THE HISTORY Back to top

Canada and the Holocaust - Connections
"Victoria, BC, Canada is many kilometres, and many years, from the horrors of the Holocaust. For most of us, the murder of six million European Jews between 1933 and 1945 is an event whose sharpness is now blurring into the sepia-toned images of a history lesson. Yet, our parents, our grandparents, our great grandparents, witnessed what happened." Read more

A Brief History of Hate-motivated Violence in Canada
(From the Department of Justice, Canadian Government)
"Canada has a long history of hate-motivated violence towards racial or ethnic minorities. For example, in 1907 in Vancouver, a mob of whites attacked the Chinese and Japanese communities, causing at least extensive damage to stores and, it was claimed by one report, "several fatalities". During World War II, members of the Japanese Canadian community were interned and their property confiscated. In the 1970s, a series of subway attacks against members of the South Asian community in Toronto helped to result in creation of a task force to study that problem..." Read more

A History of Race/ism
(From the Toronto Board of Education)
"When I mention that racism has a history, people often give me very confused looks. Racism is most often seen as an individual, psychological phenomenon. For example, one often hears the statement "racism is just human nature." Buried in that statement is the implication that since there isn't much we can do about human nature, there isn't much we can do about racism either. According to this point of view, racism is constant, unchanging, like the weather, the moon or the seasons. Understanding history is a good antidote to that kind of pessimism. If we can show that racism has a beginning, then the "human nature" argument obviously doesn't hold much water. And if racism has a beginning, then we can argue that it can have an end." Read more

A Legal History of Racism in Canada
(From The Peak SFU's Independent Student newspaper)
"Did you know that in the 19th century, there were thousands of KKK members in Canada? At the same time, did you know that it was a crime for Chinese restaurant owners to hire white women? Think racism is not an issue? Think again. Constance Backhouse is a professor of law at the University of Ottawa... She is the author of Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900-1950, where she takes the reader through the history of Canadian law in which non-whites have experienced systemic racism in the justice system." Read more

Development and Growth of the Working Class and Working Class Militancy 1880-1920
"The period of 1880-1920 was one of transition for both capital, as it further monopolized industry and learned new ways to subjugate labour; and for the working-class as its divided factions foundered in the face of attacks from both capital and state. Labour leaders spent as much time and energy fighting each other’s ideologies and tactics as they did battling capital." Read more

Media, Stereotypes and the Perpetuation of Racism in Canada
(From the University of Saskatchewan)
"This paper examines the role media has in the perpetuation of racism in Canada through stereotypes. A background to the topic of racism in Canada is offered first where concepts such as the other, whiteness, and white privilege  are explored. This is followed by a functional definition of stereotypes and its critique. Finally, the paper will examine stereotypes in media such as television (TV), cinema, news, and advertising." Read more

Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900-1950
"Historically Canadians have considered themselves to be more or less free of racial prejudice. Although this conception has been challenged in recent years, it has not been completely dispelled. In Colour-Coded, Constance Backhouse illustrates the tenacious hold that white supremacy had on our legal system in the first half of this century, and underscores the damaging legacy of inequality that continues today." More

Report on Systemic Racism and Discrimination In Canadian Refugee and Immigration Policies
(by the Canadian Council for Refugees) More

The Silence of Canadian Protestant Churches?
"Irving Abella and Harold Troper, in their landmark book None is Too Many, claimed that Canadian churches practised silence as Canada callously closed its doors to Jewish refugees during the 1930s and 1940s.
How true is this accusation? In How Silent were the Churches? Canadian Protestantism and the Jewish Plight During the Nazi Era (Wilfred Laurier University Press), Alan Davies and Marilyn Nefsky sift through the evidence and reach similar conclusions." More

Canadian Critical Race Theory: Racism and the Law
The book " applies the principles of Critical Race Theory (CRT), a recent movement in public-interest/civil rights law, to Canadian racial problems and issues. Especially noteworthy is her treatment of litigation, which successfully weds the insights of this new body of jurisprudence with the everyday problems of lawyers working for racial justice." More

Winning Over Racism
"Asober book of profound insight that is sure to open your eyes to the myriad ways of racism in society. It's social impact will rival such books as Vertical Mosaic and Feminine Mystique, two books that helped change the way we see ourselves." More

From Marches to Modems:A Report on Organized Hate in Metro Toronto. A History from 1933-1989
"Racism, hatred and anti-Semitism are no strangers to Canada and Canadian history. Indeed, Ontario and specifically Metropolitan Toronto has had a sordid history of open fascist activity dating as far back as the late 1920's..." More

Racism in the Criminal Justice System: A Bibliography
(Published by the University of Toronto Centre of Criminology) More

THE NATIVE EXPERIENCE IN CANADA Back to top

An overview of Aboriginal History in Canada
At the National Archives of Canada Learn more

"Our History"
An extensive essay on the history of the native peoples of Canada Learn more

Native People and Employment: A National Tragedy
(From: Currents, Urban Alliance on Race Relations) Learn more

Native People and Racism
(From: Currents, Urban Alliance on Race Relations)
"Native peoples in Canada suffer from low incomes, high unemployment, high poverty rates and other adverse socioeconomic circumstances. The development of employment and economic opportunities within the Native communities to address these problems is not, however, simply a technical matter. Values, culture, political institutions, history and other 'soft' factors play a much greater role than the technical factors that traditionally most concern economists and policy makers. While the Native economies remain extremely fragile and vulnerable, care must be taken to ensure that the costs of supporting economic growth does not mean sacrificed values, traditions and social organizations." Read more

