Why should Canadians apologize for wanting to keep Canada white? They are not responsible for taking in anyone who wants to move there.
Are Tibetans evil for wanting to keep Tibet Tibetan? Are Japanese evil for wanting to stay Japanese? So why should white people in countries created and developed by white people apologize for wanting to keep their countries white?
On Wednesday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered a formal apology in his country’s House of Commons for an incident that took place more than a century ago.
In mid-May 1914, the Komagata Maru, a Japanese steamship, arrived in Vancouver after leaving Hong Kong in early April. On board were 376 passengers, most of whom were Sikh migrants from what was then British India. The ship was not allowed to dock.
A 1908 Canadian law at the time forbade arrivals in the country who did not make a “continuous journey” from their nation of birth or citizenship. In an era when hundreds of thousands of white European immigrants were settling in Canada, the law was seen as a measure to stymie Indian arrivals because it was practically impossible to travel directly from the Indian mainland to North America.
n a challenge to the rules, the Komagata Maru, chartered by a Sikh businessman with ties to an influential Sikh political party in the Americas, steamed across the Pacific. Its arrival in Canada was anticipated by doom-mongering local headlines, which warned of an impending “Hindu invasion.”
Sir Richard McBride, then the Conservative premier of British Columbia, made clear the explicit racism of Canada’s policies on the night the Komagata Maru reached Vancouver.
“To admit Orientals in large numbers would mean the end, the extinction of the white people,” he said. “And we always have in mind the necessity of keeping this a white man’s country.”
