A climate of fear once gripped the Okanagan as a shortage of labourers fuelled a well organized and racially charged anti-immigration movement.
This was the situation in Penticton in the early 1900s that led to a years long citizen-led campaign to ‘keep Penticton white.’
History can sometimes take on a sepia-toned glaze and the cultural and sociopolitical climate can easily be shoved into the background when looking back on the great achievements in the area’s history.
There are two sides to every story and history is no different. While most know of the building of the Kettle Valley Railway, less is said about the social climate of the day during its construction.
Museum assistant at the Penticton Museum and Archives, Manda Maggs, wasn’t surprised to find racist overtones when researching Penticton newspaper archives for the Kettle Valley Railway exhibit at the museum, however, she was not anticipating the scope of the local anti-Asian movement.
“I kind of expected to find some things. I just didn’t realize it would be that blatant where they would have a public meeting,” Maggs said.
One article from the Penticton Herald dated Jan. 8, 1920 describes a meeting where “Nearly 300 citizens listened to speakers and took preliminary steps to rid the district of yellow evil.”
This was not the extent of the movement and in later newspapers advertisements for local laundry services phrases like “Are you White? Then Patronize a White laundry.” or “Employs only white labour” appeared. An ad from the 1920s that ran for a year states in all capital letters “KEEP PENTICTON WHITE.”
The campaign was not limited to Penticton either, with meetings in Kelowna and Vernon taking place around the same time. Maggs said a big fear in Penticton at the time was a shortage of labourers.
“Especially in World War One, the men were leaving and that left women to do the orchard work. Often the young women who didn’t have kids were the only ones who could do that, so they would hire them out to whoever they could,” Maggs said.
While the blatant racism is shocking by today’s standards, it may have been the case of a vocal minority, and more a fear of immigrant labour more than anything else Maggs said.
“I don’t think this level of racism was necessarily the majority. I just think it was a concern, and it wasn’t just a concern morally, some peopled seemed to have taken that stance, but it was more of an economic concern,” said Maggs. “We still face this issue today, especially in the Okanagan because the nature of the industry is seasonal.”
Maggs also discovered citizens who were adamant about advocating for their Asian employees in the face of the loudly vocal minority.
A series of articles from 1929 show the callous nature of the local media when dealing with immigrant-related crimes. However, a man eventually came to the defence of his employee.
Over the course of a few months the man from Oliver hired a Chinese man to work for him on a small orchard. The Chinese man disappeared from the property and was essentially driven out of town by racial hatred, though the articles don’t take the matter as seriously. One of the headlines reads “High wind at Oliver blows Chinamen clear out of town, court case follows return.”
The article continues: “The Chinamen who has been the cause of all the trouble in the Oriental invasion of Oliver is back in the district having been spirited away the other night.”
Maggs said even at that time, it was a strange way of reporting the incident.
“They don’t really describe it in terms of what it was, which was an abduction, kidnapping, beating probably,” Maggs said. “This went on over months. People seemed to know what happened to him, but until Mr. Heel (the man’s employer) came back and made a big deal about it, nobody questioned it, which was really strange.”
Maggs said much of the racial tension could be due to more rampant misinformation, like the concern that Asian immigrants had multiple wives back home and would be marrying all the women whose husbands were off to war.
“There was a lot of fear and misunderstanding going on there as well,” Maggs said.
Maggs said it’s not uncommon to come across overlooked parts of history that the majority of people are unaware of.
“People think you want to stir the pot, but working in a museum we see all of this and there is a set history that you tell kids, the curriculum kind of stuff,” Maggs said. “This is fact, it’s here, people can see it.”
She said the depth in which issues like these can be explored is mostly due to the excellent condition of the newspaper archives.
“We’re really lucky to have these (newspapers) because they are in really good shape and you can read them and flip through them,” Maggs said.
While it may not be a bright spot in Penticton’s history, that doesn’t mean it should be forgotten.
“People are embarrassed about it and that is a good sign, that people are embarrassed about it, but it is still fact, it happens and I really believe that if you’re going to not repeat the bad parts of history, you need to understand your history. Not just what happened, but why it happened. What led up to that?” Maggs said.
“It wasn’t just suddenly ‘oh we don’t like the Chinese’ there were reasons behind it and a lot of it revolves around misunderstandings. So once you understand where they are coming from with that, you can avoid those same pitfalls in modern times.”
The discovery of the racist campaign was equally as surprising to Penticton Art Gallery Curator Paul Crawford. He’s currently playing with the idea of exploring the issue in the form of an exhibit.
“It’s something I’m intrigued about and something I would love to address. The idea of racism in Canada today,” Crawford said. “I think we have idealized ideas that we’re this great, forward country and these things don’t exist, but they do exist.”
He feels the old adage of failing history and being doomed to repeat it is relevant.
“I think it is really important that we look back because we have to remember where we’ve come from and we don’t want to repeat all this horrible history that we seem to be repeating. We’re going to be going in circles otherwise,” Crawford said.
He noted that the Okanagan Valley is the least immigrated part of Canada.
“I know the Immigrant society here in town does a really good job of trying to make people feel more welcome, but I do think that it does affect us. I think we’re poorer because of it. Greater diversity enriches us as people in every capacity,” Crawford said.
Immigrants still face challenges today
Tahira Sayeed, program manager for South Okanagan Immigrant and Community Services, acknowledged the situation for immigrants in the South Okanagan has improved drastically compared to a century ago, however she said many still face challenges today.
“It could be improved a lot. We still have struggles getting low-income housing for our immigrants. But otherwise, who doesn’t love Penticton. Once you’re here you don’t want to go back anywhere,” Sayeed said.
She said she’s seen an increased community participation from many immigrants in Penticton.
“When there are events happening in Penticton you can see how all different immigrants are coming out and you get to see how many immigrants are here,” Sayeed said.
She said she wasn’t shocked to find instances of discrimination in the history books, due to the fact she conducted similar research herself.
“When I was doing my masters at UBCO, a lot of research and a lot of articles we had to go through as students to identify all the different types of discrimination there are,” Sayeed said. “I’m not surprised to see it, and to a certain extent there is still discrimination here.”
“In Oliver a few months ago, we took immigrants out to an event put on by a community organization and we could see people there were so uncomfortable having immigrants sitting next to them and being with them. But, that’s something we have to work on together,” Sayeed said. “It’s going to be a slow process, it’s not going to change drastically.”