1. S.S. 1912, C.17.

2. The validity of racial designations such as “white” and “Chinese” is discussed below. For the purposes of this article I have used the racial terminology and categorizations prevalent at the time.

3. The narrative tradition was the cornerstone for the feminist analysis of sexual violence. For example, see Russell, Diana E. H., The Politics of Rape (New York: Stein and Day, 1975).Google Scholar

4. See, for example, Julie Cruikshank in collaboration with Sidney, Angela, Smith, Kitty, and Ned, Annie, Life Lived Like a Story: Life Stories of Three Yukon Native Elders (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990).Google Scholar

5. See, for example, Williams, Patricia, The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Bell, Derrick, “The Final Report: Harvard's Affirmative Action Allegory,” Michigan Law Review 87 (1989): 2382–2410CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bell, Derrick, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (New York: Basic Books, 1992).Google Scholar “Racialized” is a term commonly used by those who believe definitions of race are socially constructed in preference to terms such as “people of diverse race” or “people of color.”

6. See, for example, Delgado, Richard, “Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative,” Michigan Law Review 87 (1989): 2411–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Winter, Stephen L., “The Cognitive Dimension of the Agon: Between Legal Power and Narrative Meaning,” Michigan Law Review 87 (1989): 2227CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Massaro, Toni M., “Empathy, Legal Storytelling, and the Rule of Law: New Words, Old Wounds?” Michigan Law Review 87 (1989): 2099, 2105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For superb examples of narrative legal writing, see Williams, The Alchemy of Race and Rights; Bell, “The Final Report”; Bell, Faces al the Bottom of the Well.

7. Sewell, William H. Jr, “Introduction: Narratives and Social Identities,” Social Science History 16, no. 3 (1992): 480.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Somers, Margaret R., “Narrativity, Narrative Identity, and Social Action: Rethinking English Working-Class Formation,” Social Science History 16, no. 4 (1992): 599CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who suggests that traditional historical narrative was scorned as “nontheoretical storytelling about elites.”

8. Sewell, “Introduction: Narratives and Social Identities,” 482.

9. See Somers, “Narrativity, Narrative Identity, and Social Action,” 600, 618.

10. Comments of Soifer, Aviam and Bloomfield, Maxwell, Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the American Society for Legal History, Washington, D.C., 20–22 October 1994.Google Scholar

11. Backhouse, Constance, Petticoats and Prejudice: Women and Law in Nineteenth-Century Canada (Toronto: The Osgoode Society and Women's Press, 1991).Google Scholar The book was a corecipient of the 1992 Willard Hurst Prize in American Legal History.

12. One of my colleagues, Martin, Robert, argues this explicitly in a recent article, “Challenging Orthodoxy: A Critical Analysis of Racially-Based Job Quotas,” Canadian Labour Law Journal 1, no. 4 (1993): 409–40.Google Scholar “The historical argument in favour of ‘employment equity’ is an attempt to take a truth from the history of the United States and assume that it must have equal application in Canada. It does not. … while there is racism in Canada, we are, by international standards, amateurs” (424, 434).

13. Moose Jaw's growth dated from its selection in the early 1880s as the dividing point of the CPR. It became a town in 1884 and a city in 1903. See Census of Prairie Provinces: Population and Agriculture, 1916 (Ottawa: King's Printer, 1918), 120; Archer, John H., Saskatchewan: A History (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1980), 129, 138–39Google Scholar; McCourt, Edward, Saskatchewan (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1968), 88–89Google Scholar; Knight, Leith, All the Moose … All the Jaw (Moose Jaw: Moose Jaw 100, 1982).Google Scholar

14. Pascoe, J. E. and Moose Jaw Times-Herald, eds., Golden Jubilee, 1903–1953, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan (Moose Jaw: n.p., 1953)Google Scholar; Not Only a Name: A Long Love Letter from Hometown Moose Jaw, republished Robert Moon, ed., The Moose Jaw Book (Crocus House, Moose Jaw, n.d.); McCourt, Saskatchewan, 88–89, and Archer, Saskatchewan, 129, 138–39, 158, 161, 207–8; Calderwood, William, “Pulpit, Press and Political Reactions to the Ku Klux Klan in Saskatchewan,” in Trofimenkoff, Susan Mann, ed., The Twenties in Western Canada (Ottawa: National Museum of Man, 1972), 191–229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. See, for example, “Chinese All in the Limelight—Gambling Den Charges,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 31 October 1911 at 1, an account of a gambling and opium raid on River Street; “Many Chinese Before Court,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 18 December 1911 at 1, describing a raid on the Yip Foo Block on River Street for gambling and opium; “Another Raid Chinese House,” concerning opium-related arrests, Moose Jaw Evening Times, 14 March 1912 at 9; and the account of the Moose Jaw arrest of “twenty-two Chinamen” for “gambling in a joint on River west,” Regina Leader, 25 April 1912 at 7; Regina Daily Province, 25 April 1912 at 11.

By 1913 there were more than thirty-five Chinese laundries and three Chinese restaurants in Moose Jaw. For further details on the Chinese population in Moose Jaw, see Lai, David Chuenyan, Chinatowns: Towns Within Cities in Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1988), 9–10, 92–93.Google Scholar See also the Census of Prairie Provinces, 1916, 144–49, which gives the following racial divisions:

Total Population of Sask. 1916: 647, 835

Chinese Population of Sask. 1916: 2,064 (21 female)

Total Population of District of Moose Jaw, 1916: 44,790

Chinese Population of District of Moose Jaw, 1916: 268 (5 female)

Total Population of City of Moose Jaw, 1916: 16,934

Chinese Population of City of Moose Jaw, 1916: 151 (3 female)

Comparatively speaking, the Chinese population in Saskatchewan was small. In 1911 the total Chinese population in Canada was 27,774, of whom 70 percent resided in British Columbia. See Roy, Patricia, A White Man's Province: British Columbia Politicians and Chinese and Japanese immigrants, 1858–1914 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1989), xxi.Google Scholar Thirteen percent were located in the three prairie provinces. See Li, Peter S., “Chinese Immigrants on the Canadian Prairie, 1910–1947,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 19 (1982): 530.Google Scholar In 1911 the Chinese population of Vancouver was 3,871; Montreal 1,197; Toronto 1,099; and Winnipeg 585. See Fifth Census of Canada 1911 (Ottawa, 1913), vol. 2, 169, 372, and Wynne, Robert Edward, Reaction to the Chinese in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia, 1850–1910 (New York: Arno Press, 1978), 461.Google Scholar

16. “Chinese in the City,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 8 August 1911 at 10, which estimated that there were now “more than 500” Chinese residents in Moose Jaw.

17. Chinese immigrants came to Canada in three waves: first in 1858 with the British Columbia gold rush, second as contract laborers for the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the early 1880s, and third during the boom years of 1896 to 1913. Most of the immigrants were in their late teens or early twenties, with little formal schooling and practically no English. See Roy, White Man's Province, x–xi, and Li, “Chinese Immigrants on the Canadian Prairie,” 531–32.

18. Quong Sing was born in Hong Kong and naturalized in Lethbridge, Alberta, in 1901 (Quong Sing, Saskatchewan Archives Board [hereafter S.A.B.], “Deposition” including “Certificate of Naturalization,” 1–8). Quong Wing's certificate of naturalization lists him as formerly from the “Empire of China” but does not indicate the date of his arrival. He had been living in Moose Jaw since at least 1902 and had successfully applied to become “naturalized” as a citizen in 1905. See Quong Wing, S.A.B., “Certified Copy of Naturalization Certificate for Quong Wing, granted by Mr. Justice J. S. P. Prendergast of the Supreme Court of the North West Territories, presiding in chambers in Moose Jaw” (7 December 1905), “Stated Case for the Supreme Court of Saskatchewan,” 2 July 1912. Canadian citizenship per se did not yet exist, but by becoming naturalized, immigrants could obtain the status of a British subject.

For a detailed history of naturalization legislation and its interpretation by the courts, see Imai, Shin, “Canadian Immigration Law and Policy: 1867–1935” (LL.M. thesis, York University, 1983)Google Scholar, and Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock, unpublished manuscript (copy on file with the author, October 1991).

19. For a more detailed discussion, see Constance Backhouse, “Gretta Wong Grant: Canada's First Chinese-Canadian Female Lawyer,” forthcoming, Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice; Andracki, Stanislaw, Immigration of Orientals into Canada, with Special Reference to Chinese (New York: Arno Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Li, Peter S., “Immigration Laws and Family Patterns: Some Demographic Changes among Chinese Families in Canada, 1885–1971,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 12, no. 1 (1980): 58–73Google Scholar; McEvoy, F. J., “A Symbol of Racial Discrimination: The Chinese Immigration Act and Canada's Relations with China, 1942–1947,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 14, no. 3 (1982): 24–42Google Scholar; Angus, Henry F., “Canadian Immigration: The Law and Its Administration,” in MacKenzie, Norman, ed., The Legal Status of Aliens in Pacific Countries (London: Oxford University Press, 1937), 58–75Google Scholar; Lee, Victor, “The Laws of Gold Mountain: A Sampling of Early Canadian Laws and Cases That Affected People of Asian Ancestry,” Manitoba Law Journal 21 (1992): 301–24Google Scholar; Ryder, Bruce, “Racism and the Constitution: The Constitutional Fate of British Columbia Anti-Asian Immigration Legislation, 1884–1909,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 29 (1991): 619–76Google Scholar; Ryder, “Racism and the Constitution: The Constitutional Fate of British Columbia Anti-Asian Legislation, 1872–1922” (forthcoming; copy on file at Osgoode Hall Law School Law Library); Imai, “Canadian Immigration Law and Policy.”

20. See Adilman, Tamara, “A Preliminary Sketch of Chinese Women and Work in British Columbia, 1858–1950,” in Latham, Barbara K. and Pazdro, Roberta J., eds., Not Just Pin Money (Victoria: Camosun College, 1984), 55–61Google Scholar, and Roy, White Man's Province, xi.

21. Mention is made of Quong Sing's wife, who is not named, in the trial transcript. Chuenyan Lai, Chinatowns, 9–10, 92–93, reports two women in Moose Jaw in 1913. The Census of Prairie Provinces, 1916, 144–49, lists three Chinese women in the City of Moose Jaw. Palmer, Howard, Patterns of Prejudice: A History of Nativism in Alberta (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1982)Google Scholar notes that in the early 1900s there were 1,787 Chinese in Alberta, only twenty of whom were women (32). Roy, White Man's Province, states that in 1911 only 961 or 3.5 percent of the Chinese in Canada were female (xi). But see also Adilman, “Chinese Women and Work,” who remarks that it is impossible to know exactly the number of Chinese women in Canada because of illegal entry (60).

22. For a more detailed discussion, see Backhouse, “Gretta Wong Grant”; Creese, Gillian, “Organizing against Racism in the Workplace: Chinese Workers in Vancouver Before the Second World War,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 19 (1987): 35–46Google Scholar; Creese, , “Immigration Policies and the Creation of an Ethnically Segmented Working Class in British Columbia, 1880–1923,” Alternate Routes 17 (1984): 1–34Google Scholar; Creese, , “Class, Ethnicity, and Conflict: The Case of Chinese and Japanese Immigrants, 1880–1923,” in Warburton, Rennte and Coburn, David, eds., Workers, Capital and the State in British Columbia (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Creese, , “Exclusion or Solidarity? Vancouver Workers Confront the ‘Oriental Problem,’” BC Studies no. 80 (1988–1989): 24–49Google Scholar; Li, Peter S., “The Economic Cost of Racism to Chinese-Canadians,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 19, no. 3 (1987): 102–13Google Scholar; Li, , “A Historical Approach to Ethnic Stratification: The Case of the Chinese in Canada, 1858–1930,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 16, no. 3 (1979): 320–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baureiss, Gunter, “Chinese Immigration, Chinese Stereotypes and Chinese Labour,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 19, no. 3 (1987): 15–34Google Scholar; Jin Tan, “Chinese Labour and the Reconstituted Social Order of British Columbia,” ibid., 68; Ryder, “Racism and the Constitution;” Kobayashi, Audrey and Jackson, Peter, “Japanize Canadians and the Racialization of Labour in the British Columbia Sawmill Industry,” BC Studies 103 (1994): 33–58.Google Scholar

23. For racial stratification in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Canadian labor market, see Li, “The Economic Cost of Racism to Chinese-Canadians”; Li, , The Chinese in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Creese, “Organizing against Racism”; Creese “Exclusion or Solidarity?”; Baureiss, “Chinese Immigration, Chinese Stereotypes and Chinese Labour”; Ward, W. Peter, White Canada Forever: Popular Attitudes and Public Policy toward Orientals in British Columbia, 2d ed. (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Palmer, Patterns of Prejudice; Tan, “Chinese Labour,” 80–81; Anderson, Kay J.Vancouver's Chinatown: Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875–1980 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1991), 3–5, 14–18.Google Scholar

24. Creese, “Exclusion or Solidarity?” notes that Asian men and women of all races were denied the same political and civil rights as white men, leaving the former groups in a weaker bargaining position in any attempts to obtain better wages (30). Some jobs were clearly classified as “women's work” and others as “coolie work,” sometimes with overlapping boundaries, allowing Chinese males to fill service occupations customarily held by white women, when the population of white women was small. Even when their numbers grew, white women tended to view domestic service as inferior to jobs in offices, stores, and factories, where they received better treatment and obtained higher social status. See Report of the Royal Commission to Investigate Chinese and Japanese Immigration into British Columbia, Sessional Paper No. 54 (Ottawa: King's Printer, 1902Google Scholar; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1978), 37. See also Li, “The Economic Cost of Racism to Chinese-Canadians”; Li, Chinese in Canada: Ward, White Canada Forever; Palmer, Patterns of Prejudice; Tan, “Chinese Labour”; Muszynski, Alicja, “The Creation and Organization of Cheap Wage Labour in the British Columbia Fishing Industry” (Ph.D. diss., University of British Columbia, 1986).Google Scholar

25. For a description of the fare typically offered in Saskatchewan “Chinese cafes,” see Archer, Saskatchewan, 161. For more details about the early Chinese restaurants on the prairies, see Li, “Chinese Immigrants on the Canadian Prairie,” 534.

