost and dumped a bunch of folks in the forest outside Port Alberni.
55:43On Monday morning, when the legislature was sitting, it was all in the newspaper, here's all these people and they're,
55:49you know, you should lock these people up or send them back to where they came from, they have no
55:54right to be here.
55:55The government is sort of prevaricating and saying, well, we're going to interview them and find out who they are.
56:00And then the opposition's going, no, no, they jumped the queue, they're breaking all the rules.
56:06And finally it pissed me off and I got up.
56:09I said, okay, here's the drill, you guys.
56:11I was 21 years old and I snuck into this country and said I was on vacation.
56:18My family jumped the queue.
56:20Here's what I would like to suggest to the opposition.
56:24You want to throw the people out of Canada who just came for a better life and maybe broke some
56:31rules.
56:32Okay, I volunteer. Start with me and if you won't, then leave these people alone.
56:38And I'm happy the debate ended.
56:40Like, they weren't going to do it.
56:44And I don't know that that was so much respect for me as maybe they were thinking like, oh, what
56:50about my grandpa or even my mom or like, I don't think I was the only one.
57:01The ship Corky describes as one of four vessels.
57:05They spent two months crossing an unruly sea with a cargo of 600 migrants.
57:10They sought to escape toward opportunity.
57:14And it is the seeking that led so many to this place.
57:17Nootka Sound.
57:18The very place where Captain Cook landed in 1778.
57:22And the same place where new battles unfolded in the 20th century.
57:49The only place where they function sites like the census date.
57:55The only place where even countries were said that they eventually recruiting and inspectors.
57:58Theyefy location the waters andıllarasant.
58:04That was a great day to see us.
58:04Obrigado.
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