The Segregation of Native People in Canada: Voluntary or Compulsory?
(From: Currents Summer, Urban Alliance on Race Relations)
"The history of the Indian people for the last century has been the history of the impingement of white civilization upon the Indian: the Indian was virtually powerless to resist the white civilization; the white community of B.C. adopted a policy of apartheid. This, of course, has already been done in eastern Canada and on the Prairies, but the apartheid policy adopted in B.C. was of a particularly cruel and degrading kind. They began by taking the Indians' land without any surrender and without their consent. Then they herded the Indian people on to Indian reserves. This was nothing more nor less than apartheid, and that is what it still is today(1). " Thomas Berger Read more

The History of Native Veterans in Canada
(From the Government of Canada)
"Believing in the good of their people and country, approximately thirty-five per cent of all eligible natives enlisted for active service. According to a report issued in 1920 by Canada's Deputy Superintendent General." Read more

Indian History Index - 1700 to 1999
"You Europeans are the most unreasonable people in the world; you laugh at our belief dreams, yet expect us to believe things a thousand times more incredible".
A Wendat Indian 1769 Learn more

A Turbulent Industry: Fishing In British Columbia
"If one image could illustrate the history of fishing in British Columbia, it would be a salmon, curved into a dollar sign, fighting its way upriver. Every time the fish leaps in the air, grasping hands - from a few individuals, but mostly corporations and bureaucracies - almost prevent the salmon from reaching its destination. Salmon meant wealth, and not only to industrial movers and shakers in British Columbia in 1871, when Alexander Ewen began the first continuous cannery. For thousands of years before Europeans arrived and the Hudson's Bay Company set up what would be future department stores, salmon had already meant wealth to First Nations people of British Columbia. If the salmon run failed, an aboriginal community could starve." Learn more

A Tortured People: The Politics of Colonization
"This book provides a history of Canadian colonialism and the role the government has played in its maintenance and character transformation. An analysis is provided concerning the relationship between Canadian colonialism, Aboriginal consciousness and Aboriginal political culture over time. In an effort to explain the roots of the Aboriginal struggle for self-determination, including recent militant resistance to state-polices, the author examines Canada's colonial legacy by covering the following issues: The Local Nature of Colonialism; Sources of Colonialism; The Challenge to Colonial Oppression; and Maintaining Colonization Under Neocolonialism." More

THE BLACK EXPERIENCE IN CANADA Back to top

Canadian Black Heritage in the Third Millennium
"An online resource for students researching Black History from a Canadian Perspective. This online resource on Black Heritage categorizes past, present and future events, people, places and issues." More

THE JEWISH EXPERIENCE IN CANADA Back to top

Perspectives on Racism: Anti-Semitism in Canada. Realities, Remedies & Implications for Anti-Racism
"Hate propaganda, defined as 'the promotion of hatred against identifiable groups,' became a criminal offense in Canada in 1970, when laws against it were adopted as amendments to the Criminal Code (sections 318-320). In that same year, Canada ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which had been adopted by the UN in 1965 and signed by Canada in 1966. The Canadian Human Rights Act and various provincial human-rights acts also address the issue of hate propaganda. While the League for Human Rights and several other organizations, as well as many studies and commissions, have proposed changes to strengthen the effectiveness of the existing legislation (a summary and analysis of which are beyond the scope of the present chapter), there is almost universal agreement on the need for effective laws to deal with hate propaganda. The catalyst for such legislation was undoubtedly the Holocaust. It showed the world that unchecked racism and hate propaganda could lead even a highly educated and cultured society to justify the most heinous crimes against humanity." Read more

Anti-Semitism in Canada: History and Interpretation
"Anti-Semitism in Canada: History and Interpretation and Shades of Right: Nativist and Fascist in Politics in Canada, 1920-1940 both contain a wealth of data and facts and shed some interesting light on extremist politics in Canada." More

THE JAPANESE EXPERIENCE IN CANADA Back to top

From Racism to Redress: The Japanese Canadian Experience
"At the turn of the century, anti-Asian sentiment was rampant. Successive waves of Asian immigration gave rise to a public anxiety over the "Yellow Peril". It reached a fevered pitch in 1907 when a crowd at an anti-Asian rally suddenly turned into a mob and marched through Vancouver's Chinatown and Japanese town breaking store windows..." Read more
 
The History of the Japanese in Canada
An index of links on the topic Learn more

Minority Education in B.C.: Reexamining the Case of the Japanese Canadians in the 1940s
"Historical accounts of the Japanese evacuation from the coast of British Columbia (B.C.) during World War II negatively portray the actions of B.C.'s educational bureaucracy. Some historians have erroneously conflated the racism that marked B.C.'s society in the early 1900s with the sentiments and behaviour of educators. This paper describes how educators and administrators in B.C. helped to ameliorate educational opportunities for the "unfortunate children of evacuees" in B.C. during the war." Read more

THE CHINESE EXPERIENCE IN CANADA Back to top

Presentation to the Nova Scotia Human Rights Conference
"The Chinese settled on the West coast of Canada in 1788, over 200 years ago. Our community's history is entwined with Canadian history in more ways than one. We all know about the Chinese railway workers. 17,000 Chinese workers came to build the CPR through the Rockies to the Pacific ocean and 1500 of them died in the process. What else is written in the history books about Chinese Canadians? Do we know any of the names of the Chinese railway workers, the Chinese shipbuilders who settled on Vancouver Island, or the names of the Chinese farmers who applied their peasant skills in the interior of BC?" Read more

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