No, not the kind Voldemort spreads in the sky in eerie green only to have it dissipate without a trace. We are discussing the kind that sticks ugly in people’s minds and in history. Can-do Canada’s past is no stranger to such impressions, no stranger to xenophobia. In the early part of the last century the Canadian government imposed a head tax on all Chinese immigrants that began at $50 in 1885 and increased to $500 by 1903. Out of the around 80, 000 Chinese in Canada who paid that tax, 15, 000 were working to build the Canadian Pacific Railway and around 4000 of them died during construction. The head tax kept families apart for decades, sometimes for good, and kept them in a state of economic depression while they made it possible for goods to travel across Canada’s enormous land mass.

In April, the Chinese Canadian National Council’s mission to gain a formal apology and remuneration for the estates of Chinese-Canadians who paid the tax came closer to status ‘accomplished’. At the end of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s throne speech there was mention of an agenda item concerning a formal apology for Chinese Canadians. This type of dialog has prompted hope among many in the Indo-Canadian community of a similar apology, with possibility of redress, with regard to the Komagata Maru incident:

The Conservative government should issue an apology and compensation to Indo-Canadians over the Komagata Maru incident if it is going to give both to Chinese-Canadians over the head tax paid by Chinese immigrants in the early 20th century, B.C. Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal said… “If the government is going to apologize to one group of Canadians, they should also have a similar line for other groups of Canadians who have suffered discrimination” [Link]

Harper is said to be “looking into the matter”.

The Komagata Maru was carrying passengers who were Sikh by a large majority but the “white, please” immigration policies of the Canadian government at the time saw only brown. Passengers were not allowed to disembark, were left on board for two months in miserable conditions and were ultimately forced to return to India where they were persecuted by the British as participants in the Independence Movement. All because the Canadian government was afraid of some hardworking brown folk. This episode is as much a part of our history as Indian-Canadians as it is a part of Sikh history. Early immigrants to Canada were largely Sikh but they came here as Indians and they were discriminated against as Indians. Continue reading →