On May 23, 1914, the ship Komagata Maru was turned away from a Vancouver harbour when it tried to land. Onboard were 376 South Asian immigrants from British India, veterans of the British Indian Army, who sought to make a life for themselves in the empire they had fought to defend. How wrong they were. Instead of a warm reception, the Komagata Maru was surrounded by Canadian immigration boats half a mile from shore and ordered to leave.
Asia is big! Technically it begins in Turkey and ends not far from Alaska in the north west or Singapore in the south west. That’s a lot of turf and hundreds of cultures. Many of them are represented by significant communities in Canada, from Koreans to Armenians to Lebanese to Punjabis to Tamils to Vietnamese to Chinese and Japanese.