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Canadian Human Rights History
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Contents |
Slavery in New France and BNA
- June 19, 1687 - Jean de Champigny seizes a group of Iroquois at Fort Frontenac; sends them to France as galley slaves. Kingston, Ontario
- May 29, 1733 - Gilles Hocquart, Intendant of New France, upholds the right of Canadians to have Indians as slaves and to sell them. Québec, Québec
- June 21, 1734 - Marie-Joseph Angelique is hanged for setting fire to her master's house, which caused a huge conflagration that burned a large section of Montréal; she was a black female slave protesting her condition. Montréal, Québec
- June 19, 1793 - Upper Canada Assembly passes act prohibiting importation of slaves into the colony; First such law in the British Empire. Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario
- August 23, 1797 - Emanuel Allen sold at public auction in Montréal; last slave transaction in Canada. Montréal, Québec
- May 20, 1803 - Chief Justice William Osgoode declares slavery to be inconsistent with the laws of Canada. Montréal, Québec
- August 28, 1833 - British Parliament outlaws slavery in the British Empire; 700,000 persons are liberated. London, England
- March 13, 1859 - John Brown brings first black slaves to Windsor, Ontario from the US via the Underground Railway; he is later made famous in a song, John Brown's Body, about a raid he made on Harper's Ferry, Virginia.
1885 - Chinese Head Tax Imposed to Discourage Chinese Immigration
The first Chinese came from San Francisco to British Columbia during the Fraser Valley gold rush in 1858. In the 1860s many prospected for gold in the Cariboo Mountains.
When workers were needed to build the Canadian Pacific Railway, many Chinese were brought directly from China. From 1880 to 1885 about 17,000 Chinese labourers helped build the difficult and dangerous BC section of the railway. They were paid only half the wage of white workers.
In 1885, after the driving of the Last Spike of the CPR, cheap labour in large numbers was no longer needed, and there was a backlash from union workers and some politicians against the Chinese. The Canadian government moved to discourage further immigration from China, and after a Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration, Ottawa passed the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885. The Act imposed a fee of $50 - later called a 'head tax' - payable by each Chinese person entering Canada.
Prior attempts by BC to introduce similar taxes had been struck down by the courts as 'ultra vires' [beyond the powers of] the provincial legislature because they impinged upon federal jurisdiction.
From 1886 to 1894, 12,197 Chinese people immigrated to Canada, and paid the tax; between 1895 and 1904, this figure grew to 32,457 people. In 1901, responding to public pressure about a continuing influx of Chinese, Ottawa doubled the head tax to $100, and three years later, raised it to $500. It was a large sum at a time when the average production worker in Canada took home only $417 in annual wages, and a house or quarter section of land cost only $250.
Despite the astronomical figure, Chinese immigration continued to rise during the early years of the century, reaching a record of 7 500 in 1913. However, after that point, the discriminatory 'head tax' had the desired effect as Chinese immigration virtually ceased after World War One.
Still, with the outbreak of World War I, Chinese labour was needed in Canada again. In 1917-18, the number of Chinese immigrants increased to 4,000 a year. But when the war ended and soldiers returned to Canada looking for work, there was another backlash against the Chinese. The economic recession in the early 1920s added to the resentment.
The Chinese were the only ethnic group that had to pay a Head Tax to enter Canada. Other Asians, such as the East Indians and the Japanese, were not subject to a Head Tax. Before the Statute of Westminster 1931, Canada could not deter citizens from India, which was still a British crown colony, or Japan, which agreed to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1902.
The Government of Canada collected well over $24 million in face value from about 81,000 head tax payers, some of the money being used to support Canada's war effort in World War I. The total head tax collected by 1923 has been estimated as equivalent to over $1.2 billion in 2005 dollars.
On July 1, 1923, Ottawa replaced the head tax by passing the Chinese Immigration Act or Canadian Chinese Exclusion Act, which had the effect of barring Chinese immigrants from the country altogether. July 1, 1923, is known as "humiliation day" in the Canadian Chinese community.
The 1923 act caused great hardship, since more than 90% of the Chinese men in Canada were bachelors and the law would not allow the men to date or marry non-Chinese women. Thousands of families were separated for decades until the Chinese Exclusion Act was was repealed in 1947. The Chinese population in Canada went from 46,500 in 1931 to about 32,500 in 1951. In that same year Chinese Canadians regained the right to vote in Canadian federal elections. It wasn't until 1967 that the final elements of the Chinese Exclusion Act were completely eliminated.
1914 - Ukrainian Canadians Interned Under War Measures Act
After Britain entered the First World War in August of 1914, Canadian Prime Minister Robert Borden introduced the War Measures Act. Under the Act, the Cabinet passed an Order In Council that resulted in the internment of 8,579 "enemy aliens" in 24 "concentration camps" and work sites in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and based like the Beauport Armoury and CFB Valcartier .
The internment did not include Canadian-born, Canadian citizens, or citizens of the Russian Empire. But Austro-Hungarians were singled out as aliens. Most were ethnic Ukrainians who had emigrated to Canada from territories under the control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Canada was aligned with Britain against Austria-Hungary, an ally of Germany.
In total, the Canadian Government interned 8,579 males, including 5,954 Austro-Hungarians. Most internees were poor or unemployed single men, although 81 women and 156 children (of all nationalities) voluntarily accompanied men at two of the camps, even those who were born in Canada.
The Act also obliged an additional 80,000 individuals (of whom about 70,000 from Austro-Hungary were Ukrainians) to register as "enemy aliens", and required them to carry identity papers and report to local authorities on a regular basis. The Act also denied them citizenship rights, including the ability to vote.
