Canada is often held up as a model for others to emulate in matters of multiculturalism. For goodness’ sake, the country has an official multiculturalism policy! Granted, the multiculturalism policy is only fifty years old, and madness lies in expecting for the present to be reflected in that past. And yet, there I was, clutching my pearls and reaching for the smelling salts.
Hyperbole aside, the passages on late nineteenth and early twentieth century immigration in The Canadian Dominion by Oscar D. Skelton (published 1919) had the same effect as a speed bump on an inattentive driver. I didn’t stop driving, but I sure as hell slowed down.
Perhaps I’ve grown used to expecting more from Canada – after all, the Quebecois have been a part of the Canadian story since the seventeenth century. Although the historical relationship between the two solitudes could not be characterized as one of unending and uninterrupted mutual respect and celebration, there was at least an awareness that the two peoples shared a nation. Perhaps that is why I am always taken aback when presented with evidence that Canadians shared the common Western prejudices of their time.
To be fair to Mr. Skelton, we should put him in context. Oscar Douglas Skelton (1878-1941) was one of the most important Canadian bureaucrats of the first half of the twentieth century. After earning a doctorate in political economy from the University of Chicago, he returned to Canada and a post at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. After a stint as a foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Mackenzie King, he was the civil servant in charge of the External Affairs Department from 1925 until his death. Educated at the turn of the century and spending his professional life in academia and near the center of power, Skelton would naturally be expected to share the mainstream views and prejudices of his day.
The book in question, The Canadian Dominion: A Chronicle of Our Northern Neighborhood, is the forty-ninth volume in the Yale Chronicle of America Series. The slim volume is the size of a postcard and runs to 295 pages. It relates the history of Canada from the end of New France (1763) to the First World War. The passages that have me all a flutter come from the book’s fifth, final, and longest chapter: “The Years of Fulfillment.” After summarizing the challenges facing Canada at the end of the nineteenth century, Skelton turns to the need to populate the Canadian West.
The word “swarm” should have set the alarm bells ringing: “eastern Europe was in a ferment, and thousands were ready to swarm to new homes overseas,” but it passed by unnoticed. It was the next passage that brought me up short.
“Foremost in numbers were the Ruthenians from Galicia. Most distinctive were the Doukhobors or Spirit Wrestlers of Southern Russia, about ten thousand of whom were brought to Canada at the instance of Tolstoy and some English Quakers to escape persecution for their refusal to undertake military service. The religious fanaticism of the Doukhobors, particularly when it took the form of mid-winter pilgrimages in nature’s grab, and the clannishness of the Ruthenians, who settled in solid blocks, gave rise to many problems of government and assimilation which taught Canadians the unwisdom of inviting immigration from eastern or southern Europe. Ruthenians and Poles, however, continued to come down to the eve of the Great War, and nearly all settled on western lands.”
I think it was the outdated, casual prejudice that raised an eyebrow. It is certainly not a violent, racist polemic. There are no denunciations of subhuman, mongrel races infecting Canada and threatening its very existence. From a certain point of view, I rationalized, there’s not even anything technically wrong with the passage.
And then I learned from Skelton that Canada didn’t just let anybody in. No, sir. They barred “the criminal, the insane and feeble minded, the diseased, and others likely to become public charges.” Okay, I thought, building my last rationalization around the notion that mental illness and disability were conceived of very differently in Skelton’s time. He lost me entirely, however, with “Asiatics were restricted with special regulations.” Really? “Asiatics?” Good lord, why does that almost sound worse than “Orientals?”
Hundred-year-old books should be read more for what they reveal about their time and less for the information they contain. I know this intellectually, but I obviously still struggle with it on an emotional level. I take some solace from a later passage in which Skelton condemns “imperialists who drove a wedge between Canadians by emphasizing Anglo-Saxon racial ties, and politicians of the baser sort exploiting race prejudice for their own gain.” Here, Skelton is referring to conflict between English-Canadians and French-Canadians, but at least its progress, right? A two-hundred-year-old book would probably have spoken of the Quebecois with even less understanding than Skelton reserves for the Doukhobors.
“Well, well, well, Canada. Look who is also a jerk.” That was my sister’s summation when I told her about the book I was reading. And she’s right. Canada was not always the multicultural promised land it touts itself as now, but it was no worse than its southern neighbor. Reading books from a century ago reminds me how far we have come. Being startled enough by what we read to investigate further is one of the reasons we should read old books.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
