Editorially speaking...
For some, July 1st was a day for reflection.
As the Cumberland Museum and Archives pointed out in a news release, July 1, 2023 marked “the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Immigration Act, a policy that banned Chinese immigration from 1923 to 1947. “Our histories are complicated, and for many acknowledging this is hard but the impacts of our past are present today, and it is essential to create space for dialogue on the injustices our communities’ face. The Cumberland Museum & Archives encourages you to take a moment over the Canada Day weekend to reflect and engage in learning about these histories.”
It looks like a share certificate. But any ‘sharing’ on Canada’s part was extremely reluctant and mean-spirited. —Wikipedia
A week has passed but we can still (should) give thought to how Canada has come be what it is, the country that we live in and (I hope) love. Most if not all of our past has devolved by trial and error; overall, we got it right.
But not always, as in the case of the Chinese immigrants who helped to build this province but who were mostly reviled and abused for their efforts.
For those who aren’t sure of what the infamous ‘head tax’ was about, this a-b-c definition: “The Chinese Head Tax was a fixed fee charged to each Chinese person entering Canada. The head tax was first levied after the Canadian parliament passed the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 and it was meant to discourage Chinese people from entering Canada [applying for citizenship] after the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway.”
It’s no cause for pride that the British Columbia of a century ago was the most virulently anti-’Asiatic’ province in the country.
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Canada’s ‘First’ Maple Leaf
Long before Canada adopted its maple leaf flag, we and all other nations of the British Commonwealth flew the Red Ensign with the British Union Jack in the top left corner and the Canadian shield, right of centre.
During the Second World War all of His Majesty’s ships of the Commonwealth navies flew the White Ensign with its Union Jack and red St. George’s Cross.
Canada broke from the herd when the Naval Board authorized the attaching of a green maple leaf badge to ships’ funnels so as to identify them as Canadian.
Images, left to right, the green Maple Leaf; the White Ensign; the Red: www.thestar.com www.mrflag.com
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I really must clean house more often.
Motivated by the imminent arrival of a television camera crew, Belinda and I recently blitzed my library which is also my office, and some real treasures turned up. A file that I’d been looking for for years, among others.
Also some oddities that I couldn’t remember acquiring and can’t really explain, such as 25 photocopied pages from Volume 3 of the Victoria Registry of the Supreme Court of British Columbia. The subtitle identifies it as “Orders issued in Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, 1877-1931.”
Curious, I glanced through it over a coffee. What a revelation!
To think that our forebears of the Victorian and Edwardian eras—periods in history when the code of virtue prevailed throughout the British Commonwealth—were anything but pure. High-button dresses, veils, so-called bathing suits that ensured no (dare I say it) flesh was exposed to the eye, chastity was the badge of a woman’s honour, and on and on.
Accepting that infidelity was one of the very few grounds for legal divorce in Canada at that time, and therefore might well have been staged for the benefit of a court rather than be reality, the sad fact remains that other human frailties are cited in these court registry of matrimonial discord.
Besides the almost requisite infidelity, failings such as frigidity, impotence and bigamy.
To think that I’d grown up believing that our parents and grandparents and on and on through the generations had been honest to a fault, and pure of both body and mind. Only to see it there, in black and white—written in stone—that they were capable of such dastardly conduct.
I’m sure that readers share my shock.