Download Free Righting Canadas Wrongs Italian Canadian Internment In The Second World War Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Righting Canadas Wrongs Italian Canadian Internment In The Second World War and write the review.

Italians came to Canada to seek a better life. From the 1870s to the 1920s they arrived in large numbers and found work mainly in mining, railway building, forestry, construction, and farming. As time passed, many used their skills to set up successful small businesses, often in Little Italy districts in cities like Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, and Winnipeg. Many struggled with the language and culture in Canada, but their children became part of the Canadian mix. When Canada declared war on Italy on June 10, 1940, the government used the War Measures Act to label all Italian citizens over the age of eighteen as enemy aliens. Those who had received Canadian citizenship after 1922 were also deemed enemy aliens. Immediately, the RCMP began making arrests. Men, young and old, and a few women were taken from their homes, offices, or social clubs without warning. In all, about 700 were imprisoned in internment camps, mainly in Ontario and New Brunswick. The impact of this internment was felt immediately by families who lost husbands and fathers, but the effects would live on for decades. Eventually, pressure from the Italian Canadian community led Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to issue an apology for the internment and to admit that it was wrong. Using historical photographs, paintings, documents, and first-person narratives, this book offers a full account of this little-known episode in Canadian history.
During the Second World War, over 20,000 Japanese Canadians had their civil rights, homes, possessions, and freedom taken away. This visual-packed book tells the story.
Beginning in the 18th century, Black men and women arrived from the U.S. and settled in various parts of Nova Scotia. In the 1800s, a small Black community had developed just north of Halifax on the shores of the Bedford Basin. The community became known as Africville and grew to about 400 people. Its residents fished, farmed, operated small retail stores and found work in the city. Jobs for Black people were hard to find, with many occupations blocked by racist practices. Women often worked as domestics and many men were train porters. A school and a church were the community’s key institutions. The City of Halifax located a number of undesirable industries in Africville but refused residents’ demands for basic services such as running water, sewage disposal, paved roads, street lights, a cemetery, public transit, garbage collection and adequate police protection. City planners developed urban renewal plans and city politicians agreed to demolish the community. Residents strongly opposed relocation, but city officials ignored their protests and began to seize and bulldoze the homes. In 1967, the church was demolished — in the middle of the night. This was a blow that signaled the end of Africville. In the 1970s, some community members organized and began working for an apology and compensation. In 2010, Halifax’s mayor made a public apology for the community’s suffering and mistreatment. Some former residents accepted this; others continued to campaign for restitution. This new edition documents the continued fight for compensation by community members and their descendants. The spirit and resilience of Africville lives on in new generations of African Nova Scotians.
A ground-breaking account of multiple forced relocations by the Canadian government of Inuit communities and individuals. All have been the subject of apologies, but are little known beyond the Arctic. The Inuit community has proven resilient to many attempts at assimilation, relocation and evacuation to the south. In a highly visual and appealing format for young readers, this book explores the many forced relocation of Inuit families and communities in the Canadian Arctic from the 1950s to the 1990s. Governments promoted and forced relocation based on misinformation and racist attitudes. These actions changed Inuit lives forever. This book documents the Inuit experience and the resilience and strength they displayed in the face of these measures. Years afterwards, there have been multiple apologies by the Canadian government for its actions, and some measure of restitution for the harms caused. Included in the book are accounts of a community forced to move to the High Arctic where they found themselves with little food and almost no shelter, of children suddenly taken away from their families and communities to be transported to hospitals for treatment for tuberculosis, and of the notorious slaughter by RCMP officers of hundreds of sled dogs in Arctic settlements. Though apologies have been made, Inuit in northern Canada still face conditions of inadequate housing, schools that fail to teach their language, and epidemics of infectious diseases like TB. Yet still, the Inuit have achieved a measure of self-government, control over resource development, while they enrich cultural life through music, film, art and literature. This book enables readers to understand the colonialism and racism that remain embedded in Canadian society today, and the successful resistance of Inuit to assimilation and loss of cultural identity. Like other volumes in the Righting Canada’s Wrongs series, this book uses a variety of visuals, first-person accounts, short texts and extracts from documents to appeal to a wide range of young readers.
Canada's residential school system for aboriginal young people is now recognized as a grievous historic wrong committed against First Nations, Metis, and Inuit peoples. This book documents this subject in a format that will give all young people access to this painful part of Canadian history. In 1857, the Gradual Civilization Act was passed by the Legislature of the Province of Canada with the aim of assimilating First Nations people. In 1879, Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald commissioned the "Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds." This report led to native residential schools across Canada. First Nations and Inuit children aged seven to fifteen years old were taken from their families, sometimes by force, and sent to residential schools where they were made to abandon their culture. They were dressed in uniforms, their hair was cut, they were forbidden to speak their native language, and they were often subjected to physical and psychological abuse. The schools were run by the churches and funded by the federal government. About 150,000 aboriginal children went to 130 residential schools across Canada. The last federally funded residential school closed in 1996 in Saskatchewan. The horrors that many children endured at residential schools did not go away. It took decades for people to speak out, but with the support of the Assembly of First Nations and Inuit organizations, former residential school students took the federal government and the churches to court. Their cases led to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, the largest class-action settlement in Canadian history. In 2008, Prime Minister Harper formally apologized to former native residential school students for the atrocities they suffered and the role the government played in setting up the school system. The agreement included the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which has since worked to document this experience and toward reconciliation. Through historical photographs, documents, and first-person narratives from First Nations, Inuit, and Metis people who survived residential schools, this book offers an account of the injustice of this period in Canadian history. It documents how this official racism was confronted and finally acknowledged.
