October 6, 1921
What was happening a century ago this week from the front page of the Cowichan Leader.
October 6, 1921
The headline that cries out on this front page of the Leader is a nasty one:
ORIENTAL MENACE – Asiatic Exclusion League Aims Endorsed by Board of Trade Council.
The ugly issue of white privilege vs. Asian ‘invasion’ was again to the fore. Members of the B of T and of the Retail Merchants’ Association of Canada had joined in attending an address on the “Oriental Menace” delivered by H. Glyn-Ward, author The Writing on the Wall which was said to be attracting a good deal of attention.
At least he was honest in presenting it was as fiction although supposedly based upon fact. He must have been persuasive, too, as several of the RTA representatives joined the Exclusion League and the BoT endorsed its aims.
These were:
● To work for a white Canada
● To eradicate the Oriental menace by every means in our power
● To educate the people of this country to the terrible effect of allowing Orientals a foothold in Canada
Shades of Mississippi and the KKK? No, our forefathers, right here in Duncan, land of the free and equal so long as you were white and, preferably, of British descent. Only the white sheets were missing.
Based in Vancouver, the League’s list of officers included Great War veterans and at least one tradesman. They claimed to have 23,000 members with 1300 about to join in Victoria; their goal was 150,000 members or 75 per cent of the B.C. electorate. Although not intending to run candidates in the coming election they were determined to pin down every candidates’ views on the subject of Asian immigration.
Using a series of articles which had appeared in the Vancouver Daily World as their source of information, the League was demanding that the fishing industry which employed thousands of Chinese cannery workers and Japanese fishermen be nationalized and employment restricted to whites.
Interestingly, both the Japanese and Chinese consuls attended the talk and the Leader said it would be asking them their views on the subject of immigration.
Former Vancouver MLA J.S. Cowper expressed his concern for the growing Asian communities in the Fraser Valley, Okanagan and Cariboo and said that the latest census showed that Chinese outnumbered white residents in Ashcroft. “In the surrounding district,” he said, “there is not a single white grower of Ashcroft potatoes. There is not a hotel in the whole of the Cariboo that is not run by a Chinaman [sic].”
He said that no fewer than 1445 “trained” merchants from China, each bankrolled with $1000, “had invaded the province” without paying the infamous head tax.
In spite of a “gentleman’s agreement” between Canada and Japan, Japanese immigration continued to grow: “Today one birth in every 13 [in B.C.] is that of a Japanese child.”
Worse, Japanese immigrants were demanding to be naturalized and given the vote!
I could go on but you get the drift. The United States feared and resented its Black minority; we in British Columbia feared and resented Asian immigrants, many of whom had no choice but to accept lower wages or undesirable jobs which, paradoxically, made them a threat to white labour.
But enough of that for today...
Mayor Pitt presided over a full attendance of Duncan Council to approve local improvement debentures to the tune of $12,500 and discussed a Vancouver man’s proposal to install an electricity generating waterwheel in the Cowichan River. They were reminded that an engineering study some years past had shown such a wheel to be impractical.
Council had run out of patience with groups requesting permission to hold Tag Days and W.L.B. Young appeared on behalf of Cowichan Merchants Ltd. to request monetary compensation for having had to raise their sidewalk at their own expense ($108) to meet the level of the new pavement.
And since he was before Council, Young took the opportunity to ask permission to erect awnings on the Station and Craig street sides of the store. These would be suspended from the walls and no pedestrian obstructing standards would be required.
Council passed the buck to the Streets Committee to deal with both requests and approved payment of $4659.77 for street improvements.
The regular meeting of the Board of Trade enjoyed a larger than usual visitors gallery because of the discussion of the Oriental ‘Menace’ described above. A major item of business was a report on the city campsite. 180 cars had stayed that season for a guesstimated total of as many as 720 visitors “who spent one or more nights and considerable time in the city and district”.
(Five provinces, six American states and a vehicle registered as being from India(!) indicated that tourism was alive and well in the Valley as long ago as 1921.)
There was further talk of building a tile making plant in the Valley and W.R. Elford, chairman of the roads and bridges committee, Cobble hill, praised the new road linking the West Arm of Shawnigan Lake to the Burnt Bridge area.
Col. G.T. Oldman reported that a special police officer had been assigned to keep an eye on vacant summer homes around the lake. Only problem was, he lived in an out-of-the-way location, didn’t have a phone and couldn’t respond to calls for assistance without first getting approval from Victoria!
Of the privately owned 2000 lots surrounding the lake, said S.J. Heald, the average annual property tax was “at least” $3 each. Yet, “for all of this revenue,” property owners received little in return, only $1000 having been expended on roads in the area in the past five years.
The Board resolved to write another letter to the province and, failing a satisfactory answer, to deputize a committee to go to Victoria.
The contentious issue of Cowichan Tribes’ fishing in the Cowichan River with the use of weirs remained on the front burner and all were assured that the federal government’s report on Valley fresh and salt water fisheries by Mr. Justice Eberts—which he’d begun in 1918—was in the works.
Despite continued pleadings then demands, not even the fisheries department had succeeded in getting Eberts off the pot and the matter had been raised in the House of Commons. At least everyone involved had the satisfaction of knowing that Eberts wouldn’t be paid until he delivered.
300 people enriched the King’s Daughters’ Hospital by $200 at a ‘cabaret’ in the Agricultural Hall. The Leader expressed its disappointment in the fact that the entertainers performed on stage rather than mingling with the crowd as in the real sense of a cabaret but admitted that the fare was sufficiently entertaining to have inspired repeated encores.
The nomination of a Liberal candidate for the next provincial election was again postponed, this time to October 15th.
Finally, this obituary reprinted in the Leader from the Colonist of Oct. 2, 1871:
AN OLD TIME PIONEER – Early Days in Cowichan Recalled By News Item of 50 Years Ago:
“Mr. W.F. Crate died at Cowichan on Sunday. He crossed the Rocky Mountains 43 years ago in the Hudson’s Bay Co. service. Twenty-two years afterwards he crossed the Rockies again in company with Sir James Douglas and several of the now leading men of the [HBC].
“Mr. Crate has seen frontier life in all its phases, and built a saw and grist mill near Fort Vancouver, Washington Territory... Mr. Crate’s former associates in the [HBC’s] employ, and the public generally, will be pained to learn that the old pioneer died in very indifferent circumstances.”
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