page_title: History of Vancouver
section_title: Social controversies
hierarchical_section_title: History of Vancouver / 1900 to 1940 / Social controversies
caption_attribution_description: English: Sikhs on board the "Komogata Maru" in English Bay, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. 1914
context_page_description: The history of Vancouver is one that extends back thousands of years, with its first inhabitants arriving in the area following the Last Glacial Period. Vancouver is situated in British Columbia, Canada; with its location near the mouth of the Fraser River and on the waterways of the Strait of Georgia, Howe Sound, Burrard Inlet, and their tributaries. Vancouver has, for thousands of years, been a place of meeting, trade, and settlement.
  The presence of people in what is now called the Lower Mainland of British Columbia dates from 8,000 to 10,000 years ago when the glaciers of the last ice age began to disappear. The area, known to the First Nations as S'ólh Téméxw, shows archeological evidence of a seasonal encampment near the mouth of the Fraser River that dates from that time.
  The first Europeans to explore the area were Spanish Captain José María Narváez in 1791, and British naval Captain George Vancouver in 1792. The area was not settled by Europeans until almost a century later, in 1862. The city grew rapidly following completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway transcontinental line from Eastern Canada, allowing for continuous rail service in the late 1880s.
context_section_description: Although the provincial resource-based economy allowed Vancouver to flourish, it was nonetheless not immune to the vagaries of organized labour. Two general strikes were launched by labour groups during the years following the First World War, including Canada's first general strike following the death of a trade unionist, Ginger Goodwin. Major recessions and depressions hit the city hard in the late 1890s, 1919, 1923, and 1929, which, aside from creating hardship also may have fuelled social tensions. In particular, members of the new and growing Asian population were subjected to discrimination as well as periodic upsurges of more physical objections to their arrival.
  The most overt expression of this may have been the 1907 riots thought to have been organized by the Asiatic Exclusion League, a group formed under organized labour and inspired by its counterpart in San Francisco.
  But discrimination was perhaps less overt than such events suggest. It could be argued that some politicians and publicists may have promoted and disseminated controversial ideologies through popular books such as H. Glynn-Ward's 1921 The Writing on the Wall and Tom MacInnes’s 1929 The Oriental Occupation of British Columbia. Newspapermen such as L. D. Taylor of the Vancouver World and General Victor Odlum of the Star generated a glut of editorials analyzing and warning about the "Oriental Menace," as did Danger: The Anti-Asiatic Weekly.
  This determination of British Columbians to secure B.C.'s borders  influenced federal politicians to pass immigration laws such as the head tax and the Chinese Exclusion Act. What may be called a "climate of fear and hysteria" in the 1920s, culminated in the 'Janet Smith case', in which a Chinese national was accused of killing his young, white, female co-worker. The evidence for his guilt was perhaps based more on stereotyping than facts.
  A growing population of Indians, primarily from the province of Punjab and of the Sikh religion, were also required to abide by immigration laws starting in 1908, despite the fact that they were subjects of the British Empire. This culminated in the 1914 Komagata Maru incident, in which most of 376 immigrants on the Komagata Maru, most of them from the Punjab in India were not permitted to disembark because they had not complied with immigration laws that required that they come by a continuous passage from their home country.
  A group of residents of Indian origin rallied in support of the passengers. After losing a court challenge of the immigration laws, the ship remained in Burrard Inlet while negotiations continued concerning its departure. When negotiations dragged on, the head immigration officer in Vancouver arranged an attempt by the Vancouver police and other officials to board the ship, who were repelled by what the Vancouver Sun reported as "howling masses of Hindus". Subsequently, the federal government sent a naval ship and after concessions made by the federal Minister of Agriculture, an MP from Penticton, the ship departed. After returning to India, twenty of the passengers were shot by police in an incident after they refused to return to the Punjab.
caption: Sikhs aboard Komagata Maru in 1914. The incident involved a migrants from the British Raj attempting to move to Canada, but were denied entry upon their arrival to Vancouver.
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