Apologize now, and likely apologize later
Shachi Kurl
Special to the Sun
Thursday, May 29, 2008
'Sorry" really does seem to be the hardest word, except maybe when you're trying to get out of the doghouse, or when you think you've got something to gain.
So it was particularly telling when Liberal house leader Mike de Jong rose in the British Columbia legislature last week, and eloquently apologized on behalf of the provincial government for the way 376 South Asian would-be immigrants to Canada on board the Japanese vessel Komagata Maru were treated when they sought admission at Vancouver Harbour in 1914.
Only a handful were allowed to stay. The rest were sent back following a two-month standoff fuelled by hysterical suspicion, racism and mistrust of the men who had come from India to test Canada's immigration laws.
De Jong and his colleagues said all the right words, and I truly believe they were sincere. But why now?
I suppose it would seem churlish to point out that the B.C. Liberals have a relationship with South Asian voters that has been described by government insiders variously as "difficult" and, at times, as "bi-polar."
The premier's office is still licking wounds inflicted by not one but two years of negative press over the decision first to send Premier Gordon Campbell and later to keep him away from Surrey's controversial Vaisakhi parade.
The Liberals have still not fully recovered from the damage of a horrific crash in March 2007 took the lives of three South Asian farm workers. Their deaths, combined with budget and program cuts around vehicle inspections, led many members of the community to conclude Liberals do not care about their safety.
It's tough to court votes within a demographic that has for decades pledged the bulk of its loyalties to the New Democratic Party.
How better then, to earn a little political love by doing something the New Democrats had a decade to get around to while in power, but never bothered with?
As sincere as I believe politicians on both sides of the House were when they spoke last Friday, there is no doubt that, with less than a year to the next election, the very act of apologizing also represented a tactical master stroke.
It's the same motivation that drives the federal government, busily preparing its own apology.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who worked equally strategically to sway newly minted Canadians to vote Tory in 2006, is now in danger of losing them with changes to the Immigration Act. If you're worried about being banished to the couch, it's never a bad idea to buy some flowers, even pre-emptively.
Still -- the apologies, made and forthcoming, are for the best, though I am sure that is not what politicians of the day would have thought. Their convictions were firmly the convictions of British Columbians, circa 1914.
Remember, that was a time of outright hostility towards most in this country who weren't WASPs. Catholics and Jews were merely tolerated. Chinese migrants were being held at bay with that head tax. The idea of more turbaned men from India did not represent the kind of growth then premier Richard McBride had in mind for B.C. -- and the reportage in this very publication reflected the attitudes of the time.
"Hindu Invaders Now in the City Harbour on Komagata Maru," screamed The Vancouver Sun's headline on May 23, 1914. The leader of the expedition, The Sun reported, was issuing statements containing "veiled threats," while "many Vancouver Hindus collected on the waterfront in low voices, as if plotting schemes to aid their countrymen on the Japanese steamer to get ashore."
The authors of a Sun editorial published two days later were none too pleased with their Vancouver MP, one Henry Herbert Stevens. According to the column, Stevens had given a speech saying the admission to Canada of "all British subjects, was paying the price of empire."
"Mr. Stevens may be willing to pay the price of empire by throwing open the gates to undesirable aliens," replied The Sun's editors, "but we are convinced that few of Mr. Stevens' constituents would follow him so far as to consent to a measure, one result of which would be the removal of the barriers against Hindu immigration, and the eventual overrunning of this province."
It would be funny were it not so truly offensive.
Still, nothing stays static, and by 1914 standards, this province, indeed this country, have since been undeniably "overrun" by the kind of "undesirable aliens" the white majority once feared.
In fact, 50 years after the Komagata Maru's ill-fated voyage, a quirk of law allowed all British subjects in Canada the right to vote, even if they weren't citizens, even the dreaded "Hindus."
The face of Vancouver is now so changed that the latest census numbers tell us what we can plainly see: Four in 10 of us come from a visible minority group.
Old attitudes, however, still linger. You still hear the us-versus-them moaning from those who don't think the governments of B.C. and Canada have anything to apologize for.
I think they are wrong. I think decency and impartiality and serenity when faced with the unknown are basic principles for governments to follow -- and they weren't in 1914.
Some take it as a point of pride to dig their heels in. I think it's far more expedient to suck it up, say you're sorry, and move on.
But there is a caveat.
As we change, the definitions of what is acceptable and tolerable change, and in saying sorry today, we must be prepared to accept that the decisions we make today may not be seen as so defensible in the future.
Ninety years from now, the descendants of the Fujianese migrants who landed on the shores of B.C.'s north coast in 1999; the majority of whom were returned to China, their refugee claims denied, may well be demanding, and receiving apologies for the way their ancestors were treated.
In 2008, many of us reject the argument that "no one is illegal" when it comes to migration. That may not be the case in a century, and if apologies are sought and proffered it would behoove our ghosts to sit as quietly in the legislature then, as the ghosts of Richard McBride and his counterparts did on Friday.
Perhaps their spirits really were sorry, but I suspect not.
Shachi Kurl is a reporter/anchor with A-Channel News with Hudson Mack.
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