Quebec Newspaper Reactions to the 1907 Vancouver Riots: Humanitarianism, Nationalism, and Internationalism

The author discusses Quebec's English-language and French-language newspaper reportage of Japanese immigration to British Columbia in the early twentieth century and the attacks on Japanese and Chinese immigrants in riots that occurred in Vancouver in September 1907. The reportage is characterized by several elements including the questions of identity and belonging, the impact of the riots on relations between Japan and Great Britain, and the tensions between nationalism and humanitarianism. The newspapers examined are the English-language Montreal Star and The Gazette, and the French-language La Presse, La Patrie and Le Soleil. The two English language papers underlined the larger global resonance of the events in Vancouver and speculated, in particular, as to their impact on relations between Japan and the British imperial government in London. These papers, according to the author, were confident in Canada's future as a white Christian society and supported the rights of the Japanese minority, calling for prosecution of white rioters as hoodlums. The French-language journalists were split on their views. The author points out that on the one side, "nationalist" writers sought to justify or even defend the rioters' actions by depicting them as a response to a threatened "invasion" of Canada by Japanese immigrants whom they considered immutably foreign and unassimilable. These journalists likewise described the riots as a product of Canada's colonial subjugation to Great Britain and of its international policy. Other "humanitarian" Francophone journalists, the author points out, insisted on protection of civil rights for all Canadian residents and voiced sympathy for the Japanese as valuable immigrants who were peaceable victims of racist outrages.

BC Studies

No. 192

25-49

Winter 2016/2017

en