Prompt:

Question #2: In this lesson I say that it should be clear that the discourse on nationalism is also about ethnicity and ideologies of “race.” If you trace the historical overview of nationalism in Canada in the CanLit guide, you will find many examples of state legislation and policies that excluded and discriminated against certain peoples based on ideas about racial inferiority and capacities to assimilate. – and in turn, state legislation and policies that worked to try to rectify early policies of exclusion and racial discrimination. As the guide points out, the nation is an imagined community, whereas the state is a “governed group of people.” For this blog assignment, I would like you to research and summarize one of the state or governing activities, such as The Royal Proclamation 1763, the Indian Act 1876, Immigration Act 1910, or the Multiculturalism Act 1989 – you choose the legislation or policy or commission you find most interesting. Write a blog about your findings and in your conclusion comment on whether or not your findings support Coleman’s argument about the project of white civility.

– Lesson 3.1, ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres May 2015

If you were to go up to a random individual on the street, say somewhere around the bustling communities of West 4th, Commercial Drive, or Main Street, and ask how they would describe Canada in one sentence, not many would use the words “exclusion [or] racial discrimination”.  However, the overview of nationalism in Canada as covered in the CanLit guide reveals that there are “many examples of state legislation and policies” that aimed to do exactly this.  This week, I will take a brief look back into the darker side of our nation’s history and research one of these such acts, The Immigration Act of 1910, and explore the ways in which it supports David Coleman’s argument for the “project of white civility”.

An extension of the original Immigration Act of 1906, the Immigration Act of 1910 sought to expand the original initiation to regulate all forms of immigration in Canada.  The Immigration Act of 1910 emphasized the expanding of the prohibited category of immigrants to include those that the government believed would “advocate the use of force or violence” and granted the government power to place an immigrant at risk of “deportation if judged undesirable”.  Some may argue that so far, the act seems unnecessary but not guilty of outright RACIAL exclusion yet…but wait for the kicker.  The act granted the government the ability to “restrict immigrants belonging to any RACE deemed UNSUITABLE to the climate or requirements of Canada”.  This detail of the 1910 act reveals the very type of discriminatory “literary personifications [and idealistic goals] of the Canadian nation” that reveal the type of “white civility” and “Britishness” status that Canada sought to maintain.  Furthermore, the emphasis on the power to deport those that were deemed capable of “force…violence”, and incivility is in line with the construction of “white and civil” as normative and in line with the “true” Canadian identity.

Today, one would like to believe these shameful acts of discrimination and racial exclusion are a part of Canada’s (albeit important) past, but even this is not true.  New pieces of legislation, like Bill C-24, prove that there is much work to be done in our country’s dealings with race.  Are we moving forward at all, or does the existence of things like Bill C-24 prove history is bound to repeat itself? What are some other examples of race exclusion and discrimination in Canadian legislature?

Works Cited

CTV Staff. “Bill C-24: What Dual Citizens Need To Know About Bill C-24, The New Citizenship Law.” CTV News, 17 Jan. 2015. Web. 25 June 2015. <http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/what-dual-citizens-need-to-know-about-bill-c-24-the-new-citizenship-law-1.2426968>.

“Immigration Act Canada (1910). North American Immigration. Web. 24 June 2015. <http://northamericanimmigration.org/141-immigration-act-canada-1910.html>.

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 3.1″. English 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres. UBC Blogs. Web. 25 June, 2015. <https://blogs.ubc.ca/courseblogsis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216-sis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216_2517104_1/unit-3/lesson-3-1/>.