26. Li, “Chinese Immigrants on the Canadian Prairie,” notes that many Chinese moved back and forth between employment and self-employment and that employers, partners, and employees frequently shared the same duties in Chinese enterprises (534). See also Li, “The Economic Cost of Racism to Chinese-Canadians,” 104–9, and Ward, While Canada Forever, 18, 126–27. See In the County Court of Vancouver, Re Gun Long (1900), 7 B.C.R. 457 (Co. Ct.), regarding the reliance of Chinese domestic servants on lodging facilities inside Chinese laundries.

27. Henderson's Moose Jaw City Directory, 1912 (Winnipeg: Henderson Directories Ltd., 1912) lists twenty restaurants and four additional restaurants attached to hotels (71–74, 495). Ten of the restaurants had Chinese men as proprietors: Charlie On, Charlie Chow, Jim Lee, Quong Jim, Quong Sing, Quong Wing, A. Sing, Wah Sing, Yee Hing, Yip Som. An eleventh Asian proprietor, N. Nakane, was Japanese.

28. Quong Wing had been residing in and serving as the proprietor of the C.E.R. Restaurant since at least 1909; he did not own the building or property at 1 Main Street (Quong Wing, S.A.B., “Deposition,” 6–8; Henderson's Moose Jaw City Directory, 1909, 1911, 1912). The legal records give variants of the restaurant name, which is also described (apparently incorrectly) as the C.N.R. restaurant. Only initials, never the full name, are used. Siggins, Maggie, Revenge of the Land (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1991)Google Scholar, lists “Qong Wing” as one of four partners (including “Qong Sing”) who owned the Royal Restaurant in 1906 (241). Quong Wing had apparently converted to Christianity soon after his arrival in Canada. See “Wage Cases in District Court,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 5 July 1913 at 1, which describes him as having been “a devout ‘Clisten’ for six years” but notes that “prosperity and an increased business” had recently led him to “neglect his former church duties” and now he was a “self-confessed heathen.”

29. The restaurant was on the main floor; two residential apartments and two office suites were on the upper floors (Quong Sing, S.A.B., “Deposition,” 1–8). Quong Sing may have been the proprietor as early as 1906: Siggins, Revenge of the Land, 241. Henderson's Moose Jaw City Directory, 1909, lists “Qwong Soon and Wit Chat” as proprietors of the Royal Restaurant, 8 River West. The 1911 and 1912 Henderson's Moose Jaw City Directory list “Quong Sing and Co.” as the proprietor of the Royal Restaurant, 8 River West.

30. The Moose Jaw prosecutions were viewed as a test case. See “Chinese Case Was Adjourned,” Regina Daily Province, 31 October 1912 at 3 and 6 November 1912 at 3; “Chinese Make Case a Test,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 28 May 1912 at 1; “White Women Must Not Work in Chinese Restaurants,” Regina Morning Leader, 9 July 1913; “Saskatchewan Law Prohibiting Employment of White Girls by Chinese Upheld by Ottawa Court,” Regina Morning leader, 24 February 1914; and “Prohibition of Employment of White Girls by Chinese Is Upheld in Ottawa Court,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 24 February 1914 at 1.

31. See Siggins, Revenge of the Land, 290–91, and “Johnson, ,” Pioneers and Prominent People of Saskatchewan (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1924), 196–97.Google Scholar Reference to the salary for the chief of police is found in “City and District,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 24 January 1911 at 8.

32. The organizer of the first Children's Aid Society in Moose Jaw, Johnson also took on responsibilities for sanitary inspection and probation and would ultimately serve as chief magistrate and the city's mayor. For biographical details and reference to the “large foot” recalled by (white) business leaders of Moose Jaw, see “Notable Pioneer of West,” Regina Leader-Post, 6 March 1940; Hawkes, John, The Story of Saskatchewan and Its People, vol. 3 (Chicago and Regina: S. J. Clarke, 1924)Google Scholar, 1930.

33. For Johnson's penchant for race horses, see “Notable Pioneer of West,” Regina Leader-Post, 6 March 1940. The law student from the law offices of Willoughby, Craig, and McWilliams, who tried to deliver the appeal documents on these cases, could not locate Johnson in his city hall office. He was finally tracked down at the Exhibition Race Track and duly served (Quong Wing, S.A.B., “Affidavit of Personal Service,” in the Supreme Court of Saskatchewan en Banc, 8 July 1912, signed by Hark_H. Do_age [handwritten entry unclear], law student).

Three years into his term, Johnson achieved local notoriety after he orchestrated a particularly enthusiastic raid without warrant on the residence of a Chinese lodging-house keeper, Win Gat, whom he suspected of gambling. Extensive property damage provoked Win Gat to sue the chief. Win Gat also claimed reimbursement of moneys lost during the melee from the combination-locked drawer, which he alleged in his statement of claim to have been taken “from the till by the defendant.” The trial court held that there was no evidence to support this claim. At trial Thomas Cooke Johnstone initially awarded only nominal damages of one dollar “because of the character of the house entered” (Hin Ca/v. Johnson [1908], 7 W.L.R. 637; 1 Sask. L.R. 81 [Sask. S.C., in Chambers]). Concerned by the illegality of the police entry, the Saskatchewan Supreme Court increased the damages to one hundred dollars on appeal, with Justice Henry William Newlands commenting, “I must say that I cannot see what the character of the house has to do with this case. According to the learned Judge's finding the character of the house did not justify the defendant in breaking and entering. Why then should it affect the amount of damages the plaintiff is entitled to?” (Win Gat v. Johnson [1908], 9 W.L.R. 293; 1 Sask. L.R. 476 [Sask. S.C.]).

34. Details about the two women are drawn from Rex v. Quong Wing, S.A.B., “Deposition of a Witness, W. P. Johnson & Others,” Police Magistrate's Court, City of Moose Jaw, 27 May 1912, at 9 and 11. Mabel Hopham is variously listed as Mable Hopham and Mabel Harpham. Mabel Harpham appears only once in Henderson's Moose Jaw City Directory, in 1911, as a waitress at the Globe Restaurant on 28 High West. The Globe Restaurant, owned by Cecil Miller (or Millar) and Llewellyn C. V. Burt, disappeared from listings after 1911. The Moose Jaw Evening Times, 3 November 1910 at 8, had described it as “the only white restaurant in Moose Jaw to serve a clean first class meal at twenty-five cents.”

35. Quong Wing, S.A.B.,”Deposition,” 4–5.

36. Annie Hartman is also referred to as Hopham, Harpham, and Horwood. Whether she is any relation to Mabel Hopham (also listed Harpham) is unknown. Although there is no listing for Annie Hartman in the city directory, an Annie Harpham appears from 1917 to 1918, working as an employee and cashier for the C.P.R. restaurant. Quong Sing is also referred to as Quon Sing. For details of the case, see Quong Sing, S.A.B., “Information and Complaint” (21 May 1912), and “Deposition of a Witness, W.P. Johnson & Others” (28 May 1912), Police Magistrate's Court, 28 May 1912, at 1–2.

37. Journals of the Legislative Assembly (1912), 68.

38. The Saskatchewan legislation appears to have been the first in Canada, and I have been unable to find any similar state or federal legislation in the United States. Despite the precedent-setting nature of the Saskatchewan law, there is some evidence that the “problem” it was designed to address had been considered years earlier. The Report of the Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration (Ottawa, 1885; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1978) described the results of a tour the Canadian Commissioners took through Chinatown in Portland, Oregon, on 29 August 1884 (173, 371). To their surprise, they discovered a white female sales clerk working for a Chinese merchant at the Oriental Bazaar, a specialty dry goods store. They questioned her at length on her hours of work (9 A.M. to 9 P.M.) and her treatment. She replied, “The Chinese pay better [than white employers] and are much more polite than Americans would be. It is just as good working for them as for the ordinary white person. They are perfectly respectful, much more than Americans. They never show the least tendency to take a liberty. The man who owns this shop is a perfect gentleman.” While the reply must have alleviated the concerns that motivated the questioning, the anxiety provoked by Chinese male employers supervising white female staff was evident.

39. “Another Bill Provides that Orientals Not Permitted Employ White Girls,” Saskatoon Phoenix, 27 February 1912. See also “White Women Must Not Work with Chinese,” Regina Morning Leader, 27 February 1912.

40. S.S. 1912, C.17, s.l.

41. The majority of immigrants from India at this period were Sikhs from the region of the Punjab, who were often erroneously labelled “Hindus” or “Hindoos” by Canadians. For some historical references to this group as “Oriental,” see Ward, White Canada Forever, 79–86. See also Leyton-Brown, Kenneth B., “Discriminatory Legislation in Early Saskatchewan and the Development of Small Business,” in Wu, Terry and Mason, Jim, eds., Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Conference of the International Council for Small Business—Canada (ICSB) (Regina: International Council for Small Business, 1990), 253–72.Google Scholar

42. For an account of the formal demand made by the following delegates of the Saskatchewan T.L.C., James Somerville and W. McAllister of Moose Jaw, George Peake, T. Withy, and G. H. Merlin of Regina, and John McGrath of Saskatoon, see “Labor Men Interview Government,” Regina Morning Leader, 7 February 1912 at 5; “What Trades and Labor Men Wanted,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 8 February 1912; Regina Daily Province, 7 Feb. 1912; Regina Morning Leader, 7 February 1912 at 5.

The announcement that the provincial government would accede to this request was reported in “Reply Made to Labor Council,” Regina Daily Province, 18 March 1912; “The Scott Government and Labor Legislation,” Regina Leader, 10 April 1912 at 23. See also “Trades Council Deserves to Have Representation on Public Bodies,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 6 March 1912, where a T.L.C. delegate recommended expanding the legislation to make the employment of white girls in any capacity by Asiatics a criminal offence.

Officials of the Typographical Union, the first permanent union organized in Regina and a constituent member of the Saskatchewan T.L.C, also wrote directly to Attorney General Turgeon about a prohibition on Asian hiring of white women (Turgeon Papers, S.A.B., General Correspondence 1911–12, “M,” box 9, 14). The Typographical Union, one of the leading Saskatchewan unions at the time, may have been concerned about the prospect of competition from Chinese and Japanese print shops, a source of concern in Vancouver as early as 1908. See Creese, “Exclusion or Solidarity?” 31; Archer, Saskatchewan, 160. For other references to organized labor's lobbying, see “White Girls Cannot Work for Chinese,” Swift Current Sun, 15 July 1913 at 3; Moose Jaw Evening Times, 24 February 1914 and Regina Morning Leader, 24 February 1914. See also Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Labour, Saskatchewan Department of Agriculture (1912), entry dated 8 March 1912, 34–37.

43. For examples of anti-Asian sentiments on the part of organized labor, see “To Form Labour Council,” Regina Morning Leader, 30 July 1906; untitled anti-Japanese column in Regina Saskatchewan Labor's Realm, 9 August 1907 at 6; “The Immigration Question,” Regina Saskatchewan Labor's Realm, 13 September 1907 at 2; “Rev. Dr. Sparling and Immigration,” Regina Saskatchewan Labor's Realm, 27 September 1907 at 1; “Orientals in Vancouver,” Regina Saskatchewan Labor's Realm, 20 December 1907 at 2; “Canadian Labor Party and the Asiatic Immigration Question,” Regina Saskatchewan Labor's Realm, 31 January 1908 at 1. For a discussion of the successful period of union organization between 1910 and 1912, see Makahonuk, Glen, “Craft Unionism and the 1912 Strike Wave,” Saskatchewan History 44, no. 2 (1992): 59–67.Google Scholar For a more general discussion of the role of organized labor in Canadian immigration policy, see Avery, Donald, Dangerous Foreigners: European Immigrant Workers and Labour Radicalism in Canada, 1896–1932 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1979).Google Scholar For a comparative discussion of the racism of white working-class laborers in the United States, see Roediger, David R., The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1991)Google Scholar; Saxton, Alexander, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (London: Verso, 1990).Google Scholar

44. For the role of organized labor in the anti-Asian campaigns, see generally Ward, White Canada Forever; Roy, White Man's Province; Creese, “Organizing Against Racism”; Creese, “Exclusion or Solidarity?”; Creese, “Immigration Policies and the Creation of an Ethnically Segmented Working Class in British Columbia”; Creese, “Working Class Politics, Racism and Sexism”; Ireland, Ralph R., “Some Effects of Oriental Immigration on Canadian Trade Union Ideology,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 19 (1960): 217–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45. See “Trades and Labor Congress at Calgary,” Regina Leader, 14 September 1911 at 12; “Much Against the Chinese,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 13 September 1911 at 1; Vancouver World, 7 July 1911, and Roy, White Man's Province, 243. For reference to the T.L.C.'s national significance, see Ireland, “Some Effects of Oriental Immigration on Canadian Trade Union Ideology,” 218. Ireland notes that the first all-Japanese local was admitted to the T.L.C, on a segregated basis in 1927 and that no effort was made to unionize the Chinese until the 1940s (219–20).

46. See Wynne, Reaction to the Chinese, 470, who reports this phenomenon all across Canada. Ward, White Canada Forever, notes that by 1920 the British Columbia board of the Retail Merchants' Association of Canada had endorsed Oriental exclusion (124). The Vancouver Board of Trade and the Victoria Chamber of Commerce called not just for exclusion but for school segregation and a curb on Asian property ownership as well.

47. The Retail Merchants' Association was one of the constituent groups forming the Social and Moral Reform Council, a principal lobbyist for the bill, whose role is discussed in more detail below.

48. See “Chinese Think Laundry Tax Is Too High,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 21 February 1914 at 14, which notes that the white managers of steam laundries felt they were unable to compete with the long hours worked by Chinese laundrymen. See also Regina Evening Leader, 24 May 1914 at 1, quoting Regina's first police magistrate, William Trant, who categorized these complaints as “white-livered-weakness” in the context of a campaign to impose burdensome taxes on the Chinese.

