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Content warning: Racism and racist violence. Some of the language used are original captions and are no longer considered appropriate.
Image from TPL Archives showing a woman on the subway with an advertisement to her left. It is a picture of a subway token and the words "Go in peace". The original caption was:
In the wake of racial attacks on the subway; the TTC has supplied many subway cars with posters showing a subway token and the message Go in peace. The province is sharing the printing bill.
I was looking at the TPL online archives for images of the SRT and came across a series of photos related to racist attacks. I also found a dissertation on the topic, which gives the post its title.
Today we think if the concept of the Toronto Man and Jamaican English (also called Patois) as being a core part of what makes Toronto. While I too associate the city with multiculturalism and immigration, I knew of the nickname "Toronto the Good" and knew it wasn't complimentary. My understanding was that people like John Tory (one of the WASP-est people I know of) still held the power and come from the old, proper and uptight Toronto. I wanted to share some of the photographs and excerpts from the dissertation for interest.
1975-04-02: Racist Scrawls make Toronto blacks wonder whether they can expect fair treatment
In January 1977, an American television program ran a story on race relations in Toronto. The NBC-TV News’ “Weekend” edition presented a twenty-minute assessment of incidents of overt violence against ethnic minorities and concluded that the metropolitan city was “a time bomb of racial tension.” The show’s commentator blamed racial tensions in Toronto on the increased immigration of people who were visibly different from “Toronto’s WASP residents.”
To demonstrate the growing racial tensions in the city, the show featured the Western Guard, a White supremacist group that claimed 300 to 500 followers in Toronto and also showed uncensored footage of immigration officials detaining illegal immigrants.
The program also featured an interview with a Black youngster who described being beaten and taunted because of his colour. At the end of the interview, the Black boy lamented that he wished he was White. The commentator, however, assured his two million viewers that all would be well because Canadians would “overcome this sort of thing.”
Torontonians, including the city’s mayor David Crombie, reacted with great disdain at these accusations and argued that the report was “an example of the most irresponsible kind of journalism.” With a sly grin, the mayor blamed the airing of the program on American networks who were upset over the blocking of U.S. commercials by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission.
The program also received criticism from the federal government because it attacked Canada’s most multicultural and diverse city. Canada’s Federal Immigration Minister Bud Cullen commented on the “irresponsible” program and argued that it was contrived and aired by “a group which is so dissatisfied with its own immigration policy that it’s thrusting those sentiments on someone else.
Why are we so blind we cannot see?
Why are we so deaf we can’t hear the
call of liberty?
I would like to be able to walk the
streets, to choose my direction, north,
south, west or east.
Why do we complicate that which is
simple?
Why do we make ugly that which is
beautiful?
Why do we imprison that which is free?
Is it not at all possible to live in
harmony?
*Poem by Farida Ali, pictured above (also found in Kieryło's dissertation.) *
The week that the American documentary aired was particularly horrific; three racially motivated attacks occurred in the city. Toronto’s newspapers reported that the racial violence targeted those who did not fit the image of an average “white Canadian.” Most of these racial incidents occurred in subway stations or in subway cars which provided the perpetrators with a confined and unsupervised area in which to attack their victims.
...
The newspaper blamed such racial attacks on youths who were “reckless thrill-seek[ers].”It was common for media outlets to minimize these sorts of racial incidents. In fact, Toronto newspapers argued that these incidents were a part of urban violence which was being perpetuated by “group[s] of young men” who were “probably high” and were looking to jostle “dark-skinned men.”
1977-11-06: South Asians protest against racism at recent rally at Queen's Park.
During the 1970s, many Canadians saw the concept of institutional racism as a foreign, if not, American peculiarity.
...
In the Canadian context, provincial and federal governments conceptualized racism as a phenomenon that was perpetuated by individuals, not institutions. In fact, public policy was aimed at controlling individual expressions of prejudice.
(How little has changed!)
During the 1970s, a dramatic shift occurred in the composition of new immigrants to Canada. Immigrants from ‘non-traditional’ countries such as India, Pakistan, Guyana, Jamaica and Tobago began to outnumber European immigrants. This new immigrant intake was facilitated by the ‘points system’ – a system which attempted to attract skilled workers and business immigrants.
...
Unlike previous generations of immigrants, they were not rural migrants or unskilled workers. They were “relatively young, educated, skilled and ready to enter technical, business and professional occupations in their new country.” These changes had profound economic and social implications for Metropolitan Toronto. New highly skilled and upwardly mobile immigrants moved into employment and social realms which were predominately White and as a result, contact between Toronto’s White majority and people of colour increased.
That debate began in May 1975 when a White man shot and killed Michael Habbib, a 15-year old student from Jamaica, in broad daylight. It was a senseless death that shocked the city and signified the beginning of deteriorating race relations in Toronto. Deputy Police Chief believed that there was “a distinct possibility” that Habbib’s killing was racially motivated as there was no other obvious motive - the suspect had never met the victim. Following a police investigation it was revealed that the suspect had also attempted to shoot two Black musicians in a parking lot outside a Yonge Street tavern in January. Months after the shootings, the suspect admitted to targeting Blacks in opposition to Canada’s liberal immigration laws; his goal was to start a “race war.”
Among the mourners at Habbib’s funeral was Willis O. Isaacs, the High Commissioner for Jamaica. Isaacs learned of the incident after dozens of Jamaican Canadians called him to voice their anger about growing discrimination in Metropolitan Toronto. For many, Habbib’s death demonstrated that racism was reaching new heights. Others expressed their concerns with law enforcement in Toronto. The High Commissioner concurred and argued that Toronto police were “extremely racist, uncultured and inhuman.” Although Toronto police could not be blamed for the youth’s death, the High Commissioner was expressing his dissatisfaction with alleged police brutality against Blacks in Toronto. Isaac claimed that he had proof; at his office he kept a diary of complaints of numerous incidents against Blacks in Metropolitan Toronto.
Municipal and federal officials were surprised by such an accusation. Toronto’s Police Chief Harold Adamson argued that such charges against his force were “unfair.” In the House of Commons, MP John Diefenbaker argued that such an accusation went against the “reputation of Canada for respecting the equality of all, regardless of colour.” Diefenbaker also criticized the High Commissioner for making statements that were “totally out of keeping with the position of one who is high commissioner” and he demanded an official apology.
I would encourage you to at least skim the lengthy file as it contains a great deal of interesting history and analysis. It is the authors conclusion that canada continues to move backwards and that "It is clear that the multicultural mosaic which dominated the discourse of diversity during the 1970s and 1980s is no longer celebrated across Canada." (pg 368). It is quite illuminating to read about Toronto 50 years ago and see how this problems persist and have perhaps gotten worse as racism is used as a systemic tool to divide the people.
I knew about the resurgence of neonazis in Toronto in the 1990s, and knew many individuals who took part in the skilled labour migration from the Caribbean in the 1970s and 1980s but helped me see the bigger picture.
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Toronto-area PC MPPs have billed taxpayers over $100K for Toronto overnight stays
(www.thetrillium.ca)
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