Apologies are easy, but if they are to mean anything, they must be accompanied by change. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau鈥檚 apology in Parliament for the Komagata Maru incident should help ease some of the pain that lingers a century after a shipload of Indian nationals were turned back from Canada鈥檚 shores. It was a disgraceful, ugly incident.
On May 22, 1914, a Japanese ship called the Komagata Maru arrived at the William Head quarantine station west of Victoria, where the 376 passengers were subjected to routine medical tests, given clean bills of health and allowed to proceed to 91原创.
Officials in 91原创, using Canada鈥檚 racist immigration laws, refused to allow the vast majority of the passengers, mainly Sikhs from Punjab, to disembark. After two months of legal wrangling, the ship was sent back to India, where some of the passengers were shot and killed.
The Komagata Maru passengers were only a few of the people who suffered because of the 91原创 government鈥檚 deliberate exclusionary policies, which were based on the odious view that certain classes and races of people should be kept out of Canada. Potential immigrants were rated according to desirability, with white people of British descent placed at the top of the scale. The rest were placed in descending order, with people from India, China and Japan at the bottom.
The Komagata Maru was symbolic, but change came slowly. It was not until 1967 that racial and ethnic discrimination in Canada鈥檚 immigration laws was stopped.
Trudeau鈥檚 apology cannot change what happened a hundred years ago, but it can help change the future. It is important to recognize the errors of the past and fight for equality and understanding today.
The best way to make up for what happened is to ensure that we never again turn away people because of their religion or skin colour.
