After more than a century, Vancouver’s ‘bloody’ anti-Asian riot still resonates
一个多世纪后温哥华的“血腥”反亚裔骚乱仍然引起共鸣
New book White Riot examines the legacy of 1907 anti-Asian violence in Vancouver
Jon Azpiri · CBC News · Posted: Apr 09, 2023 9:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: April 9
Businesses in the 500-block of Carrall Street in Vancouver have broken windows boarded up, after a 1907 race riot targeting Chinese and Japanese people and businesses tore through the neighbourhood. (Vancouver Archives)
More than a century ago, rioters smashed windows and destroyed the shops and homes of Asian Canadians in Vancouver.
The anti-Asian riot of 1907 involved a mob of about 9,000 people, according to Canadian Encyclopedia, and lasted two days and nights.
Now, a new book examines the 1907 anti-Asian violence in Vancouver and aims to provide context for the current wave of anti-Asian prejudice.
White Riot is based on an immersive, self-guided walking tour created in 2019 by Henry Tsang, who teaches at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design.
Henry Tsang, creator of 360 Riot Walk, shows the tour on a tablet while standing at one of the stops in Shanghai Alley, the centre of the city’s original Chinatown.
Henry Tsang’s new book is based on a digital walking tour he created that depicts Vancouver’s 1907 anti-Asian race riot. (Rafferty Baker/CBC)
No lives were lost during the riot, according to Tsang’s White Riot, but “there were close calls.”
The book notes that “only five rioters were eventually found guilty and given jail terms of one to six months.”
‘Bloody battle’
In 1907, the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council, a labour movement organization, helped found a local chapter of the Asiatic Exclusion League, which began in San Francisco. Its first public event was a parade and demonstration on Sept. 7, 1907, to create awareness and lobby the federal government to pass laws to exclude Asians from Canada.
Then-Vancouver mayor Alexander Bethune and his wife took part in a cavalcade, along with city councillors, labour leaders, and leaders from church groups, that went through downtown Vancouver and stopped at City Hall.
Speeches inside City Hall were relayed outside to a crowd of thousands.
“Estimates [are] up to one third of Vancouver’s population came out for this parade,” Tsang said. “It was kind of crazy popular.”
Guest speakers from the U.S. and New Zealand stoked the crowd, Tsang said.
“A mob broke out,” he said. “That mob went down to Chinatown, which was nearby, and started attacking people.”
Tsang says the streets of Chinatown were largely quiet as residents concerned about the parade barred their doors and hoped things would blow over.
When things didn’t calm down, members of the community took up arms.
“They brought out all the guns and ammunition and they set up
patrols and they started to take back their streets,” he said. “So hand-to-hand combat happened for two days.”
The riot moved toward a community of Japanese Canadians on Powell Street.
“The Japanese had more time to set up,” Tsang said. “They had barricades ready by the time the mob went into the area. It was a bloody battle.”
Following the riot, Chinese Canadians went on strike for three days and “effectively shut down the city,” Tsang said.
Recent rise in anti-Asian hate
The book comes in the wake of a rise in anti-Asian hate in Vancouver.
During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, police said anti-Asian hate crimes in Vancouver increased from 12 incidents in 2012 to 98 in 2020 — a 717-per-cent spike.
In Richmond, south of Vancouver, police said they’ve recorded 46 hate crimes and incidents in 2021, up from 34 in 2020; 67 per cent were related to racial discrimination, and of the people targeted, 61 per cent were Asian.
Lawyer and advocate Steven Ngo told CBC that figures reported by any jurisdiction should be taken with a grain of salt.
“The reality is people have just given up [reporting],” he said.
Examining the historic roots of racism in Canada, Tsang says, can help us better understand where we are today.
“I was shocked that I didn’t learn about this until I was later in my 20s,” he said. “Why wasn’t this brought up in school?”