49. See, for example, “Celestials Who Are Now Citizens of Earthly Moose Jaw,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 6 September 1913 at 7: “[T]he only enemies who oppose [the Chinese] with any degree of reason are firms which are in daily opposition to him in his particular line of business. It is a remarkable fact that in any city where there are a number of Chinese restaurants, the price of ‘raw material’ be what it may, meals are procurable at a very reasonable figure. The Chinaman is essentially an economist, and seems able to supply food for less money than can any other countryman. The European argues—and the very contention has been raised in Moose Jaw—that this is because he is satisfied with less gain, and should therefore be barred from competition.”

50. See, for example, “Bylaws Like Piecrust Made to Be Broken,” Regina Leader, 12 October 1911 at 12, which reported that the city solicitor proposed to apply a special license arrangement to a Chinese laundry on Cornwall street, due to the complaints of a group of (white) citizens; and “Regina May Have Segregated Chinese Colony,” Regina Daily Province, 14 November 1912 at 3; “Chinese Object to Segregation,” Regina Daily Province, 15 November 1912 at 11. Ward, White Canada Forever, notes that in 1919 Victoria businessmen vowed ceaseless vigilance in the defence of the city's new early closing bylaw in order to protect themselves against Asian competition (124). He also points out that revisions in 1922 to the factory and shop legislation in British Columbia were meant to “enforce early closing by-laws and ‘white’ working conditions upon Orientals” (130). Ward points out that a group of British Columbia businessmen successfully lobbied in 1928 for a trade-licensing statute to “limit the number of shops controlled and owned by Orientals” and “halt the spread of Oriental commerce” (134–38). For references to various municipal bylaws passed to prevent economic growth by the Chinese in Hamilton, see Wenxiong, Gao, “Hamilton: The Chinatown That Died,” The Asianadian: An Asian Canadian Magazine 1 (Summer 1978): 15–17.Google Scholar For references to racially restrictive municipal bylaws in Hamilton and Lethbridge, see Chuenyan Lai, Chinatowns, 90, 99. See also Palmer, Patterns of Prejudice, 32, and Li, “The Economic Cost of Racism to Chinese-Canadians,” 103–4.

51. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Saskatchewan, Sir Frederick William Gordon Haultain, would later make this point explicitly: “A Chinaman who wishes to invest in business property must do so with the full knowledge that his only possible tenants will be persons who are willing to carry on a business which can employ colored female labor, and in the case—say—of a hotel, can only accommodate colored female guests.” See Quong Wing and Quong Sing, S.A.B., “Judgments of Lamont, J., Brown, J., and Haultain, C.J.,” Supreme Court of Saskatchewan en Banc, 9 July 1913; reported as Rex v. Quong Wing, [1913] 4 W.W.R. 1135; (1913), 12 D.L.R. 656; 24 W.L.R. 913; 21 C.C.C. 326; 6 Sask. R. 242 (Sask. S. C).

52. For discussion of how this works today, see Li, Peter S., “Race and Gender as Bases of Class Fractions and Their Effects on Earnings,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 29, no. 4 (1992): 488–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For nineteenth-century examples, see the discussion of the restrictions on women's and Asian men's employment in the mines, as well as other female labor restrictions, in Backhouse, Petticoats and Prejudice, chapter 9.

53. See the testimony of Rev. Canon Beanlands, Church of England, resident of Victoria, as given to the Report of the Royal Commission to Investigate Chinese and Japanese Immigration (1902), 27: “I have never seen a Chinese man employ a white man ….”

54. See, for example, Bannerman, Josie, Chopik, Kathy, and Zurbrigg, Ann, “Cheap at Half the Price: The History of the Fight for Equal Pay in BC,” in Latham, and Pazdro, , eds., Not Just Pin Money, 297–313.Google Scholar The Report of the Royal Commission to Investigate Chinese and Japanese Immigration into British Columbia (1902) noted that Chinese men received “rather better wages on average” than white women for domestic service jobs in British Columbia (295). Other earlier sources suggest that the pay scales of Chinese men may have been equivalent to those of white women. See the Report of the Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration (1885), which noted that the average wages paid to male Chinese domestic servants on the west coast of the United States was “about the same” as that paid to “white girls and to white women” (11).

55. Mah Po, the owner of the King George Restaurant in Regina, spoke explicitly about the absence of Asian women: “[T]here is no reason why we should be deprived of the right to employ white girls when we cannot have our own women here to act as waitresses” (“Japanese Consul General in Regina,” Regina Morning Leader, 14 May 1912 at 2). Wilson, Anne Elizabeth, “A Pound of Prevention—or an Ounce of Cure,” Chatelaine (December 1928)Google Scholar, conceded in her article on the employment of women by Chinese entrepreneurs that white women were the group at risk “inasmuch as Orientals have not Oriental women in this country” (12). For a general discussion of the racial barriers to immigration, see Trebilcock and Kelley, manuscript; Imai, , “Canadian Immigration Law and Policy”; and Hawkins, Freda, Canada and Immigration: Public Policy and Public Concern, 2nd ed. (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1988).Google Scholar For more detailed information on black immigration, see Troper, Harold Martin, “The Creek-Negroes of Oklahoma and Canadian Immigration, 1909–11,” Canadian Historical Review 53, no. 3 (1972): 272–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Troper notes that the black population in Canada fell from 17,437 in 1901 to 16,877 in 1911 (282). He also remarks that white women played a significant role in lobbying for restricted immigration of blacks, citing the efforts of the Edmonton chapter of the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire, who petitioned Ottawa with the claim that white women would become the easy sexual prey of black men (281).

The First Nations (Cree, Blackfoot, Assiniboine, and Sioux) and Métis do not appear to have provided a significant source of waged labor for the service industries in the towns and cities either. Largely confined to the reserves until World War II, many were unable to obtain passes to travel to the urban centers to seek employment. In addition, white racist attitudes may have affected the Chinese, causing some to overlook this group of potential employees. Prevailing racism labeled First Nations' employees as undependable, “on account of their restless, nomadic propensities, which prevented them from settling down to any permanent, industrious avocations” (Report of the Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration [1885], 142 [Henry P. Pellew Crease, judge of the Supreme Court of British Columbia]). First Nations' women in British Columbia tended to labor at traditional subsistence pursuits and racially restricted jobs in canneries, fishing, knitting, and agriculture. See Mitchell, Marjorie and Franklin, Anna, “When You Don't Know the Language, Listen to the Silence: An Historical Overview of Native Indian Women in B.C.,” in Latham, and Pazdro, , eds., Not Just Pin Money, 26–27.Google Scholar

56. White restaurant and steam laundry proprietors in British Columbia often advertised that they employed only white help. One Victoria restaurant even changed its name, replaced its Chinese cooks with Germans, and advertised that “the stomach of a person of refined tastes must revolt at the mere idea that his dinner has been cooked by a Chinaman.” White men who established laundries also “advertised the whiteness of their employees as much as the whiteness of their linen.” See Roy, White Man's Province, 32, 243.

57. Saskatchewan Supreme Court Justice John Henderson Lamont conceded as much when he intimated in his appeal decision that the employment of white women might be “necessary or more profitable to the conduct of the business”: Quong Wing and Quong Sing, S.A.B., “Judgments of Lamont, J., Brown, J., and Haultain, C.J.”; reported as Rex v. Quong Wing.

58. “Shocking Fate of White Girls,” Regina Morning Leader, 5 September 1912 at 9. I am indebted to Kenneth Leyton-Brown for this reference.

59. Newspapers from Regina, Swift Current, and Moose Jaw attributed passage of the anti-Asian act to “agitation” commenced by “a large section of the community interested in Social and Moral Reform.” See “White Girls Cannot Work for Chinese,” Swift Current Sun, 15 July 1913 at 3; “Saskatchewan Law Prohibiting Employment of White Girls by Chinese Upheld by Ottawa Court,” Regina Morning Leader, 24 February 1914; “Prohibition of Employment of White Girls by Chinese Is Upheld by Ottawa Court,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 24 February 1914.

60. For descriptions of the founding of this temperance organization and its membership, see Regina Morning Leader, 14 December 1907, and Pinno, Erhard, “Temperance and Prohibition in Saskatchewan” (M.A. thesis, University of Saskatchewan, Regina, April 1971), 11–12.Google Scholar Pinno lists the following member organizations: Church of England in Canada (Dioceses of Saskatchewan and Qu'Appelle), Methodist Church of Canada (Saskatchewan Conference), Presbyterian Church of Canada (Synod of Saskatchewan), Saskatchewan Branch of the Baptist Convention, the Roman Catholic Church, Evangelical Association, Union Church Conference, Mennonite Church, the Saskatchewan Sunday School Federation, Royal Templars of Temperance, Trades and Labour Council of Saskatchewan, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, Great War Veterans' Association, Army and Navy Veterans' Association, North-West Commercial Travellers, Retail Merchants' Association, Dental Association, Medical Association, Educational Association, Citizens Educational Board, Local Council of Women, the Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C. A.

61. See, for example, “Chinese a Stagnant Race: The Real Yellow Peril,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 21 February 1912 at 10. “Chinamen Arrive,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 8 September 1909 at 1 noted, “Chinamen pay heavily for living in this country, and they deserve to. They take a lot of money from it and leave nothing in return, unless it is bitter memories amongst former customers of laundry spoiled or digestions ruined.” See also Ward, White Canada Forever, 7–14; Howay, F. W. (a judge of the County Court of Westminster, BC), British Columbia: The Making of a Province (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1928), 263.Google Scholar

62. Ward, W. Peter, “The Oriental Immigrant and Canada's Protestant Clergy, 1858–1925,” BC Studies 22 (Summer 1974): 46, 50Google Scholar; Miller, Stuart Creighton, The Unwelcome Immigrant: The American Image of the Chinese, 1785–1882 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 68, 88, 185–86Google Scholar; “Mission Workers Hear About China,” Regina Morning Leader, 31 May 1912 at 13.

63. See, for example, “No One to Buy Sixty Girls Who Must Starve in China,” Regina Leader, 18 April 1911 at 9, recounting that “sixty girls were offered for sale at one small town without a purchaser, because the food the slaves [would eat] was more valuable than their lives.” “Chinese Women Are Waking Up,” Regina Daily Province, 10 May 1912 at 9, reported on the fledgling women's rights movement in China but also reminded readers of the pervasive practice of female infanticide, the harsh working conditions for “women coolies,” adding that “the position of Chinese women was the same 3,000 years ago that it is today,” and that “the legal position of the Chinese woman is deplorable … [a] position [which] naturally cripples her powers and has a disastrous effect upon her character.” Although reports of Chinese female slavery were exaggerated, for women sent from China into indentured servitude as prostitutes on the west coast of the United States and Canada, conditions of work may have resembled slavery. See also Gronewold, Sue, Beautiful Merchandise: Prostitution in China 1860–1936 (New York: 1982)Google Scholar; Osterhout, Stephen Scott, Orientals in Canada: The Story of the Work of the United Church of Canada with Asiatics in Canada (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1929)Google Scholar; Pascoe, Peggy, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874–1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant, 68.

64. See Ware, Vron, Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History (London: Verso, 1992), 237, 250.Google Scholar She quotes a turn-of-the-century British writer, Ellice Hopkins, who combined feminist sentiments with imperialist doctrine, claiming that the way that women were treated was an index of a nation's racial purity and strength: “All history teaches us that the welfare and very life of a nation is determined by moral causes; and that it is the pure races—the races that respect their women and guard them jealously from defilement—that are the tough, prolific, ascendant races, the noblest in type, the most enduring in progress, and the most fruitful in propagating themselves” (149–50). See also Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant, 68.

65. Strong-Boag, Veronica Jane, The Parliament of Women: The National Council of Women of Canada, 1893–1929 (Ottawa: National Museum of Man, 1976), 186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

66. See, for example, “Ladies Made Speeches,” Regina Morning Leader, 20 February 1912 at 4, describing a debate at the Metropolitan Church over whether Asiatics should be excluded from Canada. Those arguing for exclusion won the debate with the following arguments: “They contended that the Asiatics being a different race and one which could not be assimilated with the white races, would be a menace to the unity of Canada, that they could not appreciate the aims and ideals of the westerner and that while they might be of great benefit to the world by staying in China and working to realize the ideals of their own race in conjunction with the teaching of Christianity, in Canada they tend to promote strife.”

67. Male Chinese domestic servants, customarily referred to as “houseboys,” were highly regarded by turn-of-the-century white Canadian women. See Ward, White Canada Forever, who quotes a Vancouver housewife complaining in 1903 that “We are wholly dependent on Chinese as household servants. We cannot get woman servants for love or money” (61). Western members of the Council of Women of Canada viewed Chinese men as ideal servants, “who may be dismissed at any time without responsibility” (Strong-Boag, The Parliament of Women, 237). Roy, White Man's Province, notes that Chinese servants were renowned as “deferential … impassive to the wrongdoings of their masters and mistresses, [and] deemed incapable of gossip” (36). They were particularly popular with white women, as one British Columbia news editor put it, because “their husbands cannot love him as they might love a girl.” That a number of these husbands may have been interested in same-sex relations with male Chinese servants seems to have escaped notice. The Daughters of the Empire circulated a petition favouring a reduced head-tax for Chinese immigrants who became domestic servants (Roy, White Man's Province, 180). “Gwen,” the author of a weekly column for women, took up the same campaign in 1905: “Why should we women be forced to give up our homes, why should we be forced to neglect our children, our sewing and our requisite rest and recreation because we cannot afford the high wages demanded by Chinese since the imposition of the $500 tax?” (Vancouver News-Advertiser, 13 August 1905; see also 17 February, 10 March 1907). The response of the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council was quick and scathing: “It is, we think, absurd that the working class of Canada should run the risk of having its standard of living degraded to the level of a Chinese coolie merely to gratify the whim of an aristocratic lady for a Chinese servant” (Creese, “Exclusion or Solidarity?” 33). It should also be noted, however, that many whites believed that Chinese servants should not be entrusted to care for white children. See Report of the Royal Commission on Chinese and Japanese Immigration (1902), 38–39, 1689. Many middle- and upper-class white Canadian women favored British female domestics; Palmer, Patterns of Prejudice, remarks that the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the Y.W.C.A., and the Women's Institutes had all banded together to create the Canadian Council of Immigration of Women, which concerned itself with securing domestics, preferably British (66).

