This is an excerpt from A Nation’s Paper: The Globe and Mail in the Life of Canada, a collection of history essays from Globe writers past and present, coming this fall from Signal/McClelland & Stewart.
The front-page headline demanded action: “Time to Close the Gates.” It was March 26, 1908. Centred on the page, a list of three recently murdered men and their four “supposed slayers” – their non-Anglo-Saxon, ethnic names unmissable in all-caps. “The Goth is at our own gates,” The Globe editorial warned.
“One has only to glance at this list to see that the Slav and the Italian are swelling the statistics of crime in this country.” The only effective cure for the “invasion” would be “the closing of the gates on the offscourings of the Slav and Latin races.”
Canada was in the midst of an immigration boom, and a nation-forming discussion about the country’s racial makeup, with much handwringing about keeping it British. “Slavs” was a term the paper – and others – used to describe a large swath of Eastern Europeans.
One hundred years is a long time in this young country’s history. But a century has its constants. On March 26, 2008, exactly 100 years later, The Globe and Mail was still weighing in on immigration. It supported Conservative reforms that would give the immigration minister broad powers over the prioritizing and processing of applications in an effort to deal with a huge backlog.
“This will not sit well with some ethnic communities, for whom the Liberals have made sacred the right to bring in aging parents and grandparents. But it stands to benefit our economy,” the paper stated in another editorial that month. “Immigration policy, not to be confused with refugee policy, should first and foremost fit Canada’s needs.”
New Canadians accept flags at a Toronto citizenship ceremony.Fernando Morales/The Globe and Mail
While the backgrounds and originating locales of Canada’s newcomers have changed over time, immigration has always played a role in this nation – and played out in the pages of its national newspaper. Frequently using language excruciating to read today, Globe reports, editorials and opinion columns – sometimes written by newsmakers themselves – have covered and even led the immigration debate. The Globe often, although certainly not always, offered a progressive, humanitarian view, long before the tide of opinion seemed to turn.
But if it was at times more favourable toward immigrants than were many Canadians – including government officials – the paper also at times amplified fear and panic. In its worst moments, it urged Canada to close its doors to certain people.
The narrative many Canadians have been raised on, the fairy tale we like to tell ourselves, is that this is a nation built by newcomers on vast, empty land – a myth that stings for Indigenous people. A country that is accepting and open to immigrants – all too often, another myth.
“Immigrants were not always welcomed with an outpouring of compassion for the world’s downtrodden, oppressed and displaced,” wrote Globe reporter Victor Malarek in his 1987 book Haven’s Gate: Canada’s Immigration Fiasco. “They were brought here to work and Canada was not about to coddle them. … They were sometimes shunned, patronized and exploited.”
As The Globe marks its 180th anniversary, questions around immigration continue to populate its pages. Who gets in, who doesn’t. On what criteria. Deafening in its absence for many years: discussion of who was displaced by settlers as Canada formed and evolved. From the Chinese head tax to Roxham Road, a trip through the pages of The Globe offers the real story in black and white. Canada – if it opened its gates at all – has often been inhospitable, even hostile, to newcomers.
Asylum seekers cross into Canada in Noyes, Minn., in 2017, a period when the Trump administration's anti-immigration policies led many to flee the United States. The Manitoba crossing was dangerous, and sometimes deadly, for people ill-protected from the cold.Ian Willms/The Globe and Mail
For Canada, underpopulation would be “a constant and lasting problem,” Globe and Mail journalist Doug Saunders noted in his 2017 book Maximum Canada: Why 35 Million Canadians Are Not Enough. At Confederation in 1867, Canada’s population was 3.5 million. The vast majority were white: French, Irish, English and Scottish. But Chinese men began coming to British Columbia in large numbers in the 1880s, primarily to work on the railway.