The internment ended in 1920, although most Ukrainians were paroled into jobs for private companies by 1917. But some were held in camps for 18 months after the war because their labour was so cheap. Before they were interned, many young men had been fired from jobs for "patriotic reasons" and were left homeless.
Some of the detainees were forced to turn over money and property. According to McGill University historian J. H. Thompson, the Canadian government later auctioned the property for 10 cents on the dollar or kept. Some of that wealth is still in federal coffers.
In 2005, Prime Minister Paul Martin recognized the Ukrainian-Canadian internment as a "dark chapter in the history of Canada", and pledged $2.5 million to fund memorials and educational exhibits.
- Internment of Ukrainians in Canada 1914-1920 at InfoUkes
- A Time for Atonement: Canada's First National Internment Operations and the Ukrainian Canadians 1914-1920, booklet by Lubomyr Luciuk
- Re: internment of Ukrainian Canadians by Orest Martynowych, Ukrainian Weekly
References
- Luciuk, Lubomyr (2001). In Fear of the Barbed Wire Fence: Canada's First National Internment Operations and the Ukrainian Canadians, 1914-1920. Kingston: Kashtan Press.
- Martynowych, Orest (1991), "Registration, Internment and Censorship", in Ukrainians in Canada: The formative period, 1891–1924, pp. 323–334. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. ISBN 0-92086-276-4.
June 27, 1946 - Canadian Citizenship Act Enacted
Until 1947, there was no such thing in law as a Canadian citizen. Canadian nationals were legally defined as British subjects, both in Canada and abroad.
The law that gave legal recognition to the term "Canadian citizen" originated with Liberal Cabinet Minister Paul Martin Sr.. During the Second World War, when he was visiting Dieppe, he resolved to bring in a law defining what constituted a Canadian.
The Immigration Act of 1910, the Naturalization Act of 1914 and the Canadian Nationals Act of 1921 provided a definition of "Canadian nationals," which Canada needed for participation in the League of Nations and membership in the International Court of Justice, but as Martin noted in Parliament, there was unending confusion and embarrassment. Married women did not have full authority over their national status. Along with minors, lunatics and idiots "under a disability," they could not become naturalized or control their national status as independent persons, except in very special circumstances.
On October 22, 1945, Martin spoke to Canadian Citizenship Act in the House of Commons:
Our "new Canadians" bring to this country much that is rich and good, and in Canada they find a new way of life and new hope for the future. They should all be made to feel that they, like the rest of us, are Canadians, citizens of a great country, guardians of proud traditions and trustees of all that is best in life for generations of Canadians yet to be. For the national unity of Canada and for the future and greatness of this country it is felt to be of utmost importance that all of us, new Canadians or old, have a consciousness of a common purpose and common interests as Canadians; that all of us are able to say with pride and say with meaning: "I am a Canadian citizen."
The Canadian Citizenship Act, enacted on June 27, 1946, came into force on January 1, 1947. It conferred a common Canadian citizenship on all Canadians, whether or not they had been born in Canada. Canadian citizenship, however, was deemed a privilege to be granted only to those considered qualified. Among the changes introduced by the new Act were the following:
- All Canadian citizens would have automatic right of entry to Canada.
- As a rule, immigrants (including those from the Commonwealth) would not qualify for full citizenship until they had been resident in Canada for five years and had taken out citizenship papers. However, immigrants who were already British subjects would not lose their existing rights, including the right to vote after they had resided in Canada for only one year. Immigrants who had served in the Canadian armed forces during the First or the Second World War would qualify for naturalization after only one year.
- Married women would be given full authority over their nationality status.
- Citizenship would be lost under certain circumstances, such as the adoption of citizenship of another country.
- Provision would be made for instruction in the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and for appropriate citizenship ceremonies, including a revised oath of allegiance.
- An applicant for citizenship could substitute 20 years of residence in Canada for a knowledge of English or French.
With this revolutionary law Canada became the first Commonwealth country to create its own class of citizenship separate from that of Great Britain. Henceforth Canadian citizenship could be acquired by immigrants who had been naturalized in Canada, non-Canadian British subjects who had lived in Canada for five or more years, and non-Canadian women who had married Canadian citizens and who had come to live in Canada.
At a cermony of January 3, 1947 in the Supreme Court of Canada, Chief Justice Thibaudeau Rinfret presented 26 individuals with the first Canadian citizenship certificates. Prime Minister Mackenzie King received certificate 0001. Photographer Yousuf Karsh, born in Armenia, also received his citizenship.
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1946 - Viola Desmond Takes on Nova Scotia's Black Segregation Laws
When she sat in the lower "Whites Only" house seats, the manager ordered her to sit in the balcony which was designated for Black patrons. When she refused, he called the police and she was arrested, dragged bodily from the theatre and thrown in jail overnight for 12 hours. Bruised and angry, she sat bolt upright all night on the hard jail bench, wearing her white gloves. In the morning she was charged with "attempting to defraud the Federal Government" based on her refusal to pay the one cent amusement tax difference between the 3 cents charged to those sitting in the balcony and the 2 cents charged to those sitting downstairs. Even though she had offered to pay the difference in ticket price, she was convicted of failing to pay the tax on the downstairs ticket. After a short trial Viola was sentenced to a fine of $20 plus court costs and 30 days in prison.
The new Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NSAACP), founded in 1945 by William Oliver and Pearleen Oliver, raised the money to pay her fine and fight her conviction. Her lawyer took the case to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, but her appeal lost on a technicality. Viola Desmond's action took place almost ten years before Rosa Parks boarded a bus for home in Montgomery, Alabama and remained seated after being ordered to give up her seat to a white passenger, in an action that was a key part of the U.S. civil rights movement. The Nova Scotia government finally repealed the laws allowing segregation in 1954.