With files from Rafferty Baker and Zahra Premji
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/white-riot-1907-anti-asian-violence-vancouver-1.6804950
Riot Walk tour recounts dark moment in Vancouver’s history
暴乱步行之旅讲述了温哥华历史上的黑暗时刻
The self-guided walking tour depicts Vancouver’s 1907 anti-Asian race riot
Rafferty Baker · CBC News · Posted: Nov 17, 2019 10:00 AM EST | Last Updated: November 17, 2019
Henry Tsang, creator of 360 Riot Walk, shows the tour on a tablet while standing at one of the stops in Shanghai Alley, the centre of the city’s original Chinatown. (Rafferty Baker/CBC)
Vancouver is known for its multiculturalism, and dating all the way back to when the city was founded on the unceded land of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations in 1886, there have been people from a mix of cultures calling the place home.
But many Vancouverites may not be aware of the racist aspects of the city’s history. That’s why Henry Tsang, artist and associate professor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, created an immersive, self-guided walking tour of the oldest parts of the city, focusing on the details of the 1907 race riot.
It takes a couple of hours to complete the 360 Riot Walk, which is free and requires only a mobile device connected to the internet. It leads people through 13 stops beginning in Gastown, and continuing through Chinatown, the Downtown Eastside, and into what was known at the time as Japantown.
The anti-Asian riot of 1907 involved a mob of about 9,000 people, according to Canadian Encyclopedia. Whipped up by the Asiatic Exclusion League, rioters smashed windows and destroyed the shops and homes of Asian Canadians in Chinatown and Japantown.
“I think anyone who’s interested in the place that they’re living should take the tour,” said Tsang. “This is where Vancouver began, right? This part of town.”
While the race riot is central to the tour, it also offers context and other historical details of the early days of Vancouver. It can be taken by anybody, anywhere on a computer. But people walking the tour are invited to begin at Maple Tree Square in Gastown, where Carrall, Alexander, Powell, and Water streets intersect.
The 360 Riot Walk uses archival images overlaid onto 360 photographs taken at each stop. At Maple Tree Square in Gastown, images of Vancouver’s founding are shown. (360 Riot Walk)
There, surrounded by today’s bustle of the touristy square with its streets paved with bricks, people are introduced to how the land would have looked before European settlement.
The narrator, Michael Barnholden, describes the area as a canoe portage between Burrard Inlet and False Creek, with a canal that filled at high tide, allowing Indigenous people to paddle between the bodies of water.
Standing in the square with mobile device in hand, one can swivel around, looking at archival images overlaid on the 360 photos that make up the immersive tour experience.
Henry Tsang holds a tablet in the 100-block of Powell Street. Though the facade has changed in the 112 years since the 1907 riot, a building that was targeted still stands. The tour has a photo of the building with windows smashed and boarded up. (Rafferty Baker/CBC)
The tour quickly builds toward the race riot, which lasted two days and nights.
“Over a third of Vancouver’s population came out to this anti-Asian demonstration,” said Tsang. “Well, there were inflammatory speeches that were made. Some folks got really excited, and they decided to go attack the Chinese Canadians in Chinatown.”
According to Tsang, the riot wasn’t part of the plan and took everybody by surprise. At a stop at Main Street and Pender, Barnholden describes the scene.
“This was the entrance to Chinatown, into which the mob stormed,” he says in the narration to the English version of the tour. “The rioters identified which businesses were run by Chinese, and smashed their windows and vandalized their buildings.”
The 360 Riot Walk experience includes multiple stops in which archival images from the Vancouver Public Library, Vancouver Archives, and other sources, are overlaid on modern 360 images captured at each of the 13 stops. (Rafferty Baker/CBC)
Eventually, the riot moved toward Japantown on Powell Street. There, the rioters were driven away by Japanese Canadians who had a day’s warning of the threat, and armed themselves.
Henry Tsang, associate professor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, stands in Shanghai Alley, one of the 360 Riot Walk tour stops. (Rafferty Baker/CBC)
The tour was made with $17,000 in funding from the Vancouver Park Board and Emily Carr University. It’s available in English, Cantonese and Japanese. According to Tsang, the Punjabi version will soon be online.
For some, the tour will serve as a reminder of the city’s dark history. For others, it may come as a shock.
“A surprising number of people that were born here also don’t know the white nationalist and very racist history of, specifically, Vancouver, British Columbia — and overall, Canada,” said Tsang.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/riot-walk-vancouver-history-tour-1.5358936