Prior to the Second World War, Canada's Jewish community was well established in many cities, including Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg. As war grew closer, anti-Semitism across Europe was increasing. Hitler's Nazis were spreading hatred and violence towards Jews across Germany. At first, Jews were allowed to leave Germany and thousands escaped to save themselves and their families. Then countries around the world closed their doors to Jewish refugees. In 1939, the MS St. Louis sailed for Cuba with nearly a thousand Jewish men, women, and children looking for safety. They were turned away by Cuba, then the US. The ship sailed on to Canada. Despite pleas from the Canadian Jewish community, the government refused to allow the passengers to land in Canada. After war broke out, Canada continued to refuse Jewish refugees entry. When Britain forced Canada to take some refugees in, Canada imprisoned them in internment camps — alongside Nazis. Some of these Jewish refugees were only teenagers. Three years after the war ended and after the horrors of the Holocaust were universally known, Canada finally changed immigration policies and begin to accept Jews equally with other immigrants. Canada's long history of anti-Semitic immigration policies was deemed shameful. In November 2018, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made an official apology to the Jewish community for Canada's refusal to accept the passengers of the MS St. Louis, as well as for its historical anti-Semitic policies.
Enemies Within is the first study of its kind to examine not only the formulation and uneven implementation of internment policy, but the social and gender history of internment. It brings together national and international perspectives.
The community of Africville was founded in the late 1800s when African Nova Scotians built homes on the Bedford Basin on the northern edge of Halifax. Africville grew to include a church, a school, and small businesses. At its peak, about 400 people lived there. The community was lively and vibrant, with a strong sense of culture and tradition. But the community had its problems. Racist attitudes prevented people from getting well-paying jobs in the city and the City of Halifax refused residents basic services such as running water, sewage disposal, and garbage collection. In the 1960s, in the name of urban renewal, the City of Halifax decided to demolish Africville, relocate its residents and use the land for industrial development. Residents strongly opposed this move, but their homes were bulldozed, and many had to move into public housing projects in other parts of the city. After years of pressure from former members of the community and their descendants, the City of Halifax finally apologized for the destruction of Africville and offered some compensation. A replica of the church was built on the site. But former residents and their descendents were refused compensation beyond what little was paid in the 1960s. Through historical photographs, documents, and first-person narratives, this book tells the story of Africville. It documents how the city destroyed Africville and much later apologized for it — and how the spirit of the community lives on.
The first Chinese immigrants arrived in Canada in the mid-1800s searching for gold and a better life. They found jobs in forestry, mining, and other resource industries. But life in Canada was difficult and the immigrants had to face racism and cultural barriers. Thousands were recruited to work building the Canadian Pacific Railway. Once the railway was finished, Canadian governments and many Canadians wanted the Chinese to go away. The government took measures to stop immigration from China to Canada. Starting in 1885, the government imposed a Head Tax with the goal of stopping immigration from China. In 1923 a ban was imposed that lasted to 1947. Despite this hostility and racism, Chinese-Canadian citizens built lives for themselves and persisted in protesting official discrimination. In June 2006, Prime Minister Harper apologized to Chinese Canadians for the former racist policies of the Canadian government. Through historical photographs, documents, and first-person narratives from Chinese Canadians who experienced the Head Tax or who were children of Head Tax payers, this book offers a full account of the injustice of this period in Canadian history. It documents how this official racism was confronted and finally acknowledged.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER FINALIST for the 2021 Ottawa Book Awards A masterful telling of the way World War Two has been remembered, forgotten, and remade by Canada over seventy-five years. The Second World War shaped modern Canada. It led to the country's emergence as a middle power on the world stage; the rise of the welfare state; industrialization, urbanization, and population growth. After the war, Canada increasingly turned toward the United States in matters of trade, security, and popular culture, which then sparked a desire to strengthen Canadian nationalism from the threat of American hegemony. The Fight for History examines how Canadians framed and reframed the war experience over time. Just as the importance of the battle of Vimy Ridge to Canadians rose, fell, and rose again over a 100-year period, the meaning of Canada's Second World War followed a similar pattern. But the Second World War's relevance to Canada led to conflict between veterans and others in society--more so than in the previous war--as well as a more rapid diminishment of its significance. By the end of the 20th century, Canada's experiences in the war were largely framed as a series of disasters. Canadians seemed to want to talk only of the defeats at Hong Kong and Dieppe or the racially driven policy of the forced relocation of Japanese-Canadians. In the history books and media, there was little discussion of Canada's crucial role in the Battle of the Atlantic, the success of its armies in Italy and other parts of Europe, or the massive contribution of war materials made on the home front. No other victorious nation underwent this bizarre reframing of the war, remaking victories into defeats. The Fight for History is about the efforts to restore a more balanced portrait of Canada's contribution in the global conflict. This is the story of how Canada has talked about the war in the past, how we tried to bury it, and how it was restored. This is the history of a constellation of changing ideas, with many historical twists and turns, and a series of fascinating actors and events.