68. Palmer, Patterns of Prejudice, 39. The Ontario vice-president of the National Council of Women of Canada wrote in 1913: “One of the greatest problems confronting us as a young nation today, is the many types of people who are rapidly coming to us from the nations beyond the seas. How shall these people of diverse tastes, temperaments and trainings be assimilated and made desirable citizens? … How shall we teach them the sacredness of the ballot? How shall the women and children of these incoming peoples be given the high social and moral ideals which are so dear to all true Canadians?” (Strong-Boag, The Parliament of Women, 247, citing NCWC Yearbook [1913], 35).

See also Carol Bacchi, “Race Regeneration and Social Purity: A Study of the Social Attitudes of Canada's English-Speaking Suffragists,” Histoire sociale/Social History 11, no. 22 (1978): 460–74, who notes that Canadian suffragists' commitment to race, creed, and class often superseded the commitment to sex equality (461).

69. Valverde, Mariana, The Age of Light, Soap and Water: Moral Reform in English Canada, 1885–1925 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1991)Google Scholar, remarks that social purity activists appealed to Canadian nationalism through symbols of “snowy peaks” and “pure white snow” (17). See also Palmer, Patterns of Prejudice, 43. For a good illustration of the forcefulness of “cleanliness” imagery in the racial context, see Wynne, Reaction to the Chinese, citing a late nineteenth-century American clergyman who argued that unsanitary Chinese laundries would besmirch the purity of white women: “the dainty garments of white women puddled around in suds that reeked with dirt …”(182).

70. Strong-Boag, The Parliament of Women, 248, citing the NCWC Yearbook (1912), 81–82. For more recent manifestations of the organized women's movement's lack of interest in eliminating anti-Asian governmental policies, see Omatsu, Maryka, Bittersweet Passage: Redress and the Japanese Canadian Experience (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1992), 13, 155–56.Google Scholar

71. Lavell, M. M. C., Oriental Missions in British Columbia (Toronto, 1908), 4–5.Google Scholar

72. Ware, Beyond the Pale, 37–38. The ideological focus on motherhood of the “first wave” of the women's movement, often categorized as “maternal feminism,” facilitated claims that combined reproduction and racism. See Valverde, The Age of Light, Soap and Water, 60–61.

73. Valverde, Mariana, “‘When the Mother of the Race is Free’: Race, Reproduction, and Sexuality in First-Wave Feminism,” in Iacovetta, Franca and Valverde, Mariana, eds., Gender Conflicts: New Essays in Women's History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 3, 14Google Scholar; Gilman, Sander L., “Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature,” in Gates, H. L. Jr, ed., Race, Writing and Difference (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), 223–61Google Scholar; Groot, Joanna de, “‘Sex’ and ‘Race’: The Construction of Language and Image in the Nineteenth Century,” in Mendes, S. and Rendali, J., eds., Sexuality and Subordination (London: Routledge 1989), 89–128Google Scholar; Ware, Beyond the Pale, 171–72.

74. See references to the Chinese as “small-boned and unmuscular,” more “docile and tractable” than white men, “timid,” and eager to obtain work that other men labeled “unmanly”: Report of the Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration (1885), xviii, xxxii, XXX, LXXVII. Ward, White Canada Forever, claims that “judging by their attitudes toward the Chinese, North American whites were not much concerned about Asian sexuality, whereas attitudes toward blacks were highly charged with sexual imagery” (175). Valverde, The Age of Light, Soap and Water, makes no such comparative claim but does note that in discussions of the opium trade, suggestions were made that Chinese sexual vice was not characterized by impulsive aggression but rather by a loss of manhood and consequent need for drugs to induce sexual desire (110–11).

75. Report of the Royal Commission to Investigate Chinese and Japanese Immigration into British Columbia (1902), 278.

76. Childish designations were common in the press as well. See, for example, the description of “twenty-two Chinamen” convicted of gambling in Jaw, Moose: “With smiles that were childlike and bland, the followers of Confucius each paid a $25 fine” (“Aids Police but Likes Game,” Regina Leader, 25 April 1912 at 7).Google Scholar In “Celestials Who Are Now Citizens of Earthly Moose Jaw,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 6 September 1913 at 7, the press noted, “A Chinaman can look you straight in the eye, and in the most childish and innocent manner possible, tell you the most beautiful fabrication to which you have ever listened. To him it is merely a story. He is essentially not a practical liar. He lies as a child lies, not with the purpose of gaining anything for himself by his stories, but merely to entertain, or for something to say.” See also “Dr. Sun Urges Fight against White Help Law,” Regina Morning Leader, 13 May 1912 at 1, noting the excitement within the Chinese community in Moose Jaw when they learned that Dr. Sun Yat Sen would back their campaign: “This has tremendously elated the ‘boys’ and they see in it a vindication of their policy to fight the act to the finish.”

77. See the testimony of Commissioner Gray, James Hamilton, Report of the Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration (1885), 59, 62.Google Scholar See also the testimony of Dr. E. Stevenson of Victoria: “Place our white males in the position of domestic servants, doing all the housework, even preparing and assisting the lady of the house and children at the bath, and what would be the result even before the end of one week? I need not inform you. But during all these years, with thousands of male Chinese engaged in the capacity of domestic servants, not a case but one that I ever heard, of liberties or attempted liberties with white females” (92).

The American labor publication, the Workingman's Advocate, complained in 1873 that “beguiled by the childish quality of these Chinese houseboys … mothers [permitted them to wash and dress little white girls and] innocently undressed [themselves] in front of them.” See Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant, 198.

78. Wilson, “A Pound of Prevention,” 12. In addition, the article noted that a recent report of the National Council of Women had found female employees suffering from “wrongful treatment from the white patrons of restaurants kept by Orientals.”

79. One indicator of these fears is the amount of criminal prosecution for sex offences. For examples of reported cases involving Asian-Canadian defendants, see Rex v. Iman Din (1910), 18 C.C.C. 82, 16 W.L.R. 130, 15 B.C.R. 476 (B.C.C.A.); The King v. Sam Sing (1910), 17 C.C.C. 361, 22 O.L.R. 613 (Ont. C.A.); Rex v. Sam Jon (1914), 24 C.C.C. 334 (B.C.C.A.); Rex v. Louie Chong (1914), 23 C.C.C. 250, 32 O.L.R. 66, 7 O.W.N. 84 (Ont. C.A.); Rex v. Delip Singh (1918), 26 B.C.R. 390 (B.C.C.A.); Rex v. Chin Chong (1921), 29 B.C.R. 527 (B.C.C.A.); Rex v. Gee Poy (1922), 38 C.C.C. 280; 19 Alta. L.R. 1; [1923] 1 D.L.R. 279 (Alta. C.A.); The King v. Tom Ging (1924), 57 N.S.R. 196 (N.S.S.C); Rex v. Yee Jam Hong, [1928] 3 W.W.R. 490; (1928), 23 Sask. L.R. 173 (Sask. C.A.); Rex v. Ah Sing, [1937] 3 W.W.R. 185; (1937), 52 B.C.R. 146 (B.C.S.C); Rex v. ling Foo, [1939] 4 D.L.R. 812; (1939), 73 C.C.C. 103; 54 B.C.R. 202 (B.C. Co. Ct.); Rex v. Bakshish Singh, [1943] 3 D.L.R. 735; 2 W.W.R. 478; (1943), 59 B.C.R. 238 (B.C.C.A.). See also the reports of the conviction in Lethbridge of Lem Chung for indecent assault on an eight-year-old girl, “True Bills on Five Counts,” Regina Daily Province, 12 April 1912 at 5; “Chinaman Sent Down,” Regina Daily Province, 13 April 1912 at 1.

80. Valverde notes that Chinese men “were perceived as decadent perverts in need of opium and other drugs to fuel their flagging sexual energies …. Chinese men were suspected of hatching intelligent but devious plots, such as luring young white women into apparently harmless ‘chop suey palaces’ and opium dens, and from there into the ‘white slave traffic’” (“‘When the Mother of the Race Is Free,’” 14).

81. Although he cited no specific evidence, the early twentieth-century British Columbia politician and moral reformer H. H. Stevens alleged that Chinese men were “enticing white girls” into opium dens (Roy, While Man's Province, 17). Charles T. Bloomfield, superintendent of police in Victoria, testified that he had “seen white women smoking in the Chinese [opium] dens … white girls of respectable parents” (Report of the Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration [1885], 48). See also similar testimony from Mr. Tuckfield. representing the Knights of Labor, and Joseph Metcalf, Jr., of Nanaimo (66–67, 82); and Roy, White Man's Province, 15, citing the Nanaimo Free Press, 15 November 1884. The only woman to testify in Canada before the Commission, Emily Wharton, was a twenty-year-old white prostitute who claimed to have become addicted in Chinese opium houses in San Francisco. She was asked specifically about her treatment at the hands of Chinese men in opium dens and testified, “They never interfered with me in the least. In that respect, they are far superior to white men. Unless you speak to them, they will not even speak to you; and indeed after the first whiff of opium you have no desire to speak” (150).

For an American example of similar fears, see the account from the New York Times, 1873, quoted in Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant, 184: “To the young reporter's inquiry about ‘a handsome but squalidly dressed young white girl’ present in an opium den, the owner ‘replied with a horrible leer, “oh, hard time in New York. Young girl hungry. Plenty come here. Chinaman always have something to eat, and he like young white girl. He! He!”’”

That same year, the Workingman ‘s Advocate catalogued the “innumerable hells” burrowed beneath every Chinese settlement, which held captive white girls for “crimes that cannot be named” (Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant, 198). Miller discusses fears of the Chinese laundry as the site of evil assignations: “In 1889, a Chinese laundry in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was demolished by an angry mob of two thousand after its two owners were indicted for ravaging more than twenty young girls between the ages ornine and thirteen in the back room. Such incidents provoked sensational stories in the eastern press—headlines of ‘Two Mongolian Minotaurs,’ ‘Shocking Debauchery of Innocents.’ In Brooklyn, two seventeen-year-old prostitutes claimed that Chinese laundrymen had started them out on their ‘shameful life’ at a very tender age” (185). For a comparative discussion of the British discourse on drugs, see Kohn, Marek, Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1992).Google Scholar

82. Shearer was the head of the council's subcommittee, the National Committee for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic (Valverde, The Age of Light, Soap and Water, 54–57, 86). See also “Dr. Shearer Gives Regina Bouquet,” Regina Daily Province, 16 March 1911 at 5; “Rev. Dr. Moore on Social Evil,” Regina Daily Province, 21 June 1912 at 1, reporting on the “white slavery” investigatory tour of Victoria, Edmonton, Moose Jaw, and Winnipeg undertaken by Dr. Moore, secretary of the Methodist temperance and moral reform board; and “Gambling and White Slavery Canada's Menace,” Regina Daily Province, 6 November 1912 at 10. The Report by W.L. Mackenzie King, C.M.G., Deputy Minister of Labour, Commissioner Appointed to Investigate into Losses Sustained by the Chinese Population of Vancouver, B. C on the Occasion of the Riots in that City in September, 1907 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, King's Printer, 1908) noted that Chinese opium manufacturers in Vancouver “stated that they sold to white people as well as to Chinese and other Orientals” in “an extensive business” (15). In 1910 the police staff inspector in charge of Toronto's morality division complained about Chinese men: “The lure of the Chinaman is … developing among [young] girls, to their utter demoralization in many instances” (Valverde, The Age of Light, Soap and “Water, 111, citing Staff Inspector Kennedy, Annual Report of the Chief Constable [1910], 31). No statistical data exist to suggest that the Chinese were disproportionately involved in operating brothels in Canada or that they represented any numerical threat as “white slavers.”

83. “White Girls in Chinese Cafes,” Regina Leader, 25 September 1912 at 12; “White Women and Chinese Employers,” Regina Daily Province, 24 September 1912 at 7.

84. “Bend Energies to End White Slavery,” Regina Morning Leader, 28 May 1912 at 7, outlining addresses made by Canadian delegates to the London meeting of the National Council of Women.

85. See Ward, White Canada Forever, 9, citing the Victoria Times, 25 June 1908. Rex v. Mah Hung (1912), 2 D.L.R. 568; 20 C.C.C. 40; 17 B.C.R. 56 (B.C.C.A.) is one instance of a conviction against a Chinese man for procuring a white woman, Katie Stephens, to become an inmate of a brothel. The evidence showed that Katie Stephens, a prostitute “well known to the police as such since 1907,” accepted both white men and Chinese men as customers. Mah Hung was charged when he traveled with Stephens from Vancouver to Prince Rupert. The indictment also alleged that Mah Hung had unlawfully administered cocaine and other drugs to Stephens “with intent thereby to stupefy her so as thereby to enable a man to have unlawful carnal connection with her.” On this last count, he was acquitted at trial. For a similar case, see The King v. Lew (1912), 19 W.L.R. 853; 19 C.C.C. 281; 17 B.C.R. 77 (B.C.C.A.). But see also the later case of Rex v. Lou Hay Hung, [1946] 3 D.L.R. 111; O.W.N. 164; O.R. 187; (1946), 85 C.C.C. 308; 1 CR. 274 (Ont. C. A.), in which the narcotics conviction of a Chinese man, employed in a Queen Street East laundry in Toronto, was overturned on appeal, while the related drug conviction of his white female employer was upheld.

86. Murphy, Emily, The Black Candle (Toronto: Thomas Allen, 1922Google Scholar; reprint, Toronto: Coles Publishing Company, 1973), 17, 28, 233–34, 303–4, 306. But see also 234–39, where she discusses situations in which white women are the aggressors.