Newspaper coverage at the time displays striking antipathy toward those men, often referred to as “John Chinaman.” Even pieces supporting Chinese immigration employed dodgy language and stereotypes. In 1878, when the B.C. government wanted to restrict and regulate Chinese immigration – a proposal that predated a national Chinese head tax – The Globe wrote: “If every one who is comparatively ignorant with rather demoralized religious ideas and a spirit that is content with little, is to be excluded from Canada for instance, where shall we begin, and where shall we end? Levy a prohibitory tax upon the Chinese, is the same thing to be done with the negro or the East Indian, with the Italian or the Irishman?”
The paper contained contradictions within its own pages and was not always enlightened. “It is not easy to see how we shall escape being overrun by them,” read an 1884 piece by a Globe correspondent. “Nothing but restrictive legislation against Chinese immigration will suffice for our protection.”
Victoria's Chinatown in 1898, during the period where Chinese newcomers had to pay the head tax.City of Vancouver Archives
The Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 – the first piece of legislation to exclude immigrants based on ethnic origins – imposed a stiff $50 head tax. It increased in 1900 to $100 and, in 1903, a staggering $500 (about $15,000 today). Later, the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act severely restricted entry to Canada. It was repealed in 1947.
There was also much written about the “Japanese crisis” at the turn of the last century, as Japanese people (Canadians frequently used a different term, as did some Globe headlines) began to settle in B.C. When rioting targeted Vancouver’s Chinese and Japanese neighbourhoods in September, 1907, and some victims fought back, one Globe story announced, “Very Bad News From Vancouver: Japanese were buying firearms yesterday.” An editorial called for prevention of further disturbance, punishment for the guilty and compensation for Japanese people who were hurt or had property damaged. But it added: “We must show that we have institutions, conditions, and standards of conduct worthy of being preserved from the deteriorating influences of foreign admixtures.”
That same editorial called on Ottawa to oversee the contentious issue of Japanese migration. “This would remove a great source of irritation,” the paper stated. In 1908, Canada negotiated a deal that saw Japan voluntarily restrict immigration to Canada to 400 people annually. It was called a “Gentlemen’s Agreement.”
The matriarch of a Swiss immigrant family feeds the chickens and minds her children near Vulcan, Alta., in 1910. Canada welcomed millions of new people in the two decades leading up to the First World War.Glenbow Archives
A huge influx of other immigrants came to Canada during the early 20th century. From 1896 to 1914, nearly three million arrived, almost half between 1910 and 1913. While most came from Britain and the U.S., many continental Europeans arrived too. Coverage of the time is rife with references to hordes of “Slavs” and “Galicians” and comments about Ukrainian immigrants in sheepskin coats (the people were sometimes simply called “Sheepskins”).
That these newcomers were largely white was no accident. While Canada launched an aggressive campaign to lure farmers, it wanted white farmers. Black people, officials said, were not suited to Canadian conditions. “But colour, of course, was the real obstacle,” wrote Valerie Knowles in Strangers at our Gates: Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy, 1540-2015. Indeed, Canadian policy was overtly discriminatory.
The Continuous Journey Regulation of 1908 required prospective immigrants to enter Canada directly from their country of origin, effectively blocking immigration from India – no ships sailed directly from there.
The Immigration Act of 1910 prohibited immigrants deemed “unsuited to the climate or requirements of Canada.” (An order-in-council the following year, which was adopted but never implemented, sought to ban Black immigration outright.)
In 1919, the government amended the act to exclude immigrants from enemy alien countries and gave officials the discretion to prohibit immigrants based on nationality, race, class or “peculiar” customs.
The effects of these laws led to some of the darkest stories in Canada’s immigration history. Sometimes, The Globe spoke out against these injustices, other times not.
Migrants from India stand on the deck of the Komagata Maru, where they languished for weeks in 1914 before Canadian authorities turned them back.Library and Archives Canada
In May, 1914, the Komagata Maru, carrying 376 Indians, arrived in Vancouver. As British subjects, they believed they could immigrate to Canada. But they were stuck on board for two months while the courts heard arguments and the public fumed – fuelled by often hysterical and racist reportage.
