It's time for history class kids...youngblood style

Damn I love this country we call Canada! And it pisses me off that the US has to be such a baby about this whole missile defense shit. It’s childish: “Oh, you don’t want to play missile defense with me? Fine you can’t bring your beef over to my house anymore…and we’re not friends anymore”. It’s childish shit. And I don't care what anyone says I'll always love this country no matter where I end up. And as much as the rest of the country rags on Saskatchewan, I still enjoy it. As far as I see it the rest of the country can kiss my ass. It’s full of diverse cultures and an even more diverse climate. I’m proud to say I’m from Saskatchewan. It’s played a part in shaping who I am today. But the history of the province isn’t the most incredible. It’s been made out to be seen as this wondrous land, where the prairie settlers came and brought Canada into the 20^th century. While it is true that the settlers did help in doing so, it still doesn’t mean that they were great people. It was because of them that the dark side of prairie society came out.

Now we all know about how about the Metis rebellions, and how the government made unfair treaties with the First Nations, so let's put that aside for now because that’s a whole other mess that I’m not touching (mainly for lack of time and knowledge about the subjects). Lets just talk right now about immigration to Canada following confederation.

This dark side I speak of dates back to when Saskatchewan was still part of the Northwest Territories. Canada was thought of as this new, incredible world where people would be free to get a fresh start; that is if you were a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP). So good ol’ John A. brings over these WASP’s because they were the desired culture for this new British Empire and could all be assimilated quite easily into British-Canadian life. These people consisted mainly of British and German’s. But Once Laurier came into power in 1896 things changed. Suddenly Laurier’s government was letting people come from countries, which prior to this time were not “preferred”. Once they were there for three years they could take the oath of citizenship and be full Canadians. Sounds good right? Well not all wanted to take the oath, and that’s where things get a little dark.

One such group known as the Doukhobors, who fled oppression in Russia, didn’t want to take the oath. They were pacifists, and if they took the oath they feared having to do military service. Makes sense doesn’t it? Well not if you’re trying to assimilate them into your society. So the Doukobors held a protest against the government by stripping down and starting to walk to Winnipeg. Well people didn’t like that very much and with that, along with the conservatives fear that all the immigrants would vote liberal (because it was the liberals that brought them over), there was an outcry for restrictions on immigration. These crazy pacifist/nudist/anarchists were ruining the British way of life. So after that everything under the sun was blamed on the immigrants. Prostitution: immigrants. Drinking: immigrants. Gambling: immigrants. They couldn’t do anything right.

Then war decides to breaks out. Great, just what the immigrants needed, more reasons to be shit on. The night war was declared there was a man almost beaten to death just because he looked German. He was British, but he looked German so a mob beat the shit out of him, and when he ran to the cops they didn’t care (happened right here in good ol’Reginatown). Also, now all people of enemy alien birth were now spies as well. They lived in Canada for 10 years but they were German spies. Makes sense doesn’t? How could it not?! Plus you know..they lost all their rights too.

So the war ends and things start to look like people might take it easy on the immigrants. Ya right! It was expected that soldiers would be able to return from war and pick up where they left off. Just one problem: someone had to do their jobs, and women did fill in, but the immigrants took quite a few of them too. So when the soldiers came back who got fired if a soldier needed a job? The immigrant of course. So then unions start up. Who gets blamed for them immigrants. They were apparently all Bolsheviks plotting a communist take over of the country. They were also blamed in the 1920’s for poor economy when in reality facts prove that the economy was getting better.

So really the immigrant got shit on and lied to. They couldn’t come to Canada to live their lives just as they did before. They were expected to assimilate and be Canadian by these stupid white men, and when they didn’t they got blamed for everything. Then in the mid 1920’s the KKK decided to roll into town, and that’s a whole other story that really makes these stupid white men look even stupider, but that will have to wait for another day while in the meantime I’ll turn this into an essay for history class. (Wow! Believe it or not, I actually learned something this semester)