Emily Murphy's fears were exaggerated even further by one Methodist moral reform organization, which insisted that even “occasionally visiting Chinese restaurants” could lead to the demise of unsuspecting white women. Valverde, The Age of Light, Soap and Water, refers to a 1911 Methodist annual report and notes that the lists of dangerous places catalogued in early twentieth-century white slavery narratives invariably included “chop suey palaces” (97–99). She also notes that Ethel West, who headed up Presbyterian services for immigrant women in Toronto after 1911, sought to keep under surveillance and rescue Scottish women who “went to work where Chinamen were employed” (122).

87. Murphy, The Black Candle, pictures opposite pp. 30, 188, and 210. See also the picture opposite p. 46, which shows a dark-skinned man and white woman with heads touching, with the caption, “Once a woman has started on the trail of the poppy, the sledding is very easy and downgrade all the way.” See also pp. 45, 107, 122, 128, 166, 186–89, 196–98, 210, 302–3, and Palmer, Patterns of Prejudice, 84–85. Deeply ambivalent about the extent of Chinese designs toward racial superiority (see 107–8, 112), Murphy wrote: “It is hardly credible that the average Chinese pedlar has any definite idea in his mind of bringing about the downfall of the white race, his swaying motive being probably that of greed, but in the hands of his superiors, he may become a powerful instrument to this very end. In discussing this subject, Major Crehan of British Columbia has pointed out that whatever their motive, the traffic always comes with the Oriental, and that one would, therefore, be justified in assuming that it was their desire to injure the bright-browed races of the world” (188). Responding to Murphy's provocative prose, the National Council of Women of Canada expressed its consternation over increasing numbers of female and male drug addicts. Its solution: “further restrictions on oriental immigration were proposed as one means of cutting off the opium supply” (Strong-Boag, The Parliament of Women, 382).

88. Helen Gregory MacGill was one of Canada's first female juvenile court judges in British Columbia. See MacGill, Elsie Gregory, My Mother, the Judge (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1955).Google Scholar

89. See, for example, the discussion of the history of sexual harassment in Canada in Constance Backhouse and Cohen, Leah, The Secret Oppression: Sexual Harassment of Working Women (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1978)Google Scholar, chapter 3.

90. Wilson, “A Pound of Prevention,” 13.

91. Report of the “Committee on Trades and Professions for Women,” National Council of Women of Canada, The Yearbook of the National Council of Women of Canada, 1927 (Ottawa, 1927), 88Google Scholar; “Trades and Professions,” The Yearbook of the National Council of Women of Canada, 1928 (Ottawa: 1928), 97; see also Wilson, “A Pound of Prevention.”

92. See, for example, the testimony of Young, James of Nanaimo, , Report of the Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration (1885), 89Google Scholar: “Wherever I have known any considerable number of men deprived of female society for any length of time, the inevitable result has been that they become coarser. The intellect is depraved, the whole moral tone is lowered, and men rush into a greater depth of wickedness and vice than would otherwise have been possible.” See also Rex v. Hung Gee (No. 1) (1913), 13 D.L.R. 44; 21 C.C.C. 404; 24 W.L.R. 605; 6 Alta. L.R. 167; [1913] 4 W.W.R. 1128 (Alta. S.C.), which overturned the conviction of a Chinese Calgarian for keeping a common gaming house and adverted, with some regret, to the common view: “The learned police magistrate concludes [with] some remarks that suggest an abnormal amount of immorality among the Chinese in this country, and attributes this to the fact that ‘these people are here without their women.’ No doubt, he is voicing a common view both as to the fact and its cause.”

93. Ward, White Canada Forever, 8–9; Report of the Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration (1885), lxxviii–lxxi, xxvi, and 133, where J. Pawson of Nanaimo stated: “Nearly the whole of their females that leave China are professed prostitutes, from children ten or twelve years of age to old hags.”

In 1898 the National Council of Women had written to Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, demanding an investigation into the “female slavery” of Chinese-Canadian prostitutes. The request was initially put forward by the Local Councils of Women in Vancouver and Victoria, who hoped that such a study would correct the impression of eastern visitors who praised “the sobriety, the industry, and the peaceableness of the Celestials.” See Roy, White Man's Province, 17–18, citing National Council of Women to Wilfrid Laurier, 20 August 1898, Laurier Papers, #25897–8.

In an era when women were touted as the moral guardians of the community, the racist categorization of Chinese women as sexually promiscuous gave increased fuel to the fears that Chinese men were predisposed to improper sexual behavior. In comparison, see Giddings, Paula, “The Last Taboo,” in Morrison, Toni, ed., Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power (New York: Pantheon, 1992), 443–44Google Scholar: “[B]lack men were thought capable of these sexual crimes because of the lascivious character of the women of the race in a time when women were considered the foundation of the group's morality. Black men raped, it was widely believed, because black men's mothers, wives, sisters and daughters were seen as ‘morally obtuse’, ‘Openly licentious’.…”

94. Prime Minister John A. Macdonald predicted as early as 1883 that the “Mongolian” and white races could never combine, citing the Chinese as a “semi-barbari[c],” “inferior race” (House of Commons Debates, 12 May 1882, at 1471, 30 April 1883, at 905). In 1922 Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King would state that it was “impossible ever to hope to assimilate a white population with the races of the Orient.” Phrasing it as a matter of national interest, King proclaimed, “If I am correct … and I believe I am … in the assertion that it is a great economic law that the lower civilization will, if permitted to compete with the higher, tend to drive the higher out of existence, or drag it down to the lower level, then we see the magnitude of the question viewed as a great national problem” (House of Commons Debates, 8 May 1922, at 1555–56). See also Adilman, “Chinese Women and Work,” 61.

95. One example of a somewhat more tolerant position is found in the Report of the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the National Council of Women of Canada 1907 (Toronto: G. Parker & Sons, 1907), 35–37: “Many of us remember when only English, Irish and Scotch emigrants came to our eastern ports; now people from every country in Europe, and many from different parts of the Orient, are dwellers in Canada; even those who may not have been considered the most desirable citizens are not daunted by the heavy poll-tax imposed upon them. The sons of Sinim go backward and forward, and are the means of winning others to cross the Pacific to labor in the factories and other industries in the West, or to learn the new business of the North American Chinaman: a quiet, industrious folk, not to be turned away from a free and prosperous country.”

The National Council of Women of Canada also gave extensive consideration to the sexual imbalance in the Canadian Sikh population. Delegates were divided over whether it was worse to have an alien population seeking Anglo-Saxon wives or to encourage Sikh women to immigrate, thus providing the basis for a permanent, self-perpetuating community in Canada. A compromise solution requested Ottawa either to authorize entry for wives of resident Sikhs or to provide cash indemnities and free passage to India for the husbands (Strong-Boag, The Parliament of Women, 247–48, citing NCWC Yearbook [1912], 81–82).

96. Ward, While Canada Forever, 13, 180, and Roy, White Man's Province, x. Upon hearing of two racially mixed marriages in Halifax, one British Columbia editor complained that the “[white] brides were better off in their coffins.” Another British Columbia journal summed it up: “It is when we contemplate these unnatural unions that we find the kernel of the Asiatic problem—the mixing of the races. Race mixture is the essential danger of the Asiatic occupation of this country for race mixture means race deterioration.” See Roy, White Man's Province, 18, citing the Nanaimo Free Press, 5 April 1904; Nanaimo Herald, 11 December 1910; New Westminster Daily News, 20 May 1908; and Saturday Sunset, 17 April 1909. See also the testimony of SirBegbie, Matthew, chief justice of British Columbia, Report of the Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration (1885), 80Google Scholar, who claimed that “whites who have evil [sexual] communications with Chinese must themselves be lamentably depraved beforehand ….” Arguments for racially segregated schools in British Columbia were predicated on intermarriage fears: “If little Jim Ling is her chum at school, why may not he seek to be her suitor when she is a woman?” See Lai, David Chuenyan, “The Issue of Discrimination in Education in Victoria, 1901–23,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 19, no. 3 (1987): 47–67Google Scholar, and Roy, White Man's Province, 26–27. For an example of similar concerns, expressed in a more delicate fashion and out of a professed interest in racial equality, see Fewster, Lysle, Lengthening Shadows (New York: Pageant Press, 1957)Google Scholar, a Saskatchewan novel that comments negatively on the implications of mixed-race marriages between Chinese men and white women (79–83). For the negative response from the Chinese community to racial intermarriage with whites, see Women's Book Committee, Chinese Canadian National Council, Jin Guo: Voices of Chinese Canadian Women (Toronto: Women's Press, 1992), 41, 51, 68, 83, 179–90.Google Scholar

97. By comparison, Konvitz, Milton R., The Alien and the Asiatic in American Law (Ithaca: 1946)Google Scholar, notes that, even as late as 1946, many American states had anti-“miscegenation” statutes prohibiting intermarriage between whites and Asians (231–32). He lists Georgia, Idaho, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, and Utah. South Carolina and California permitted intermarriage between white men and Chinese women but not between white women and Chinese men. See Pascoe, Peggy, “Race, Gender, and Intercultural Relations: The Case of Interracial Marriage,” Frontiers 12, no. 1 (1991): 5–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sickels, Robert J., Race, Marriage, and the Law (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1972)Google Scholar; Martyn, Byron Curti, “Racism in the United States: A History of the Anti-Miscegenation Legislation and Litigation” (Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 1979)Google Scholar; Osumi, Megumi Dick, “Asians and California's Anti-Miscegenation Laws,” in Tsuchida, Nobuya, ed., Asian and Pacific American Experiences: Women's Perspectives (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, Asian/Pacific American Learning Resource Center, 1982), 2–8.Google Scholar

98. See “Girl Wanted to Wed a Chinaman—But Lethbridge Police Locked Up the Would-Be Couple,” Regina Leader, 19 September 1911 at 14. The article, headed “Lethbridge, Sept. 17,” stated that Mah Wing, a proprietor of a Chinese restaurant at Diamond City, and Janet Given, a “white girl of Scotch descent,” had been arrested in a lodging house in Lethbridge. The twenty-three-year-old woman “of rather prepossessing appearance” had immigrated from Scotland three months earlier and found employment in May Wing's restaurant. She told the police she had become “infatuated” with her employer and that they had traveled to Lethbridge to be married. The police were deeply suspicious of the “almond eyed” May Wing and took him into custody pending full investigation.

No legal records from this case appear to remain in the files of the Saskatchewan Archives Board, and it is difficult to determine whether any charges were ever laid. Presumably the police arrested Mah Wing on the theory that they might be able to charge him with some sort of procuring offense, after he booked a hotel room with a woman who was not yet his wife. The interracial nature of the relationship clearly motivated the arrest, however, revealing how authorities could manufacture indirect legal impediments to interracial marriage when direct legal bars were not available.

99. “Twelve White Women Brides of Orientals,” Regina Leader, 11 November 1911 at 4, recounted one of the wedding nuptials as follows: “When they entered the office of the justice of the peace [the couple] sat down side by side and neither looked at the other for five minutes, while the justice was filling out papers. He studied the design of the linoleum, while she looked far away out the window …. When the two stood up and clasped hands, [the bridegroom] was silent and looked straight ahead into vacancy. He did not answer the questions asked. [The bride] merely laughed her assent.” The report emphasized that the women concerned were widows, one significantly older than the man she was marrying, and that none would agree to having their pictures taken. One bride, it noted, “seemed to be the financial agent of her husband and carried the family purse in a large wallet.”

100. 8 January 1912 at 2. The article quotes a recently divorced white American woman: “I know … enough to give advice to other American girls, and it is never to marry people of Oriental origin or with Oriental strains in the blood. They can never understand each other and the woman will be the one who suffers.”

101. “Shocking Fate of White Girls,” Regina Morning Leader, 5 September 1912 at 9. An air of astonishment attended the report that an Ottawa cleric had spoken positively about racial intermarriage. See “Advocates That Whites Should Marry Orientals,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 11 March 1914 at 12.

102. Baureiss, Gunter, “The Chinese Community in Calgary,” Alberta Historical Review 22, no. 2 (1974): 8Google Scholar; Baureiss, , “Discrimination and Response: The Chinese in Canada,” in Bienvenue, Rita M. and Goldstein, Jay E., eds., Ethnicity and Ethnic Relations in Canada, 2d ed. (Toronto: Butterworths, 1985), 251.Google Scholar

103. See “Legislators Are Working Overtime Now,” Regina Morning Leader, 2 March 1912 at 9. Although Turgeon asserted that it was extraprovincial events (no details of which were ever provided) that had motivated the legislature, Chuenyan Lai, Chinatowns, observes that the act was precipitated by the arrest in 1912 of a Moose Jaw Chinese restaurant owner after his employee, a white waitress, lodged an assault complaint against him (93). Although he states that the case was widely publicized in local newspapers, Chuenyan Lai gives no reference to the case or the press coverage.

A search of the Saskatchewan newspapers has not revealed any such arrest in 1912. However, in September 1911 Charlie Chow was charged with committing an indecent assault on a young (white) girl, who was tarrying in a Moose Jaw Chinese restaurant (possibly the C.E.R. restaurant) unsupervised, long after she was due home from Sunday School. No conviction appears to have been registered, after evidence was given that there was a large crowd in the restaurant at the time and that the girl's aunt may have induced a false complaint by pressuring the youngster. See “Child Was Reluctant,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 1 September 1911; “Assault Case Dismissed,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 30 September 1911 at 10. Another article, “Assault Case against Chinaman Was Dismissed,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 5 March 1912 at 7, makes reference to a fistfight in the Royal Restaurant between a white man, Alfred Essrey, and Charlie Quong. Although the fight appears to have been provoked by Essrey taking pork chops from the kitchen, reference is made to Essrey's having “reprimanded a Chinaman for assaulting his sweetheart [Miss Jean McLeod], who was a waitress in the Royal restaurant.” All charges stemming from the fight were dismissed.

