Immigration Ban

During the winter of 1913, the City of Vancouver was spending $150,000 on unemployment relief. Public works were cut down and before spring, the provincial government came to the assistance of the city in caring for the jobless. Jonathan Rogers made a plea, unconvincing, that the depression had "shaken down" the financial structure and business was again on a sound basis.

He did go on to admit that speculation was extinct, no capital and little credit was available for even the soundest business. The Vancouver Board of Trade was pressing the provincial government for that last relief for a business community on the ropes - a moratorium on debts and taxes. The "pause" had become a depression and that depression was close to becoming a calamity.

Vancouver was fortunate enough to escape large-scale labour trouble. However, the shadow of that turmoil hung over the city.

Mackenzie and Mann - notorious "friends" of the McBride government - had taken over the Dunsmuir mines at Nanaimo and Ladysmith. The two were using Japanese and Chinese workers as strike-breakers in a major stoppage, backing them up with "special police".

There was wild rioting in Nanaimo and the Vancouver lawyer who was acting premier, W.J. Bowser, reverted to the old B.C. pattern and threw 1000 militiamen into the town to break the strike. For the previous six years, Oriental immigration was limited and that made the Chinese and Japanese much less of a threat to Vancouver workers in hard times. The Dominion government now banned immigration in B.C. but the threat was to be suddenly and dramatically revived.

The ban on Chinese and Japanese immigration was within in the powers of the government of Canada. However, the ban imposed on East Indians by order-in-council in 1913 was found invalid by Chief Justice Gordon Hunter of the Supreme Court of B.C. The East Indians were British subjects and therefore Canada could not exclude them. A special new orders-in-council applied only to entry into British Columbia and it was a complicated by a requirement of "direct passage" from the land of the immigrant's nativity. 

This ban insulted the pride of the Indians and a Sikh, Gurdit Singh, decided to test it.  Singh has identified as a wealthy landowner, as a "Punjabi agitator" and as a secret agent of the Japanese government. (The Japanese was insulted by Canadian immigration policies and resentful of the riots of 1907.)

Singh recruited 375 Sikhs, partly farmers and partly time-expired veterans of the Indian Army. The East Indians chartered the Japanese steamship Komogata Maru. The Indians boarded the steamship at Hong Kong, stopped at Yokohama en route and arrived at the William Head quarantine station (on Vancouver Island). The ship was granted permission and sent on to Vancouver. There she anchored in the stream, waiting immigration examination.

So what happened with the people aboard the Komogata Maru? Wednesday, I will tell you more.

Thanks to the book Vancouver, From Milltown to Metropolis by Alan Morley for the above information.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Karen Magill

Enjoying 1945

On August 22, 1945, locomotive #374 arrived in Vancouver on its last run. The locomotive pulled the first passenger train to enter Vancouver in 1887. It was retired and placed on display in Kitislano. Now I am pretty sure it is on display at Yaletown where the CPR train yards used to be.

September 1, 1945 was the day that Yvonne DeCarlo celebrated her birthday at the Hotel Vancouver's Panorama Roof. As you may remember, DeCarlo was born in Vancouver and here is the entry I wrote on our homegrown Munster.

On September 5, Igor Gouzenko - a cipher clerk - walked out of the Soviet embassy in Ottawa. He claimed that there was a Soviet spy ring in Canada many feel this was the start of the cold war.

On September 8, 1945, Henry Reifel died at the age of 76. I wrote all about Reifel in this entry from earlier this year.

A news report from Portland, Oregon stated that "Following consultations with Dr. Gerald Wendt, noted scientist, the Pacific Northwest Trade Association . . . approved appointment of a committee to collaborate with its fisheries committee in consulting with University of Washington scientists and others on the advisability of utilization of the atomic bomb to blast out Ripple Rock, navigation hazard on Canada’s route to Alaska."

Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed and conventional explosives were used for this job.

On September 14, three VFD firefighters were killed battling a blaze in the McMaster Building on Homer Street.

It was a sad day on October 28, 1945. That was the day that labour contractor and civil rights activist, Tomekichi Homma died in Slocan, BC. Homma was born June 6, 1865 in Onigoshi-mura, Chiba-ken, Japan. At the age of 18, Homma left his country and came to Canada, settling in nearby Steveston. He fished the Fraser River from 1892. From 1897 to 1899, Homma was chairman of the Japanese Fisherman's Benevolent Society

"This group," says the Steveston Museum, "built the first hospital in Steveston to deal with outbreaks of typhoid amongst the fishermen living in crowded, unsanitary housing along the waterfront." In May 1899, with Tadaichi Nagao, Homma began contracting laborers to the CPR. "Between 1900 and 1902,”the Museum continues, "he fought for voting rights for Japanese-Canadians, winning in the Canadian Supreme Court but losing in the British Privy Council. He died in an internment camp in Slocan in 1945 . . ."

Homma started the first Japanese newspaper in Vancouver and a school in Richmond is named after him. He was 80 years old when he died.

Thanks goes to the History of Metropolitan website for the above information. Friday, I will tell you more. You know, I thought one more entry would finish relating this year to you but it seems a lot happened in 1945.

I hope you find the beauty around you.