0:01

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History

0:03

Class from how Stuff Works dot com.

0:11

He hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

0:14

Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Crying.

0:16

It's time for some Six Impossible Episodes.

0:19

If you are new to the show. A couple of times

0:21

a year, we do an episode that looks at six

0:24

different stories that, for whatever reason,

0:26

we can't really do as a standalone

0:28

show. A lot of the time it's because there's

0:30

not enough information to fill out a whole

0:32

show, or because there are six stories that

0:35

have some similar themes in common.

0:37

Back in we did an episode

0:39

called Six Impossible Episodes Deja

0:42

Vu Edition, and that was on topics that were

0:44

so similar to things we had already covered

0:47

that if we had done a whole episode, it would have sounded

0:49

almost like a rerun, just with different names

0:51

and dates. Just swap those out. It's the exact

0:53

same story, and today we're doing something

0:56

a little bit similar to that.

0:59

Several times over the past few years,

1:01

we've done an episode about something that happened

1:03

in the United States, and then afterward

1:05

we've gotten lots of notes from listeners about the same

1:08

thing happening in Canada.

1:10

Although the first story that we're going to get into is

1:12

actually the reverse of that. Also, I

1:14

do want to note that these are mostly not happy stories.

1:16

Apparently mostly people tell us that also happened

1:19

in Canada about really

1:21

appalling incidents in history. So

1:24

we saved the most heroic one

1:26

for last. So starting out on

1:28

July, we

1:31

published a podcast on Le fi Duchroix,

1:33

or the King's Daughters, And this was an

1:35

effort by Francis, King Louis the fourteenth

1:38

to send eligible young women to New France.

1:40

In the sixteen hundreds, francis

1:42

focus in northern North America had been

1:44

on the fur trade, not on establishing

1:47

permanent settlements with families, and

1:49

as a consequence, by sixteen sixty three,

1:52

there were six frenchmen for every

1:54

frenchwoman in what is now Canada.

1:57

So the monarchy recruited French women

1:59

and paid for their transport to North America

2:02

in an effort to try to balance things out.

2:04

A very similar scenario also

2:06

played out in French Louisiana.

2:09

At first, authorities had expected that

2:11

French men would go to Louisiana and

2:13

marry Native women, and then they

2:15

also expected that these brides would

2:17

assimilate into French colonial society.

2:20

That is not how it worked out, though. It turned out

2:22

that the women in question had their own opinions

2:25

on this subject, which was to do essentially

2:27

the opposite. By the late seventeenth

2:29

century, French officials were actively

2:31

discouraging colonists from marrying

2:34

native women to try to preserve the frenchness

2:36

and the whiteness of the colony. But

2:38

then that meant that they needed more French

2:41

women because there weren't enough to marry these

2:43

men. The first group to arrive

2:45

by order of King Louis the fourteenth came

2:47

aboard a ship called the Pelican and

2:50

are nicknamed the Pelican Girls as

2:52

a consequence. The ship arrived

2:54

at Dauphin Island in what's now Mobile

2:56

County, Alabama in seventeen

2:58

o four. It's passengers included

3:01

twenty three frenchwomen and two families.

3:03

Sent after repeated requests by

3:06

Governor Jean Baptiste Lemoine de Bienville

3:08

and other colonial officials. The

3:11

Chancellor of France wrote to the governor

3:13

about these women, and this is what the letter said,

3:15

quote. Each of these girls was raised

3:18

in virtue and piety and knows how

3:20

to work, which will render them useful

3:22

in the colony by showing the Indian girls

3:24

what they can do for this, there

3:26

being no point in sending other than a

3:29

virtue known and without reproach,

3:31

His Majesty entrusted the Bishop of

3:33

Quebec to certify them in order

3:35

that they not be suspected of debauch.

3:38

You will take care to establish them

3:40

the best that you can, and to marry

3:42

them two men capable of having them

3:44

subsist with some degree of comfort.

3:47

Although most of these women got married

3:50

very quickly beyond that,

3:52

this first effort did not go well. Recruiters

3:55

had described Louisiana as an amazing

3:57

and wealthy paradise, which was not

4:00

even remotely true. The women

4:02

arrived during a persistent and severe

4:05

food shortage. Diseases

4:07

were rampant, and the terrain. If you've

4:09

ever been to Louisiana you know

4:11

this was swampy, and the French

4:13

colonists faced ongoing and justified

4:16

threats from the region's enslaved and indigenous

4:18

populations. Conditions were

4:21

so bad and so different from

4:23

what they had been promised that in seventeen

4:25

oh six a lot of these women launched

4:27

a protest trying to get passage

4:29

out of the colony. And back to France. This

4:32

uprising was given the disparaging nickname

4:34

the Petticoat Insurrection. Today,

4:37

this protest is folded into the lore

4:39

about the origins of Creole cuisine.

4:42

Supposedly everything was resolved when

4:44

the governor's housekeeper, Madame Langnois,

4:47

taught the women how to cook with local ingredients

4:49

and spices, because that would

4:52

solve all the problems shrug um.