Commenting later on the legislative purpose of the enactment, Saskatchewan Supreme Court justices referred to “the interests of morality,” the “protection of white women,” and the need to “secure white women freedom from the influence and authority of a Chinaman.” With evasiveness similar to that of Attorney General Turgeon, Justice James Thomas Brown added, “The reasons for attaining the object can only be understood by one familiar with the actual conditions.” See Quong Wing and Quong Sing, S.A.B., “Judgments of Lamont, J., Brown, J., and Haultain, C.J.”; reported as Rex v. Quong Wing. One Supreme Court of Canada justice was more blunt. Stressing the particular need for such legislation in the prairie provinces, Sir Lyman Poore Duff wrote: “There is nothing in the Act itself to indicate that the legislature is doing anything more than attempting to deal according to its lights (as it is its duty to do) with a strictly local situation. In the sparsely inhabited Western provinces of this country the presence of Orientals in comparatively considerable numbers not infrequently raises questions for public discussion and treatment, and, sometimes in an acute degree, which in more thickly populated countries would excite little or no general interest.”

Duff's further discussion of the “moral” rationale for the statute suggests the potential power imbalance between Chinese employers and the immigrant women who might become economically dependent upon them and hints at the prospect of vigilante activities on the part of whites. His language, however, is veiled: “One can without difficulty figure to one's self the considerations which may have influenced the Saskatchewan Legislature in dealing with the practice of white girls taking employment in such circumstances as are within the contemplation of this Act; considerations, for example, touching the interests of immigrant European women, and considerations touching the effect of such a practice upon the local relations between Europeans and Orientals; to say nothing of considerations affecting the administration of the law. See Quong Wing v. The King (1914), 49 S.C.R. 440; [1914] 6 W.W.R. 270; (1914), 18 D.L.R. 121; 23 C.C.C. 113.

104. First reading was held 26 February 1912, second reading on 1 March 1912, and debate and third reading on 4 March 1912: Journals of the Legislative Assembly (1912), 68. For newspaper coverage, see “White Women Must Not Work with Chinese,” Regina Morning Leader, 27 February 1912; Saskatoon Phoenix, 27 February 1912; “Busy Days These for Legislatures,” Regina Daily Standard, 2 March 1912; “Bills Are Made Law by Lt. Governor,” Regina Leader, 16 March 1912. The dates for royal assent and the coming into force of the legislation are found in “An Act to Prevent the Employment of Female Labour in Certain Capacities,” S.S. 1912, c.17, S.3.

105. See “An Act to Prevent the Employment of Female Labor in Certain Capacities,” S.M. 1913, C.19; “An Act to Amend the Factory, Shop and Office Building Act,” S.O. 1914, c.40, s.2(1); R.S.O. 1927, C.275, s.30; S.O. 1929, c.72, s.5; S.O. 1932, c.35, s.29; R.S.O. 1937, c.194, s.28; S.O. 1947, c 102, s.1; “Municipal Act Amendment Act,” S.B.C. 1919, c.63, s.13. For further details on these statutes, see Constance Backhouse, “White Female Help and Chinese-Canadian Employers: Race, Class, Gender and Law in the Case of Yee Clun, 1924,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 26, no. 3 (1994): 34–52.Google Scholar

I have not yet located any American statutes similar to the Saskatchewan precedent, although Mears, Eliot Grinnell, Resident Orientals on the American Pacific Coast: Their Legal and Economic Status (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1927)Google Scholar, notes that the Oregon legislature considered prohibiting the employment of white females in restaurants or grills “owned or operated by Orientals” (306–7). A bill to this effect, introduced in 1919 by W. G. Lynn, was apparently defeated due to the combined forces of Chinese hotel and restaurant proprietors and the press. Concerns about constitutionality were apparently a factor.

106. See Leyton-Brown, , “Discriminatory Legislation.” The Moose Jaw Evening Times, 1 May 1912 at 1Google Scholar, announced that the Chinese had held a mass meeting to discuss the act and intended to retain their white female employees pending legal advice. Frank Yee, the Grand Master of the Chinese Masonic Order in western Canada, enlisted the support of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the successful leader of the 1911 Chinese Revolution, who wrote to Yee from China. Portions of Dr. Sun Yatsen's letter were published in the Regina Leader on 13 May 1912, promising that the Chinese consul from Ottawa would visit Regina soon to investigate the situation. The letter threatened that if the act were enforced, Chinese cities would boycott Canadian goods and Pacific shipping would be decimated by the withdrawal of Chinese labor: “Dr. Sun Urges Fight against White Help Law,” Regina Leader, 13 May 1912 at 1; see also Regina Morning Leader, 8 January 1912 at 9; Regina Daily Province, 13 May 1912 at 1. Sun Yat-sen was quite familiar with the Chinese situation in Canada. He had made several successful fund-raising visits to western Canada in previous years and Chinese-Canadians had played a large role in financing revolutionary activities in China. See Chan, Anthony B., “The Myth of the Chinese Sojourner in Canada,” in Ujimoto, K. Victor and Hirabyashi, Gordon, eds., Visible Minorities and Multiculturalismi Asians in Canada (Toronto: Butterworths, 1980), 33–42.Google Scholar No such visit materialized and the threat appears to have been ineffective. See “Dr. Wong Not Going to Moose Jaw, as Reported,” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, 14 May 1912 at 10; “Chinese Will Fight the Act,” Regina Daily Province, 16 May 1912 at 7; and “The Oriental Problem,” Saskatoon Daily Star, 15 May 1912 at 2. Ten years earlier the Canadian Royal Commission on Chinese and Japanese Immigration had concluded that “the evidence adduced and the experience of the United States in this regard indicate that further restriction or exclusion will not affect the trade of Canada with China”: Report of the Royal Commission on Chinese and Japanese Immigration (1902), 270.

The press reported that the Japanese residents of Moose Jaw were also ready to fight the legislation, which they saw as a “curtailment of their liberties” under “international law.” See “Moose Jaw Japs to Fight Labor Laws,” Regina Morning Leader, 10 May 1912 at 1; “Japs at Moose Jaw to Test Labor Law,” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, 10 May 1912 at 7; “Moose Jaw Japs Fight Labor Law,” Regina Daily Province, 10 May 1912 at 1. Mr. N. Nakane, a Japanese proprietor of the Carlton Cafe in Moose Jaw, wrote to Turgeon on 5 March 1912 to complain about the Saskatchewan enactment as an “insult to the honour of Japan.” Turgeon replied on 28 March 1912: “It is certainly regrettable that any law of the Province should be found objectionable by any portion of the respectable citizens of the Province. However, general conditions some time require things to be done which cannot be agreeable to everybody. In the present case this law was put through, in so far at least as some of the people affected by it were concerned, not so much to remedy an existing state of affairs, but to prevent the growing up of conditions which have arisen elsewhere” (Turgeon Papers, S.A.B., General Correspondence 1911–12 “N,” box 9, 325–28).

Nakane sought an amendment removing the Japanese from the legislation on the grounds that there were “fewer than twenty Japanese in the whole of Saskatchewan,” that they were too few to pose any serious threat, and that they were not generally in a position to employ white women. He described himself as a naturalized British subject who had lived in Moose Jaw for seven years and employed only men in his restaurant. See an account of his argument in “Employment by Orientals,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 29 April 1912 at 1.

In contrast, few non-Asians complained about the act at the time of its passage. Dr. Stephens of Yellow Grass, Saskatchewan, wrote to Attorney General Turgeon on 28 February 1912 seeking an amendment that would provide an individual exemption for one local Chinese restaurant proprietor. Turgeon refused, noting that “after all the Act only comes into effect on May 1st next and in the meantime the proprietor will doubtless be able to make arrangements to secure male help” (Turgeon Papers, S.A.B., General Correspondence 1911–1912, “S,” box 11, 65–66). See also the statement of Regina's first police magistrate, William Trant, and Rev. M. MacKinnon, the pastor of Knox Church, who defended Chinese laundrymen against a campaign to impose burdensome taxes on their businesses (Regina Evening Leader, 24 May 1914 at 1).

107. An account of this meeting was reported as “Japanese Consul General in Regina,” Regina Morning Leader, 14 May 1912 at 2.

108. Reference to Dr. Yada's Tokyo mission is contained in the New York Herald, 23 April 1913 at 6.

109. “An Act to Amend an Act to Prevent the Employment of Female Labour in Certain Capacities,” S.S. 1912–13, C.18, given royal assent 11 January 1913. For the rationale behind the amendment, see Ryder, “Racism and the Constitution,” who discusses the impact of British-Japanese Treaties on Canadian domestic law and the Anglo-Canadian desire for a military and commercial alliance with Japan (635—37). See also Saskatchewan, Provincial Secretary, Correspondence of the Lieutenant-Governor on “Act to Prevent the Employment of Female Labour in Certain Capacities” and the decision to make it applicable to the hiring of women by Orientals, S.A.B., R192.4, File #249, containing letters between the Saskatchewan lieutenant-governor, the federal secretary of state, and Mr. Fu Ping Tien, Acting Chinese Consul-General, noting that the Japanese were exempt because they were few in number and rarely engaged in the occupations covered by the act. See also Tarnopolsky, Walter Surma and Pentney, William F., Discrimination and the Law (Don Mills, Ontario: Richard De Boo Publishers, 1985), 1. 10–11Google Scholar, citing correspondence between the Japanese consul-general in Vancouver and the office of Premier Walter Scott in Scott Papers, S.A.B., 45–991, and 45–992. Gisborne, F. H. and Fraser, A. A., Correspondence, Reports of the Minister of Justice and Orders in Council: Upon the Subject of Provincial Legislation, 1896–1920, vol. 2 (Ottawa: F. A. Acland, 1922)Google Scholar, note the pressure exerted by the Government of India as well: “Exception had been taken to the Saskatchewan Act by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and the Secretary of State for India. It was pointed out by Sir Edward Grey that the Japanese Government had the strongest objection to Acts differentially affecting Japanese subjects, and by the Marquess of Crewe that the Government of India and popular opinion in India resented strongly any action inflicting disabilities on British Indian subjects, who were clearly covered by the term Oriental' as used in the Act” (519).

110. See, for example, Tarnopolsky and Pentney, Discrimination and the Law, 1.10–18; Tarnopolsky, Walter S., “The Critical Century: Human Rights and Race Relations,” in Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 1982, 4th ser., vol. 20 (Ottawa: Royal Society of Canada), 312.Google Scholar

111. Discussions centered on the division of powers frequently mask the underlying social matters at stake. While posing as neutral in terms of race, gender, and class issues, judicial reasoning of this sort is clearly none of the above.

112. For a detailed description of William Grayson's life and career, see “W. Grayson, K.C. Is Honored by Law Society,” Regina Morning Leader, 3 October 1924 at 3; Siggins, Revenge of the Land, 107–19, 143–46, 290.

113. Quong Wing, S.A.B., “Deposition of W.P. Johnson & Others,” Moose Jaw Police Magistrate's Court, 27 May 1912, at 1–3.

114. For details of Craig's biography, see “Moose Jaw Lawyer Succumbs,” Regina Leader Post, 26 November 1962 at 5; Hawkes, The Story of Saskatchewan and Its People, vol. 3, 1607–8. See also reference to his appointment as chair of the workmen's compensation board, “Local C.M.A. Told of New Measure,” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, 2 April 1930 at 7. Craig later represented various members of Moose Jaw's Chinese community in prosecutions for gambling. See Rex v. Charlie Yee, [1917] 11 W.W.R. 1307; (1917) 27 C.C.C. 441; 10 Sask. L.R. 62 (Sask. S.C.), in which the accused was discharged after the court concluded that there was no evidence that he profited from the gambling, being merely the proprietor of the store in which the gambling occasionally took place. See also Rex v. Do Ling and Others (1917), 27 C.C.C. 446 (Sask. S.C.), in which Yip Jam, Yip Sam, and Yip Waw were convicted of keeping a common gaming house, while the conviction against Do Ling was quashed for lack of evidence.

115. “More Alleged Gambling Cases,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 11 May 1912 at 1 recounts this exchange:

Mr. Craig in cross-examination: What's the house on High street west used for?

Chief: Oh there's a chop suey place upstairs, a merchant down stairs, a place to sleep at the back. All kinds of things go on there. The money was not in one pile. The Chinese try to rush everything off the table, and the money was thrown all over the place.

Mr. Craig: Exactly. These Chinamen know you always take all the money in sight, don't they?

116. Quong Wing, S.A.B., “Deposition,” 2–3.

117. Ibid., 5–6. For the allegations against De Rossiter, made after a string of unsolved burglaries in 1913, see Knight, All the Moose … All the Jaw, 60–62; “Startling Evidence,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 28 August 1913 at 7.

118. Quong Wing, S.A.B., “Deposition,” at 11–12.

119. Ibid., 6–7.

120. “City and District,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 7 July 1910 at 8; “Celestials Who Are Now Citizens of Earthly Moose Jaw,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 6 September 1913 at 7; Siggins, Revenge of the Land, 289. Henderson's Moose Jaw City Directory, 1911 shows “Yip, Foo” as the proprietor of the New England Restaurant at 38 River East, although presumably 38 River “West” was meant, since the same name is recorded as living at Yip Foo Block, 38 River West.

121. The details of the mortgage are noted in Siggins, Revenge of the Land, 290.

122. Quong Wing, S.A.B., “Deposition,” 8. Whether motivated by guilt at his testimony or by his own business interests, Yip Foo later assisted Quong Wing to post a bond of $500 to permit an appeal of the trial ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada. See Quong Wing, S.A.B., “Bonds and Affidavits of Quong Wing, Chan Don and Yip Foo,” 12 August 1913, Supreme Court of Canada.

123. Quong Wing, S.A.B., “Deposition,” 8–9.

124. See, for example, the Crown's difficulty in identifying “whiteness” in the 1912 prosecution of Yoshi in Saskatoon (discussed in more detail below). Under the Canadian Indian Act the prosecutions for supplying intoxicants to aboriginal people presented a venue for similar debate about aboriginal racial identity, with speculations about blood lines, language, dress, associations, habits, modes of life, and surroundings. For some examples, see Regina v. Howson (1894), 1 Terr. L.R. 492 (NWT Sup. Ct.); The Queen v. Mellon (1900), 5 T.L.R. 301 (NWT Sup. Ct.); Rex v. Hughes (1906), 12 B.C.R. 290 (BC Co. Ct.); The King v. Picard (1908), 14 C.C.C. 33 (Alta. Dist. Ct.); Rex v. Verdi (1914), 23 C.C.C. 47 (N.S. Co. Ct.).

