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.

For this assignment I chose to research the Immigration Act of 1910. In line with the historical aims of the Canadian state to exclude individuals considered outside Canadian perceptions of the “white civil”, the act advocated the further monitoring of immigration into the country. It increased the authority of the federal cabinet in making judgements about what was to be considered suitable immigrants, and barred courts and judges from interfering with the decisions of the immigration minister. It also set out specific economic requirements for immigrants of particular countries. For example, Asian immigrants were required to have at least $200 in their possession, while immigrants from other countries were required to have at least $25 before being able to enter the country.

The 1910 Immigration act was thus one that encouraged exclusion from Canada on the basis of race and money.  Similar to the United States, Canada’s region had been inhabited by Indigenous peoples with strong cultural ties to the land and each other. Many of the Europeans that arrived to settle were in search of a new beginning: they wanted to start from scratch and build a new life. Starting from scratch was taken quite literally as it entailed the scratching out of Indigenous peoples and cultures to make room for the Canadian culture to be. These settlers, all European by birth and culture, where white, and had been conditioned by previous experiences in France and Britain, to hold the values of rationality and civility to high standards. Because of this, they (understandably) had a little trouble adapting to the vast natural landscapes of Canada which had nothing to do with the European infrastructure they had left. Instead of aiming to live in harmony with it, they opted for its destruction in order to make room for their own projects. The new settlers undertook the building of what was popularly coined in early Euro-Canadian terms as “the fortress”. Frye argues that Canadians have always felt that their adopted country’s nature was a vast and menacing one from which they had to shelter themselves. In a sense, this can also be extended to the Indigenous, who at the time, where racially devalued by the settlers, and seen as being closer to nature in terms of their lifestyles. In their aims of a new beginning, the Canadian settlers urbanized and industrialized many of Canada’s regions at the expense of nature and Indigenous cultures, and established political, military, educational, economic etc institutions. In simpler terms, they mirrored the European systems they had grown with, into Canada, whose society prior to European arrival, had been defined by complex Indigenous cultural systems.

The Canadian state they’d established sought to create a unity between the people of Canada’s European founding nations, and conversely did not consider Indigenous peoples and their cultures as being a foundational element in the making of Canada. As a result, the Indigenous suffered a great marginalization, and which was enforced legally, militarily, and politically. The 1910 Immigration Act, and the potlatch laws,  are both examples of legal and military enforcement of this. Indigenous systems of knowledge were consequently scattered, leading to a stagnation in their growth and national recognition.

Although the Immigration Act of 1910 didn’t specifically deal with the marginalization of “Indians” from Canadian society, it dealt with the exclusion of a much broader range of cultures from Canada. The questionable ethics of the act in barring courts from intervening with the opinion of the minister of immigration on who was to be considered a suitable immigrant, further goes to show where the aims of the Canadian state lay just a century ago, and definitely reinforces Coleman’s argument of the white civility project. It evidently pushed for the definition of the Canadian citizen to be one that excluded any variable deriving from European beliefs of white hierarchal superiority, and civility.