“Race,” Rights and the Law in the Supreme Court of Canada: Historical Case Studies

Chapter 2 Quong Wing v. The King

2 Quong Wing v. The King 1. THE LEGISLATION On 5 March 1912 the Saskatchewan legislature passed An Act to Prevent the Employment of Female Labour in Certain Capacities.1 Threatening a fine of up to $100 or two months in jail, the Act specified that No person shall employ in any capacity any white woman or girl or permit any white woman or girl to reside or lodge in or to work in or, save as a bona fide customer in a public apartment thereof only, to frequent any restaurant, laundry or other place of business or amusement owned, kept or managed by any Japanese, Chinaman or other Oriental person. Attorney General W. F. A. Turgeon explained that the Act would not go into force until 1 May to give affected businessmen the opportunity to dispose of any white female help.2 Immediately Chinese and Japanese residents in Saskatchewan registered their protests. A Japanese restaurant owner in Moose Jaw complained the day the law was passed that it constituted an ‘‘insult to the honour of Japan’’ and argued that at the very least it should be amended to exclude Japanese: their numbers in Saskatchewan were too few to pose a threat, and they were generally not found in the restaurant or laundry businesses.3 Japanese Consul Y. A. Hori travelled from VancouThe notes to this chapter are on pages 359-77. ver to Regina to deliver a personal protest to the attorney general, claiming that the new legislation contravened treaty provisions between the empires of Great Britain and Japan, affirmed by the Canadian government in 1907, guaranteeing reciprocal rights and freedoms.4 The federal government was inclined to support this interpretation of the treaty, and there were in fact only 57 Japanese in the province at that time. The Saskatchewan legislature therefore agreed to amend the Act by striking out the terms ‘‘Japanese’’ and ‘‘or other Oriental person.’’ The retraction came too late to avert the prosecution under the original wording, in August 1912, of a recent Japanese immigrant named Yoshi who employed three white waitresses in the Saskatoon restaurant he ran with his wife. When the revised Act came into effect in January 1913, however, it ensured there would be no further repercussions for Mr. Yoshi by adding a clause to the effect that ‘‘The said Act shall be construed as though the said words struck out by subsection (1) hereof had never been contained therein.’’5 This meant that the provision against white female employment now applied only to Chinese. In early 1912 China was still in the midst of a political revolution at home, and although the Chinese community held a mass meeting of protest in Moose Jaw on the eve of the law’s implementation , and a letter from Sun Yat Sen to a local Chinese leader promised Chinese government action if the law were enforced, Consul Yang Shu-Wen was unable to register his official objections as effectively as his Japanese counterpart. Consul Yang did not make a personal visit to Saskatchewan, and by the time he asked the federal government to disallow the Act he was advised that the one-year disallowance period had already passed. There was in any case no comparable treaty status for Chinese in Canada, and no strategic reason to assuage the honour of the Chinese Empire. The Chinese interdiction therefore remained in place.6 But the Chinese diplomat continued to complain, and Chinese residents of Saskatchewan sent delegations to Regina declaring that the female labour law was a disgrace to the Chinese nationality. Finally in 1919 Saskatchewan Premier W. M. Martin conceded. A new Act to Prevent the Employment of Female Labour in Certain Capacities was passed stating only that No person shall employ any white woman or girl in any capacity requiring her to reside or lodge in or to work in any restaurant or laundry without a special licence from the municipality in which such restaurant or laundry is situated, which licence the council of every municipality is hereby authorised to grant. 52 ‘‘Race,’’ Rights and the Law in the Supreme Court of Canada The racial reference was omitted, and a grateful Yang Shu-Wen registered his cordial thanks to the people of Saskatchewan.7 An episode had apparently ended satisfactorily. Diplomatic niceties had been restored. But while the Act had contained its explicit Chinese prohibition, a Moose Jaw restaurant owner...