City’s apology to Chinese community was ‘long-overdue’
Imagine loving the country you were born in so much that you’re willing to sacrifice your life, if necessary, in its honour.
Imagine being turned down because of the colour of your skin.
The City of Vancouver took steps Sunday to atone for even worse injustices done to the city’s Chinese community, injustices that weren’t only formally condoned, but also actively pursued from Vancouver’s first council meeting in 1886 onward.
Following the lead of Parliament, the legislature in Victoria and city hall in New Westminster, Vancouver formally apologized for historical discrimination against the Chinese community at a special council meeting Sunday in the Chinese Cultural Centre.
“It’s a rightful and long-overdue apology,” retired Lt.-Col. George Ing said in response to Mayor Gregor Robertson’s lengthy and heartfelt mea culpa on behalf of the city and past councils.
Ing told the story of Chinatown residents volunteering to serve in the Second World War, despite being denied citizenship and the right to vote, only to be turned down on ethnic grounds.
“These were Chinese Canadians who were born in Canada,” he said. “They could not become professionals. They could not become a lawyer, a doctor, a dentist or a teacher. They could not go to a local swimming pool, in the theatre they had to sit in the back rows.
“They decided to fight for Canada and prove they were Canadians, but were rejected because they were Chinese. Can you imagine walking into a recruiting office, willing to fight for Canada ... to fight for the country you live in and being rejected?”
Robertson spoke of how the first half of Vancouver’s history was awash in official and systematic racism, prejudice and discrimination directed at Chinese-Canadians.
“And yet for 60 years, rather than standing up against the injustice of racism, many of our elected officials, including mayors and councillors, used the legal power of the city to enact and expand laws targeting Chinese residents,” Robertson said.
Point by point, the mayor listed grievous actions taken by city hall to deny Chinese-Canadians basic human rights, the right to vote chief among them: “No Chinaman or Indian shall be entitled to vote in any municipal election ... “
Those rights weren’t granted to Chinese-Canadians in Vancouver until 1949.