A history of settler vigilante violence in Canada
Written by: Tyler Shipley
This week, the RCMP stood by while white settlers in Nova Scotia terrorized Mi’kmaq fishers, an escalation of settler violence that has been brewing for months. Mi’kmaq fishers have broken none of Canada’s laws, which were forced upon them, while settler vigilantes have broken several. But this is part of a very, very old pattern.
Canada, before it was even Canada, made laws to control and contain Indigenous people - and later immigrant and settler labour (on occasion) - while allowing the colonial elite, settlers, and vigilantes who shared their interests to break the law with impunity.
Targets of such vigilantism have included indigenous people, striking workers, officials from socialist countries, immigrants, opponents of Canadian policies; anyone who posed a threat to ruling class interests or who could be used as a more ‘suitable’ target for settler anger in times of trouble. (More suitable, that is, for the ruling classes, who didn’t and don’t want to find themselves the target of anger or unrest.)
This piece offers a few examples from across Canada’s history, though many others could have been chosen. As always, details and citations available in Canada in the World:
Canada’s First Vigilantes
An obvious starting point here is to note that much of what became ‘Canadian’ land was stolen by settlers against the official letter of both the treaties Britain signed and Britain’s own laws. Authorities were happy to claim they were powerless to enforce the rules.
For instance, the 1763 Royal Proclamation decreed that land could not be seized from Indigenous people without a treaty in place. But when Loyalists flooded in after the American Revolution they seized Mi’kmaq land on the Miramichi River. The authorities allowed it.
This seizure of land often involved violence, and a range of other illegal-even-by-their-own-laws practices were used by settlers to dispossess the Beothuk, Maliseet, Nippissing, Ojibwa, Mississauga and other nations. Vigilantism built the Canada we live in.
‘White Canada Forever’
Of course, white vigilante violence was also extended to non-white immigrants. Turn of the century Vancouver saw several waves of anti-Asian violence, including massive riots in 1907 against Japanese neighbourhoods, which had the approval of the Daily Province newspaper:
“This province must be a white man’s country,” said the paper. This reflected the sentiment among whites in BC, where “White Canada Forever” was a popular bar song, containing the lyrics, “the shifty yellow race...must find another place.” The vigilantes had support.
In 1914, Bela Singh, working for a Canadian immigration officer, WC Hopkinson, murdered a Sikh community leader inside the Vancouver Gurdwara. He was helping undermine the anti-colonial Ghadr Party, and he was acquitted of this act of vigilante political violence.
By contrast, in revenge for this act of violence inside the temple, Mewa Singh murdered Hopkinson, whom he considered ultimately responsible. Mewa Singh was sentenced to death by hanging. The difference in Canada’s response to these two cases is striking.
From the Klan to the Swastika
In the early 20th century, with capitalism in crisis and poverty on the rise, working people pushed hard for living wages and basic rights. Canadian authorities looked the other way when those workers were attacked by white nationalist vigilantes like the KKK, which had tens of thousands of members.
The Klan was predictably most active when those workers were immigrants; they attacked and kidnapped striking workers in Princeton, BC in 1932-33, many of them from the Balkans. The state was happy to let it happen, itself deeply concerned about worker militance.
Around the same time, in Toronto, Swastika Clubs inspired by the Nazis were plotting attacks against Jewish immigrants. Toronto’s racist police chief set his patrols elsewhere to allow what would come to be known as the Christie Pits Riot.
Police chief Dennis Draper was warned about this pending attack but actively gave the green light, later blaming it on the Jews. Draper associated Jews with his sworn enemies: trade unionists and communists. Vigilante attacks against Jews was ok, striking for fair wages was not.
A Haven For Right Wing Terrorists
After the Second World War, Canada admitted thousands of former-Nazis and their allies in other countries. Far-right militants like the Ukrainian Banderites and Croatian Ustaše had active bases in Canadian cities, where they plotted terrorist attacks within Canada and elsewhere.
In the 1960s, Canada was so bent on destroying communism that it allowed right-wing Cuban terrorists to launch attacks against Cubans on Canadian soil, most notably with a bomb at the Cuban pavilion at Expo ‘67 in Montreal and a bazooka attack at the Cuban embassy in Ottawa.
To say that Canada happily harboured foreign terrorists whose interests lined up with theirs is an understatement. From former Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz, to Honduran death squad assassin Florencio Caballero, Canada was often haven to right wing terrorists.
Homeland Security
But there is a special place for homegrown, settler terrorism in Canada. Police didn’t stop neo-nazi leader Gary McHale from organizing violent mobilizations of whites to attack Six Nations defenders of their land at Caledonia, now known as 1492 Land Back Lane.
This was recently on display at Wet’suwet’en where, as in so many other places, Indigenous people have faced the violence of white settlers, and police have watched it happen and/or sided violently with the settlers.
White vigilante violence is so much a part of the fabric of Canadian society that even clear-cut cases often favour the vigilante. Gerald Stanley shot Cree youth Colton Boushie point blank in the head, and was acquitted. Stanley claimed that the gun went off accidentally while it was aimed at Boushie’s head, but firearms experts testified that it could not have been an accident.
Police have routinely failed to even investigate violence against Indigenous women, tacitly allowing and encouraging men like Robert Pickton, Canada’s worst serial killer, to target indigenous women with impunity. (To say nothing of the many cases involving police themselves.)
In the post 9-11 environment, the entire Canadian establishment embraced the islamophobia of the moment and attacks against Muslims, Arabs, mosques, and brown people in general rose substantially. Hate crimes have steadily increased across the last decade.
And yet, whenever these groups have organized marches and public demonstrations, they have had police protection. Soldiers of Odin, Proud Boys, Steve Bannon and a wide range of proto-fascist orgs have had their ‘free speech’ protected by police even when it obviously qualified as hateful by Canadian law.
The takeaway, then, is that Canadian laws are not enforced equally. While the RCMP was empowered to fire live rounds at indigenous people at the Wet’suwet’en blockade, it has often failed to take any action against white vigilantes and right wing terrorists, thus encouraging them.
History Repeats
Which brings us back to the burning lobster pound. Had Indigenous fishers firebombed white commercial operations, there would be arrests and charges, and it would be framed as a Mi’kmaq plot to undermine Canadian lives and livelihoods. But when the reverse takes place?
The RCMP claims it has no role to play in the ‘tension,’ understands the ‘passion’ of the vigilantes, and stands aside while the violence takes place. A time-honoured practice, by an organization whose roots are in the conquest and maintenance of colonial Canada.
Finally, lest we forget, this is not the first time white vigilantes have attacked Mi’kmaq over lobsters. Nearly two decades ago, the story was the same, white violence went unpunished and the Burnt Church ‘crisis’ only began when Indigenous people defended themselves.
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