The Asiatc
“This is the face of the enemy!” were words shouted in the streets of Vancouver on the high noon of September 7, 1907. And as 10,000 whites marched down Powell Street that day, the immigrants of Chinatown hunkered down for the coming storm.
The Vancouver Riot of 1907 was the product of many years of underlying stigma that chaffed at the barrier of peace, a barrier pierced at the Vancouver City Hall that day. To understand the contents of the issue that exploded we must look back at the years leading up to the issue and the factors that contributed to the riot.
In 1858, the China-man arrived on mass at the ports of Victoria and in so, BC. Mostly laborers and coolies from down south like California they came with the wave of desperate miners and men that were swept up in the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. Many of them were men separated from their families by an ocean and alone in a new world unsure of the path ahead, but they had a goal. To work hard and buy a new life for themselves and their family in BC.
For the time they were tolerated by the white majority as people who brought in gold, did their work, and required little to no interaction so as not to be overly annoying. The Yellow people of the day lived in seclusion from white society and tolerated at best to keep to themselves. But this seclusion and silence will not be winning hearts and minds for the Asian image among the whites, and thus tensions began to simmer.
The second wave of the Asian invasion came on 1880 when the call was put out by the government to recruit the China-man in the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Another 5000 confused faces arrived on the shore of BC, bringing with them their labor, dreams, and tension. The work was hard and conditions tough, and by the end of the project only 1500 of the original 5000 came out alive. But they had a bigger surprise waiting for them.
Courtesy of Justin Yan
In 1881, when the time to be paid finally arrived those that remained lived to find the pay bare and meager in comparison to their dreams. And to top the cake with icing, in 1885 with the whites now in full concern of the mass of yellow faces in their province pushed through the Head Tax law that charges anybody immigrating from China. This means the meager pay saved up by those working on the CPR won’t be enough to start their dream of a new life.
Of course, this means that all the Asiatics now discharged from the construction of the CPR will be looking for work on mass and finally coming in direct confrontation with the population majority of the land, tipping the tension over the final edge.
The Asiatic Exclusion League is the child of the swelling tensions that reach back to 1858. The White people of the day, afraid for their jobs, livelihood, and future formed the group on August 12 of 1907 to “to keep Oriental immigrants out of British Columbia.” Just 1 month from it’s date of formation the cries about the face of enemies can be heard down Powell Street.
The Whites initially rallied at the city hall, calling up people from the streets to join the fight against the “Yellow take-over” and inciting the crowd to violence. For each person that joined the flood, one more crack was made on the wall of rationality that thus far held them back. Soon it reached a point where a reasonable man could take no more, and then did the crowd turn to violence.
Aftermath of besieged Chinatown
In one afternoon, they flooded in and then out of China town, destroying windows, and causing thousands of dollars (more than a hundred thousand of today’s dollars) of property damage and injuries. The Asians tried to protect their homes with sticks and fists, but the tide of White sentiment was just too strong to be extinguished on the street. It finally became apparent that the Yellow-man was not welcome in BC, and in the following years more strife and hardship through the expansion of the Head Tax and the Chinese Immigration Act. The AEL experienced a brief wave of new found support and publicity after their senseless plunder of China town but start losing member interest with the lack of violence and thankfully died out before passing their first anniversary.
To this day it surprises me the lack of knowledge about this event, the irony that became the riot of 1907 remains outside the boundaries of most Canadians, Caucasian or Oriental. It was the day when the “White Terror” was created to affront a fictional “Yellow Terror”.