By contrast, the racial identity legal defense does not appear to have been raised in the Chinese-American context. See Chan, Sucheng, ed., Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America, 1882–1943 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991)Google Scholar, who documents the many skillful legal challenges raised by Chinese-Americans as they contested discriminatory local, city, and state regulations.

125. See the discussion in Fryer, Peter, Black People in the British Empire: An Introduction (London: Pluto Press, 1988), 61–62.Google Scholar

126. Ibid., 61–62, citing Montagu, M. F. Ashley, Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942).Google Scholar See also Bolaria, B. Singh and Li, Peter S., Racial Oppression in Canada, 2d ed. (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1988), 13–25Google Scholar; Davis, F. James, Who Is Black? One Nation's Definition (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

127. Anderson, Vancouver's Chinatown, 3–5, 14—18.

128. Other factors have included acceptance in the community, self-identification, and purchase. In colonial Spanish America, for example, certificates of whiteness, known as de gracias al cicar, could be purchased from the Crown based on money and merit or good works. During the 1970s, in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, race was defined on the basis of political conduct. “Black” was defined by the Black Consciousness Movement, led by Steven Biko, to mean “all those people who by law or tradition have been politically, socially, or economically exploited as a group in South African society and who identify themselves as a unit in the struggle for liberation.” The latter definition recognizes the experience of oppression and active resistance to such subordination as the principal criterion. See Harris, Cheryl I., “Whiteness as Property,” Harvard Law Review 106 (1993): 1763CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who cites Ziyad Motala, “The Re-definition of ‘Black’ in the South African Liberation Struggle” (unpublished manuscript); James Lindgren, paper presented at the annual conference of the American Society of Legal History, Memphis, Tennessee, October 1993; Fryer, Black People, 61–72; Anderson, Alan B. and Frideres, James S., Ethnicity in Canada: Theoretical Perspectives (Toronto: Butterworths, 1981), 15–17Google Scholar; Stepan, Nancy, The Idea of Race in Science—Great Britain 1800–1960 (London: Macmillan, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; van den Berkghe, Pierre L., Race and Racism: A Comparative Perspective (New York: John Wiley, 1978)Google Scholar, 2d ed; Bolt, Christine, Victorian Attitudes to Race (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971)Google Scholar; Zubaida, Sami, ed., Race and Racialism (London: Tavistock Publications, 1970).Google Scholar

129. One of the clearest statements of this is by Wahneema Lubiano, “Black Ladies, Welfare Queens, and State Minstrels: Ideological War by Narrative Means,” in Morrison, ed. Raceing Justice: “[B]y ‘blackness,’ I mean conscious awareness by an individual of being part of a group—Negroes, black Americans, Afro- or African Americans—with a particular place in history and a political relationship to other groups within the geopolitical site of the United States. Blackness is also a way of referring to the existence, as a socially constructed fact, of that group …. While I make no claims about racial biology, given the political reality of twentieth-century U.S. life and more than three hundred years of history, here I refer to the idea of ‘blackness’ as a social fact if not a biological reality” (330, 345).

130. Kobayashi, Audrey, “Viewpoint: A Geographical Perspective on Racism and the Law,” Canadian Law and Society Bulletin 11 (Spring 1991): 4–6Google Scholar; Kobayashi, , “Racism and Law in Canada: A Geographical Perspective,” Urban Geography 11, no. 5 (1990): 447–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See Anderson and Frideres, Ethnicity in Canada, who point out that in the seventeenth century it was thought that there were four races: Lapps, Asiatics, Africans, and inhabitants of Europe and certain parts of Asia. In the eighteenth century, six were isolated: the Laplander or Polar race, Tatar or Mongolian race, Southern Asiatic race, European race, Ethiopian race, and American race (15). On the question of Jews as a distinct “race,” see van den Berghe, Race and Racism, 24; and Montague, Man's Most Dangerous Myth, 353–77. Roediger, David R., The Wages of Whiteness (London: Verso, 1991)Google Scholar, describes how the Irish were viewed as a colored or “dark” race in the mid-nineteenth-century United States (133–34). See also Curtis, Liz, Nothing but the Same Old Story: The Roots of Anti-Irish Racism (London: Information on Ireland, 1984)Google Scholar, who notes that the Celts have been labeled as racially distinct from Anglo-Saxons and the British working classes have been considered a “race apart” from the British upper classes (55).

131. For the “nigger” reference, see Fryer, Black People, 53, citing Cotton, H. J. S., New India or India in Transition (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1885), 41, 42, 47.Google Scholar The British imperialist Cecil Rhodes also thought Africans and Asians shared the same skin pigmentation, referring to “the dark-skinned myriads of Africa and Asia.” See Fryer, Black People, 68, citing Stead, W. T., ed., The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes …, (Review of Reviews Office, 1902), 140.Google Scholar For an “Oriental” reference, see Vancouver Sun, 18 and 19 June 1907, as quoted in Ferguson, Ted, A White Man's Country: An Exercise in Canadian Prejudice (Toronto: Doubleday Canada Ltd., 1975)Google Scholar: “Right-thinking people know that the natives of Hindustan … should not be allowed in this country, except for circus purposes …. We do not think as Orientals do. That is why the East Indians and other Asiatic races and the white race will always miscomprehend each other” (46). See also Howay, British Columbia, who refers to Hindu immigrants from India as “Oriental” (266).

132. For references to the Japanese as “yellow,” see Scholefield, E. O. S. and Howay, F. W., British Columbia from the Earliest Times to the Present (Vancouver: S.J. Clark, 1914), vol. 2, 576Google Scholar, and Howay, British Columbia, who referred to the Japanese as “wily little yellow men” (265). The Victoria Colonist, 2 May 1900, distinguished between the “yellow” and “brown hordes” of China and Japan, respectively. The Vancouver Province, 9 September 1907, described the Japanese as “little brown men” in coverage of the Vancouver race riot. See Ferguson, White Man's Country, 5. See also Leyton-Brown, “Discriminatory Legislation,” 253–72, who suggests that the “brown” description, used in Saskatchewan in the early twentieth century, was viewed as less derogatory than the “yellow” color used to refer to Chinese-Canadians. He speculates that this reflected a Canadian appreciation of Japanese military might and the perception that, due to their fewer numbers, Japanese-Canadians posed less threat to the white community.

133. Testimony of Richard Marpole, Vancouver, the general superintendent of the Pacific Division of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Report of the Royal Commission on Chinese and Japanese Immigration (1902), 194.

134. John Hawkes, the provincial legislative librarian and self acclaimed “pro-foreigner,” makes this statement in Hawkes, Saskatchewan, vol. 2, 681; see also ibid., 690.

135. McLaren, Angus, Our Own Master Race: Eugenics in Canada, 1885–1945 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1990), 25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarWalker, James W. St. G., “‘Race’ Policy in Canada: A Retrospective,” in Dwivedi, O. P. et al., eds., Canada 2000: Race Relations and Public Policy (Guelph: University of Guelph, 1989)Google Scholar notes that historically, in Canada, a “racial policy” was more likely to refer to the English-French duality than to the situation faced by Canadians of Asian or African origin (14). For references to the anti-Semitism as “racial,” see Frager, Ruth A., “Class, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Eaton Strikes of 1912 and 1934,” in Iacovetta, and Valverde, , eds., Gender Conflicts, 209.Google Scholar For a more modem example of the same difficulty with terminology, see Women's Book Committee, Jin Guo: Voices of Chinese Canadian Women, where Tarn Goosen explains: “I always felt sympathetic to the identity problems of Canadian-born Chinese. I remember being very upset when I first came here and I went to a party. Somebody—he was white—asked me where I was from. When I said, ‘Hong Kong,’ he replied, ‘You're not Chinese!’ I got mad and confronted this person. ‘What do you mean, only Chinese from Communist China are true Chinese?’ You can extend the question further. Is a Chinese born here even less Chinese? Are Hong Kong Chinese less Chinese than those from Taiwan? This whole business about Chineseness is very silly. How do you define it?” (171)

136. See, for example, the decision of Judge Schroeder in Re Noble and Wolf, [1948] 4 D. L.R. 123, O.W.N. 546 (Ont. High Ct.), where he considered a racially restrictive covenant barring the owner of a summer resort property on Lake Huron from selling to “any person of the Jewish, Hebrew, Semitic, Negro or coloured race or blood.” Holding that such a covenant was not void for uncertainty, Schroeder noted that “of course the matter will have to be dealt with in a broad common-sense way …. [Q]uestions are directed to him as to his family history and ancestry; evidence may also be available from friends, neighbours, acquaintances or relatives of the person whose racial origin is the subject of investigation. Can one say that this is a question which, dealt with in that manner, cannot be determined? I am inclined to the view that such a contention is not tenable.” Earlier in the decision, Schroeder quoted from a text on ethnology to the effect that Semitic stock could be divided into three groups: 1) Arabian, 2) Abyssinian, 3) Chaldaean … including Syrians, Israelites, Samaritans, Babylonians and Jews.

For similar “common-sense” conclusions, see the ruling of William Thomas Henderson in Re Noble and Wolf, [1949] O.R. 503 (Ont. C.A.): “It is common knowledge that the people who inhabit Canada are divided into races or are described as members of one or other particular race. … ‘A person of Jewish blood’ is a phrase thoroughly understood ….” See also the ruling of Frederick Drummond Hogg in the same case: “If the language … of the covenant is regarded in its ordinary and popular sense, this clause cannot be said to be void for uncertainty because the exact degree of race or blood in any person … cannot be ascertained.” The Ontario Court of Appeal ruling was reversed in Noble and Wolfs. Alley et al. [1951] 92 S.C.R. 64, 1 D.L.R. 321 (S.C.C.).

137. See “An Act Respecting Evidence and Witnesses,” R.S.B.C. 1911, c.78, s. 23, which stated: “Whenever it becomes necessary to prove the nationality or race of any person in any action, cause, proceeding, or matter before any Court, Judge, Stipendiary Magistrate, Police Magistrate, or one or more Justices of the Peace, the Judge, Jury, Stipendiary Magistrate, Police Magistrate, or Justice of the Peace may infer as a fact the nationality or race of the person in question from the appearance of such person.” First enacted in 1903–4, c 18, s.3, the legislation continued in force as R.S.B.C. 1924, c.82; R.S.B.C. 1936, c.90, s.23; and R.S.B.C. 1948, c.113, s.23.

138. Quong Wing, S.A.B., “Stated Case in the Supreme Court of Saskatchewan en Banc,” 2 July 1912, 14–15. Magistrate Dunn simply held as a fact that “the accused Quong Wing was born in China of Chinese parents” (“Affidavit of Wellington B. Willoughby,” 13 August 1913, 1).

139. “Chinese Make Case a Test,” Moose Jaw Evening News, 28 May 1912. Racist language such as this was not uncommon. See, for example, “War on Opium—Chink Receives Term in Prison,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 1 October 1910 at 8; “Chinks Lose Car of Goods,” Regina Morning Leader, 7 April 1911 at 12; “Montreal Police Raid Chinatown—Twenty Chink Gamblers Arrested,” Regina Daily Province, 24 September 1912 at 7; “Chink Follows Pick-Pocket and Gets Back $1,400 Wallet,” Regina Evening Province, 17 September 1916 at 3; “Distributes Opium through West Canada—Chink Arrested at Moose Jaw,” Regina Daily Province, 17 October 1912 at 10; “Chinamen in Rush Lake Wreck—Three Coaches Derailed and Fifteen of the Chinks Injured,” Regina Daily Province, 20 November 1912 at 4.

The misspelling of Quong Wing's name appears to be less accidental than a result of studied indifference. Canadian reporters often ridiculed Chinese names in their articles. See, for example, “22 Chinamen Arrested in a Gambling Den,” Regina Evening Province, 25 September 1916 at 7: “The names given by the men to the station sergeant were a source of much merriment to the bystanders. Ham Ung, for instance, was immediately nicknamed ‘Ham And;’ Oh Mah was accused of wanting his mama, and I Go, Mee Soon, Wee Love were good for a laugh apiece.”

140. Quong Wing, S.A.B., “Deposition,” 10.

141. Ibid., 12.

142. Ibid., 9.

143. Ibid., 2 (capitalization found in the original). The only additional ascription came from Nellie Lane, who was asked by prosecutor Grayson: “Were there any other White women in that establishment?” Her answer was: “Yes, Mabel Hopham” (10).

144. No legal records of this prosecution (against a Japanese employer, Mr. Yoshi, in Saskatoon in 1912) appear to survive, but various press accounts provide substantial details of the proceeding. Noting that the statute contained no definition of “white woman,” the crown attorney endeavored to supply one, arguing that the court should “give these words the meaning which is commonly applied to them; that is to say the females of any of the civilized European nations.” In early twentieth-century Saskatchewan, residents of English or Scottish origin would have been hard-pressed to identify racially with Russian or German immigrants in matters of employment or social interaction. Saskatchewan judges felt free to express overtly derogatory comments about immigrants from central Europe. See, for example, Judge Bigelow's statements in Saskatoon that “almost all the time of the criminal courts was taken up with people from Central Europe,” adding that such individuals commonly “perjured themselves” in court: “Judge Bigelow Voices Criticism in Court,” Regina Leader, 23 October 1924, 3. What was at stake in the Yoshi trial was whether the latter should be “racialized” as “white” in distinction to Asian immigrants in the context of the “white women's labour law.” Professing great confusion, Saskatoon police magistrate Brown initially reserved on the issue. A week later, he issued a decision holding the women to be white, noting that although “he did not think it necessary to go into the classification of the white race,” he was of the view, by way of “illustration,” that “Germans and Russians were members of Caucasian race.” For further discussion of this trial, see Backhouse, “White Female Help and Chinese-Canadian Employers.” See also Frankenberg, Ruth, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).Google Scholar

The issue of gender was almost completely invisible in the testimony here. No questions were asked of Hopham or Lane about their gender, “femaleness” being even more a matter of “common sense” ascription than Chinese or white racial identity. Our contemporary fascination with ambiguities of gender and sexuality, and our growing recognition that sexual identification is a complex matter that can involve chromosomal, anatomical, genital, and hormonal factors, was evidently far from the understandings of the individuals involved in this trial. For some historical discussion of sexual differentiation, see Epstein, Julia and Straub, Kristina, eds., Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity (New York: Routledge, 1991).Google Scholar

145. Valverde, The Age of Light, Soap and Water, 109–13.

146. See, for example, reference to “Indians” in “An Act Respecting Elections of Members of the Legislative Assembly,” R.S.O. 1914, c.8, s.ll and 22; reference to “colored people” in “An Act Respecting Separate Schools,” R.S.O. 1914, c.270; reference to “Chinese,” “Japanese,” and “Hindu” in “Provincial Elections Act Amendment Act” S.B.C. 1907, c. 16, s.3.

