Appendix CASE ONE - Collection Point® | The Total Digital Asset ...

The Legalization of White Supremacy in Canada 191
who professed to be concerned about the conditions in which Chinese were
transported to the Australian colonies. 24 It had been avidly seized upon by
the Australian colonies and later New Zealand as a means of controlling
the pace and flow of those migrating from China. 25 That the Australian
colonies had by the 1880s effectively blunted the concerns of the imperial
government about the adverse impact of this type of legislation on its treaty
relations with China is evident in statements in the debates in Ottawa over
the legislation, which indicated that London had no objection to what was
proposed. 26 Concern for Chinese sensitivities which had induced the British
government to reserve some earlier Australian legislation (especially that from
Queensland) was fading.
By 1885 Canada shared with Australia and New Zealand a two-tiered
immigration policy embodied in: (a) the Immigration Act with a low entry
fees and tonnage ratio, designed to encourage immigration from European
countries; 27 (b) the Chinese Immigration Act with a differential and high entry
tax and tonnage ratio calculated to reduce Chinese immigration to a trickle. 28
This latter system, it was supposed, would placate anti-Chinese hysteria in
British Columbia as well as preserving the tattered vestiges of imperial concern
for British treaty obligations to China.
The special dominion legislation was in fact effective in reducing the flow of
Chinese to British Columbia, a process assisted by the refusal of the federal
government to allow the wives or families of existing Chinese residents to join
them in Canada. 29 As a consequence overt anti-oriental feeling faded in British
Columbia between 1885 and 1895. It was to revive with a vengeance, as it did
in Australia and New Zealand, in the mid 1890s with the realization that a new
Asian 'intruder' had established a foothold in the province. A combination of
British Columbia employers looking for contract labour, the peregrinations of
Japanese fishermen and overcrowding and high taxes in Japan led to a modest
migration from that country to the Canadian west coast beginning in the late
1880s. 30 The result was that by 1895 there were the makings of a definable
Japanese presence there. As it was initially a male, sojourner community with
its own strong cultural identity and resistant to the influence of the dominant
social culture, the stereotypes applied to the Chinese were readily transferred
24 C.O., 411/1, no.12, Newcastle to Governor Latrobe, 29 January 1853; 202/60, no.22, Newcastle to
Governor Fitzroy, 5 February 1853.
25 Stat. Viet., 1855, no.39; Stat. S.A., 1857, no.3; Stat. N.S.W., 1861, no.3; Stat. Q'ld, no.8,1877;
Stat. N.Z.,no.47,1881.
26 H.C., Debates, 2 July 1885, 3004 (Chapleau).
27 Act Respecting Immigration and Immigrants, S.C. 1869, c. 10, ss. 2, 3, as amended S.C. 1872, c.
28, s. 1;S.C. 1875, c.15, s. 2.
28 See above, n.23.
29 The dominion government was only willing to make an exception in the case of Chinese wives of
European husbands, see Act to Amend 'The Chinese Immigration Act', S.C. 1887, c. 35, s. 1.
30 K. Adachi, The Enemy that Never Was (Toronto, 1976), 6-16; Roy, above n.3, 81-83.