As labourers, women, and babies arrived the white population got nervous. Sentiments went from praising the Sikhs as hard working, decent men, to describing them as undesirable and dirty, among other things. As anti-Asian sentiment rose, so did restrictions and excuses to limit immigrant from Asian countries. The Asiatic Exclusion League formed in 1907 to “keep Oriental immigrants out of British Columbia.” This legislation resulted in race riots in Vancouver’s China town, when upwards of 8000 whites stormed the neighbourhood damaging property and injuring people.
Added to this was the Continuous Journey Regulation of 1908 which meant that immigrants were required to arrive by a single journey, without stops, from their country of origin to Canada. In fact, the CPR ships did make the journey continuously, but the Canadian government stopped this by banning ticket sales for such a trip. This eventually led to the Komagata Maru incident of 1924.
Image: Damage to property of Japanese residents (Nishimura Masuya, Grocer, at 130 Powell Rd., S. Vancouver, 1907.) Library and Archives of Canada, item #3363536.
Fraser Mills got in on the act too. In 1905 the mill proposed that “no Mongolian labour would be hired,” but in reality they needed the manpower. Anti-Asian sentiment prompted the mill to send a Roman Catholic priest to Quebec to hire workers for the mill that would supplant the Sikh workers. Point “A” on the agreement between the Roman Catholic Archdiocese and Fraser Mills, in 1909, proposes “To substitute, as much as possible, good, honest, French Canadians for Oriental Labour.” They came by the hundreds and established the Maillardville community.
The number of Sikhs in Canada, most of whom were in British Columbia, went from around 5000 to 2000 during this time, and for those 2000, jobs were hard to find and easily lost to white workers. The government even tried to relocate Sikhs to Honduras as cheap labour for sugar plantations under the British Honduras Scheme, but reports from Sham Singh and Nagar Singh, who went to see the conditions first-hand, led to rejection of the scheme.
Image: This image of the deck of the Komagata Maru gives an idea of what it would have been like, stuck on the ship with limited food and water and crowded conditions. Some of the passengers had been on the entire voyage, starting on May 4, and finally arriving back at Calcutta on September 27. Vancouver Public Library, crowded deck of Komagata Maru, 1914, accession #6232. Public domain.