While a 2017 examination of the 1914 media coverage found local newspapers to be far worse, Globe headlines included, “The Hindu Peril and the Relief” and “Obstinate Hindus Make Fresh Demand.” (The demand? Better food.)
Yet The Globe urged readers to “Treat the Hindus Generously.” (Those on board were, in fact, overwhelmingly Sikh, not Hindu.) And it ran a scathing editorial questioning why Canada claimed the right to enter their country “and not let them enter ours.”
The ship was ultimately sent back.
During the years of Nazi tyranny, Canada admitted fewer than 5,000 Jews, reported Irving Abella and Harold Troper in None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948. The book is named for a bureaucrat’s response when asked how many Jews Canada should let in.
Following Kristallnacht in 1938, The Globe called for relaxed regulations to admit some German and Austrian refugees who could farm. “Silence is not possible when people are being treated like animals.”
After Canada refused to help more than 900 German-Jewish refugees aboard the doomed MS St. Louis in June, 1939, a Globe headline read: “Canada Condemns Jews to Suicide.”
During and after the Second World War, The Globe repeatedly called for increased British immigration – and help for European refugees. Many Canadians, including prime minister Mackenzie King, were against this, despite the Holocaust’s horrors. Eventually, doors opened.
Japanese Canadians say goodbye at a Vancouver train station in 1942, when they were rounded up into internment camps, an injustice that the Canadian government would apologize for in 1988.Library and Archives Canada
The Globe’s narrative regarding Japanese Canadians was starkly different.
Once at war with Japan, Canada forced about 21,000 Japanese Canadians into internment camps.
In a November, 1943, editorial, The Globe – stating British Columbians would be unhappy to see their former Japanese neighbours returned to their former properties, vocations or community status – wrote “wholesale deportation may become the only feasible option.”
When readers accused The Globe of being “cold-blooded,” the newspaper doubled down. “We agree that the deportation … would be a departure from accepted traditions, but the Japanese present a very special problem.”
It’s an ugly contradiction. The Globe championed European refugees entering Canada, but couldn’t imagine reintegrating Japanese Canadians who already lived here – without any evidence of disloyalty. The editorial was titled “Disposing of the Japanese.”
“You dispose of garbage,” says Canadian author Mark Sakamoto, who wrote about his family’s internment in Forgiveness: A Gift from My Grandparents. “So here’s the paper of record saying that a whole group of people are garbage that should be disposed of.”
Sakamoto notes that authorities seek public support by degrading the humanity of those targeted – calling them rats or garbage. “It’s so sad that Canada was doing that at the same time it was fighting on the side of angels against people who were doing the same thing.”
Such contradictions in Canadian immigration policy continued after the war.
In 1956, when Soviet tanks crushed an anti-Communist rebellion in Hungary, sending thousands fleeing to Austria, The Globe campaigned to bring them to Canada.
“For shame!” a Saturday front-page editorial cried, noting that Canada – a “half-empty country” – was promising only “top priority” to Hungarians who met immigration requirements, and interest-free loans for travel costs. The government, The Globe charged, “has displayed the warmth and generosity of a codfish.”
It urged an airlift and for Ontario to house and feed them. “Let it fling the door wide, wide open.”
By Monday, The Globe got “Action!” its headline stated. A provincial official was heading to Austria. By midweek, Ottawa announced it would pay the airfare for all those from Hungary who wanted to make Canada home.
Canada accepted more than 37,000 Hungarians.
This warm Canadian welcome (and that for thousands of Czechoslovakians later fleeing the Soviet invasion) was no doubt informed by the Red Scare and skin colour – these immigrants were white.
Officials examine new arrivals at Halifax's Pier 21 in 1952.Chris Lund/NFB/Library and Archives Canada
Under the Immigration Act of 1952, the government could still limit or prohibit immigrants for reasons that included nationality and ethnicity.
