Patricia E. Roy, "Educating the 'East': British Columbia and the Oriental Question in the Interwar Years," BC Studies 18 (Summer 1973)

Read 10 Oct 2026. BC’s campaign to bring Ottawa round to Asian exclusion between the wars.

• To the Rowell-Sirois Commission, 1938: Duff Pattullo recommended that “Oriental immigration into Canada should be prohibited upon grounds of ethnological differences of race, and as many Orientals as possible should be returned to the land from which they came,” explaining that in the East they did not see Asians “controlling for instance, market gardening… with their lower standards of living.”
• With King: the question was “a shush, shush subject, not fit for the ears of the House in view of present international complications”; Roy: “His willingness to deal in a moderate way with King on this issue had been overridden by local considerations.” He drafted the exclusion and repatriation resolution for the Liberal convention of August 1938.

See pattullo-bloody-sunday.