Racism
"Savages we call them, because their manners differ from
ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of
theirs."
Benjamin Franklin, 1784
"When
my people [First Nations] went into Vanderhoof, they were not allowed to go
into restaurants, use public toilets, and had to come in the back door of a
grocery store to buy groceries. We [Dick Patrick and King George] spoke for a
long time about the injustice to my people. He told me he would endeavor to
help my people."
Dick Patrick, awarded the Military Medal in 1944.
[After the war Dick was arrested, charged with disturbing the peace, and
sentenced to six months in prison on nine different occasions for entering a
restaurant in Vanderhoof that refused to serve First Nations people. He
was never served a meal.
– see Eric Jamieson, The Native Voice, pp.103-05]
"One day back in Canada my buddies took me down to a hotel. I had
been a soldier for one year and I had on my uniform. I went into the hotel with
them and sat down and they would not serve me because I was an Indian. The law
at that time was that they were not supposed to serve an Indian. Just think, I
was a soldier."
Andrew George, 1946
"People
less strong would have surrendered . . .watching ethnic murder as their
children were absorbed into the educational machine. . . If Donna's aunt drives
into town she will have to accept humiliation and
discrimination for she will not be permitted to rent a hotel room; she will not
be served in restaurants. . . The white man's acquired sense of superiority is
as ruinous and overwhelming as a Panzer column."
John Gibson, employed by the Department of
Social Welfare on the BC coast, A Small and Charming World, 1972
[The
Nova Scotia Royal Commission Report on Donald Marshall found a disturbing
picture of severe oppression and racial intolerance in the province justice
system.]
[The
monument was erected at the same spot where Champlain made his solar
observation in 1613. It was accompanied by a plaque that said the statue was
meant to commemorate "the advent into Ontario of the white race."]