147. Quong Sing, S. A.B., Police Magistrate's Court, City of Moose Jaw, “Deposition of W. P. Johnson and Others,” 28 May 1912, at 3–6. Although the deposition is dated 28 May 1912, this appears to have been in error, since the subsequent documents on the file date the trial as taking place on 27 May 1912: see “Conviction,” “Stated Case for the Supreme Court of Saskatchewan en Banc,” 2 July 1912.

148. Quong Sing, S.A.B., “Certificate of Naturalization of Quon Sing,” 6 December 1901.

149. Quong Sing, S.A.B., “Deposition,” 8–9.

150. Ibid., 4. Grayson had stated: “You are English of course.” Annie Hartman had replied: “Yes.”

151. Ibid., 8. Magistrate Dunn continued to view the racial identity of the female employees as an artificial issue, as can be seen from the “stated case” that he prepared for the appeal to the Supreme Court of Saskatchewan. His written judgment noted that Quong Wing and Quong Sing were naturalized British subjects, “born in China of Chinese parents,” whose employment of Nellie Lane, Mabel Hopham, and Annie Hartman contravened the 1912 Saskatchewan law. Almost as an afterthought, Dunn added a handwritten addendum to the decision stipulating that the three female employees were “white women” (Quong Wing and Quong Sing, S.A.B., “Decision of Police Magistrate W.F. Dunn,” 9 November 1912).

Wellington Bartley Willoughby, K.C., the senior partner from Netson Craig's firm who argued the appeal, initially intended to raise the matter. His appeal documents questioned “whether any evidence was submitted to prove that Mabel Hopham and Nellie Lane are white women” and “whether any evidence was submitted to prove that Annie Hartman was a white woman.” The archival documents show that the former (typewritten) question was scratched out by pen and that the latter argument was eventually abandoned, with the constitutional issues serving as the sole basis of argument. See Quong Wing and Quong Sing, S.A.B., “Decision of Police Magistrate W.F. Dunn and Stated Case,” 9 November 1912. Presumably Willoughby had concluded that, in the context of prevailing racial beliefs, the argument was no more likely to be successful on appeal than at trial.

152. See Ware, Beyond the Pale, who argues that “the construction of white femininity can play a pivotal role in negotiating and maintaining concepts of racial difference” (4).

153. Quong Wing, S.A.B., “Deposition,” 10–11. Even prosecutor Grayson felt obliged to interject: “I am not disputing that, I know he is a very fine gentleman who pays his way” (10).

154. Ibid., 1–8.

155. In so doing, the statute offered a stark contrast with the immigration law, which permitted Chinese “merchants” to escape many of the rigors of the discriminatory admission requirements See supra, note 19.

156. Similar sentiments were voiced by Rev. W. D. Noyes, the pastor of the Eastern Canadian Chinese Mission in Toronto, who took issue with the law in a letter to Chatelaine in 1928: “In Toronto we are told by representative women who work in Chinese cafes, that the hours are short, the work is light, the pay is good and their employers are courteous and kind. They feel no need of protection and resent interference with their liberty of action” (Wilson, “A Pound of Prevention,” 12).

157. See Strong-Boag, The Parliament of Women, who remarks that the National Council of Women promoted this view (378). In 1909, when the matrons of Victoria, British Columbia, learned that some Chinese merchants had employed white, female high school students to teach English to their children in their homes, the Local Council of Women petitioned the city council to pass bylaws to prohibit “this dangerous element of Chinatown's educational methods.” See Chuenyan Lai, Chinatowns, 54, citing the Victoria Colonist, 30 July 1909. English-language tutoring was often necessary for Chinese children to obtain admission to Victoria public schools. For late nineteenth-century American references to fears that Chinese men might debauch their white female Sunday School teachers, see Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant, 185. See also Rex v. Christakos, [1945] 3 W.W.R. 119 (Man. K.B.), where the court makes reference to a (white) waitress's “association with a Chinaman” as inherently disreputable character evidence (121, 125).

158. Quoted in Wilson, “A Pound of Prevention,” 13.

159. As one Alberta historian has claimed, “It did a woman no good to be seen hanging about the Chinese restaurant …. The wives of respectable farmers waited out their tedious waits for their husbands in the general store, not at the cafe.” Chinatowns in western Canada became synonymous with “red light districts,” causing many white women to avoid the area (Gilhead, Heather, The Maple Leaf for Quite a While [London, 1967], 18Google Scholar, quoted in Palmer, Patterns of Prejudice, 84).

160. Baureiss, “The Chinese Community in Calgary,” 8; Baureiss, “Discrimination and Response,” 251. See also Greenhow v. Wesley (1910), 16 O.W.R. 585, a case in which a white woman from Walkerton, Ontario, sued a newspaper for libel over allegations that she had been “a constant visitor” at Harry Wong's Chinese Laundry, was on “intimate terms” with him, and that her visits became “odorous.”

To their chagrin, white women charged with vagrancy or prostitution could also find themselves chastised for associating with local Chinese men and slapped with stiff sentences if caught by police at night in Chinese company. See Joan Sangster, “‘Pardon Tales’ from Magistrate's Court: Women, Crime, and the Court in Peterborough County, 1920–1950,” Canadian Historical Review 74, no. 2 (1993): 182, citing the Peterborough Examiner, 10 June 1940, 15 June 1944.

161. See Anderson, Vancouver's Chinatown, for a discussion of similar protests by white waitresses in the 1930s when the authorities used similar legislation to attempt to terminate their employment in Chinese-owned establishments (159–63).

162. S.S. 1912, C.17, S.2.

163. Quong Wing, S.A.B., “Stated Case in the Supreme Court of Saskatchewan en Banc,” 2 July 1912, at 14; Quong Sing, S.A.B., “Conviction,” 27 May 1912, at 1. See reference to the nominal fine as related to the “test case” nature of the proceeding in “Chinese Make Case a Test,” Moose Jaw Evening News, 28 May 1912 at 1.

164. The Moose Jaw Evening News, in “Chinese Make Case a Test,” 28 May 1912 at 1, erroneously reported that costs had been awarded against Quong Sing.

165. The importance of the case to the Chinese-Canadian community was evidenced by the decision of a number of Chinese merchants to assist in the financing of the appeals. See “White Girls Cannot Work for Chinamen,” Swift Current Sun, 24 February 1914 at 9, which states, “The Chinese banded together to fight the Act. …”; “Chinese Resent Stigma Which the Decision Carries,” Saskatoon Phoenix, 25 February 1914; and Quong Wing, S.A.B., “Bonds and Affidavits of Quong Wing, Chan Don and Yip Foo,” 12 August 1913, Supreme Court of Canada.

166. Quong Wing and Quong Sing, S.A.B., “Judgments of Lamont, J., Brown, J., and Haultain, C.J.”; reported as Rex v. Quong Wing. John Henderson Lamont, J., announced that “all argument … as to the wisdom or unwisdom, the justice or injustice, of provincial legislation, or the fact that it discriminates against one person or set of persons and in favour of another person or set of persons is excluded from our consideration. The only matter for inquiry is as to the legislative competence of the Provincial Legislature to pass the Act impeached.” The majority upheld the statute as falling within the class of subjects designated as provincial matters under “property and civil rights in the province” and “local works and undertakings” and not impinging upon the federal powers pertaining to “naturalization and aliens.” Chief Justice Sir Frederick William Gordon Haultain dissented and found the statute ultra vires, noting: “The regulations which are here impeached are not really aimed at the regulation of restaurants, laundries, and other places of business and amusement, or of the employment of female labor, but are devised to deprive the Chinese, whether naturalized or not, of the ordinary rights of the inhabitants of Saskatchewan. The right to employ, the right to be employed, the right to own property and to own, manage or conduct any business without being subjected to unequal and discriminatory restrictions, are just as truly ordinary rights of the inhabitants of Saskatchewan as the right to work.”

The actual judgments and the reports of them reveal a great deal of confusion, most of which seems to have occurred when the two cases were combined on appeal. Lamont dealt solely with the Quong Wing facts and cited his decision as “Rex and Quong Wing.” Haultain dealt solely with the Quong Sing facts and cited his decision as “Rex and Quong Sing.” Brown, who made no factual references in his decision, was the only judge to claim to rule on both cases, citing his ruling as “Rex and Quong Wing and Quong Sing.” Lamont's decision was subsequently amended to encompass Quong Sing's case as well. The style of cause in Lamont's judgment is typed as “Rex and Quong Wing,” but there is a handwritten addendum adding “Quong Sing.” When the case appeared in the Western Weekly Reports, all reference to Quong Sing mysteriously disappeared, both in the citation and in the text, where he was subsumed under the identity of Quong Wing, now listed as the owner of both the restaurant and the rooming house, and the employer of all three women. The Western Weekly Reports incorrectly transcribed the name of the C.E.R. Restaurant as the “C.N.R. Restaurant,” while the Saskatchewan Law Reports, the Dominion Law Reports, and the Canadian Criminal Cases referred to it as the “C.P.R. Restaurant.” The Western Weekly Reports omitted any reference to Mr. Justice Henry William Newlands's presence on the bench or his concurring opinion.

167. Quong Sing seems to have withdrawn before the Supreme Court of Canada hearing, leaving Quong Wing's case to be considered alone. See Quong Wing v. The King (1914), 49 S.C.R. 440; [1914] 6 W.W.R. 270; (1914), 18 D.L.R. 121; 23 C.C.C. 113, Justice John Idington dissenting. Idington was the only judge who expressly declared the statute odious on racial grounds: “In truth, its evident purpose is to curtail or restrict the rights of Chinamen …. This legislation is but a piece of the product of the mode of thought that begot and maintained slavery; not so long ago fiercely claimed to be a laudable system of governing those incapable of governing themselves” (451–52, 455–57).

168. Quong Wing v. The King (1914), 49 S.C.R. 440 at 449.

169. Ibid., 463.

170. “An Act to Regulate the Chinese Population of British Columbia,” S.B.C. 1884, c.4. The graveyard reference adverted to the Chinese practice of sending home the bones of those of their countrymen who died in Canada, for burial in ancestral graveyards. For details of the practice, see Wright, Richard Thomas, In a Strange Land: A Pictorial Record of the Chinese in Canada, 1788–1923 (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1988), 38Google Scholar; Report of the Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration (1885), xl–xli, per Mr. J. A. Chapleau, Commissioner.

171. Henderson's Moose Jaw City Directory, 1912, 71–74, 495, as discussed above. Henderson's Moose Jaw City Directory, 1916, 489–90, and advertising pages, lists eighteen restaurants and three additional restaurants attached to hotels. Three restaurants are identified as “Chinese,” without further particulars regarding the proprietor or manager. The three Chinese proprietors listed by name are Gin Quong, Wah Sing, and Yip Foo. A seventh Asian proprietor, N. Nakane, continues to be listed as the only Japanese owner of a Moose Jaw restaurant.

172. The records are confusing. Henderson's Moose Jaw City Directory, 1916 notes only that the C.E.R. Restaurant and the Royal Restaurant were owned by “Chinese” (211, 371). Neither Quong Wing or Quong Sing appears in the individual alphabetical entries. Henderson's Moose Jaw City Directory, 1917 lists Quong Sing as the manager of the Royal Restaurant (324), but the C.E.R. Restaurant is only described as “Chinese” (163). Henderson's Moose Jaw City Directory, 1918 lists the C.E.R. Restaurant as “Chinese” (156) but contains no information about the management of the Royal Restaurant (317). There are no alphabetical listings for Quong Wing or Quong Sing. Similarly confusing is the column “City and District,” Moose Jaw Evening Times, 7 February 1914, noting that “Quong Chuck and Quong Lung were arrested yesterday afternoon for unlawfully being the landlords, lessors or agents, and having control of the Royal Restaurant Block, and knowingly permitting such premises to be used for the purposes of a disorderly house.” The directories during these years contain no entries for any of the three white female waitresses involved in the trials.

173. “An Act to Prevent the Employment of Female Labour in Certain Capacities,” S.S. 1918–19, C.85. The “race-neutral” approach had been recommended by Chief Justice Haultain in his dissenting opinion in the Quong Wing Saskatchewan Supreme Court decision: “If this provincial act prohibited the employment of white female labor by any person in certain specified businesses, it might well be considered within the powers of the provincial legislature ….” (Rex v. Quong Wing [1913], 4 W.W.R. 1135 (Sask. Supreme Ct.), per Haultain, C.J. at 1137). See Backhouse, “White Female Help and Chinese-Canadian Employers,” for a more detailed analysis of the enforcement of this amended legislation.

174. “Municipalities Will Decide on Employment,” Regina Leader, 18 January 1919.

175. See “An Act Respecting the Employment of Female Labour,” S.S. 1925–26, c.53, s.3, 4; “An Act Respecting the Employment of Female Labour,” R.S.S. 1930, c.257; “An Act Respecting the Employment of Female Labour,” R.S.S. 1940, c.309; R.S.S. 1953, c.269. The act was not repealed until passage of the “Labour Standards Act, 1969,” S.S. 1969, c.24, s.73. See also “An Act to Protect Certain Civil Rights,” S.S. 1947, c.35, as amended by “An Act to Amend the Saskatchewan Bill of Rights Act, 1947,” S.S. 1949, c.29, which may have offered an impediment to the continuation of a racially based application of the labor statute.