But The Globe’s attitude was changing, and the paper started calling for change. A March, 1956, editorial asked “Who’s Prejudiced?” Not Canadian people, The Globe said, naively asserting that individual acts of discrimination were “so rare in most parts of Canada as to make headlines and arouse public wrath.” It concluded: “There is, in fact, only one place where racial prejudice is powerfully entrenched and racial discrimination sweepingly practiced; and that is in official Ottawa.”
The paper applauded new policies introduced in 1962 eliminating overt racial discrimination, but found the resulting increase in immigration from what was then the British and other West Indies in 1962 and 1963 “disappointingly” small.
In 1967, Canada implemented a new immigration points system, which evaluated applicants in categories including education and employment prospects. When that brought more arrivals from the Caribbean and Asia the following year, The Globe wrote: “The diversification they bring to Canada is an exciting and a maturing influence.”
Vietnamese refugees look through a fence in Hong Kong in 1979.John Fraser/The Globe and Mail
In 1979, a new crisis: “boat people” fleeing Vietnam, often in makeshift vessels. The Globe called on Canada to help, citing its shameful record on Second World War refugees. “Will the [Joe] Clark Government of 1979 look as gutless to the Canadians of 2009 as the Mackenzie King Government of 1942 does to us today?” wrote foreign affairs columnist Stanley McDowell in July, 1979.
“People are drowning, starving, being raped and beaten and set adrift to be dehydrated by the sun or eaten by sharks.”
Immigration minister Ron Atkey distributed copies of None is Too Many to his cabinet colleagues, urging them to save the day.
They did. In 1979 and 1980, Canada welcomed 60,000 Southeast Asian refugees. In 1986, the United Nations gave its Nansen Refugee Award to the people of Canada – the only time it has been awarded to an entire country.
But, as The Globe reported, the immigration system was marred by bureaucracy, queue-jumping and bogus claims. Changes tightening immigration rules in 1987 enraged refugee advocates – and the opposition. Liberal MP David Berger said the Conservative measures would bar even “Jesus of Nazareth.”
In a Globe column, Berger wrote: “Which country will maintain a generous attitude toward refugees if Canada doesn’t?”
Two-year-old Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi's body lies on a beach in Bodrum, Turkey, in 2015 after he, his mother and brother drowned on a Mediterranean crossing to reach Kos, Greece.AFP / Getty Images
On Sept. 3, 2015, an image appeared on The Globe’s front page – and in newspapers around the world. It was a Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, dead on a beach in Turkey. The two-year-old had drowned seeking refuge in the West with his family. (This hit home for Canadians even harder when they learned that the boy’s aunt, who lived in B.C., had attempted to sponsor other family members but was rejected.)
While some Globe readers were furious about the A1 photograph, then-public editor Sylvia Stead responded, “a newspaper has a responsibility at times to show the horrors of war and death.” There have been times throughout history, she wrote, when publishing a photo has changed public understanding or opinion of a world event.
Indeed. Between Nov. 4, 2015, and Dec. 31, 2016, close to 40,000 Syrian refugees were admitted to Canada – in many cases sponsored by individuals or groups of Canadians. Many more followed.
In 2022, Canada welcomed more than 130,000 Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion.
That same year also saw more than 39,000 asylum-seekers from more than 100 countries cross at an irregular border – the vast majority at the gateless New York-Quebec border at Roxham Road.
Writing in The Globe, Quebec Premier François Legault stated, “We have reason to be proud of our tradition of welcoming refugees.” But, he added, Roxham Road had become “a real problem,” and he called for the crossing to be closed. Not long afterward, Canada and the U.S. announced an agreement to do just that.
Border barriers are not merely physical. Canada erects walls with policy, politics, attitude.
On one Roxham Road story, before the policy change, a reader typed an online comment, asking where the sympathy was for Canadian taxpayers. One wonders – assuming this reader is not Indigenous – how their ancestors came to Canada. Were they refugees, labourers, early settlers? Were they met with support? Hostility?
And what sort of lives and opportunities do their descendants enjoy because someone made the journey, fraught as it was and is, to Canada?
Marsha Lederman is a columnist at The Globe and Mail, based in Vancouver.
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