Ku Klux Klan violence against mixed-race relationships in 1930s Ontario; the case of a Chinese-Canadian restaurateur, who in 1924 successfully challenged a 1912 act that had proclaimed bluntly that "No person shall employ in any capacity any white woman or girl or permit any white woman or girl to reside or lodge in or to work in ... any restaurant, laundry or other place of business or amusement owned, kept or managed by any Japanese, Chinaman or other Oriental person"; and the 1946 prosecution of a black woman in Nova Scotia who dared to sit in the "whites only" main-floor seating area of a cinema.
These depressing legal cases show how racist attitudes were endemic among white Canadians up to times of living memory, and how this majority successfully used the law, which it controlled and administered, to protect its own racialist interests. White Canadians laid down statutes decreeing forms of racial discrimination.
The Courts then assumed racist values as a form of socially accepted common sense. "Indians," "Chinese," "Japanese," "Hindu," "Mongolian" and "other Asiatics" were all at times denied the right to vote on account of their race. Immigration, access to education, employment, residence and business opportunities were all restricted on racial grounds by legislation. Aboriginal people were denied religious, cultural and linguistic freedom. These restrictions, Backhouse shows, did not go uncontested by those affected, but the challenges were rarely successful.
What do we learn from this history? Canada was certainly no worse in its institutional racism than any other western country, for what that is worth. More recently, it has also been at the forefront of attempts to fight racism by making discrimination illegal, by instituting comprehensive human rights legislation, and by pursuing a non-racialist immigration policy.