4:54

But it is not clear whether Lanois

4:57

ever existed, and this story really

4:59

minimizes as indigenous and African

5:01

contributions to Creole cuisine. But

5:04

it is clear that this protest was about

5:06

a lot more than cooking ingredients.

5:09

Yeah, even in in accounts written

5:11

by like the male leaders of the time were

5:13

like, they're just unhappy because they don't like to eat corn,

5:16

and that was not That was like one

5:18

tiny piece of this whole situation. Regardless,

5:21

though, word got back to France about

5:24

what this Louisiana colony was really

5:26

like, and soon women were no longer

5:28

willing to go there. Unsurprisingly,

5:31

so authorities started recruiting women from

5:33

orphanages, hospitals, and prisons,

5:35

and especially when it came to women who had been convicted

5:38

of a crime. These migrations were forced,

5:40

they were not voluntary as that first

5:42

shipload had been, and even

5:44

for the ones that were technically voluntary,

5:46

the women in question a lot of the time did

5:48

not have many other options either

5:51

way. Many of these women died on

5:53

the way to Louisiana, and the ones

5:55

who survived often were not all that

5:57

eager to marry a colonist and start

5:59

keeping house for him. France

6:01

ended the formal migration program in

6:03

seventy but the most famous

6:05

group of women arrived in New Orleans early

6:08

the following year. These

6:10

are the ones most commonly known as

6:12

the Casket Girls. These

6:14

were eighty eight women recruited from a hospital

6:16

in Paris that wasn't just a medical

6:19

facility, but was also housing

6:21

for both orphans and prisoners. Although

6:24

nineteen of these women married quickly and

6:26

thirty one married later on, the

6:28

rest either refused to marry or

6:30

return to France. The

6:33

name casket was reportedly

6:35

from the boxes that these women

6:37

were using to carry their belongings as they

6:39

traveled. They'll see articles online

6:41

that variously explained the name casket

6:43

is coming from the French caskette

6:46

or cassette, even though

6:48

caskett is not a

6:50

box it is a hat the

6:53

story of the Casket Girls departs

6:55

from reality, though articles

6:57

all over the web describe a group of women

6:59

who arrived in New Orleans in seventy

7:01

eight, all meticulously chosen

7:04

to be attractive and virtuous,

7:06

but the migration program had been over for

7:08

years by that point, and according to Marcia

7:11

A. Zug, who has written a book on these programs,

7:13

the only ship carrying a group of women

7:15

that arrived in New Orleans in seventeen was

7:18

carrying ursuline nuns, not women

7:21

available for marriage. As

7:23

a side note, if you want to hear Zug talk

7:25

more about this, she is on episode

7:28

one twenty of the podcast Ben Franklin's

7:30

World that has titled Marcia Zug History

7:32

of Mail Order Brides in Early America.

7:35

This is not the only departure from reality

7:38

when it comes to the story of the Casket

7:40

Girls, though if you go on a ghost tour

7:42

of New Orleans, you might hear a story about

7:44

how these mythical seventeen eight

7:47

arrivals came with their caskets and were

7:49

immediately suspected to be vampires

7:51

because they sun burned easily and the trunks

7:54

they were carrying looked like coffins. This

7:57

just doesn't hauled up from the beginning

7:59

because it was completely

8:01

normal for new arrivals

8:03

in the colony to get sunburns and

8:05

the subtropical sun and to

8:08

carry their things in trunks and other

8:10

boxes. There's a whole story

8:12

about these women being taken to that ursuline

8:14

convent in the French Quarter and then their

8:17

caskets being found to be mysteriously

8:19

empty, after which point the nuns had

8:21

the attic windows nailed shut using

8:23

just an astounding number of silver nails.

8:26

All of this because vampires

8:28

shure. Uh.

8:31

These women's stories are not as well

8:34

documented as the King's daughters, though

8:36

possibly because there were far fewer

8:38

of them, and also because the program in Louisiana

8:41

was just not as successful as it

8:43

had been in Canada. Yeah. That and

8:45

we we talked so much and so much more detail about

8:47

the program uh in in what's

8:49

now Canada, where the women

8:52

had a lot of choices, they had a lot more freedoms.

8:55

Um. It was one of those circumstances where you're

8:57

like, Okay, people probably didn't have as many

8:59

options in Europe as they did in North

9:01

America, and in a lot of ways that life

9:03

turned out to be better, and in most cases

9:06

that was not the case. In Louisiana's women

9:08

showed up and we're not really appreciated,

9:10

and we're made fun of and called ugly, and

9:13

we're much smaller in number.

9:15

So when you look at French

9:17

Canadian genealogy, so many

9:20

French Canadians are descended from

9:22

these these women in Canada, but it's

9:24

not um. There's not as much

9:26

of a through line in Louisiana, although an

9:29

astounding number of people say they were

9:31

descended from these um fictitious

9:34

seventeen twenty eight, meticulously

9:36

chosen to be virtuous and beautiful casket

9:40

Curl. I feel like that happens

9:42

in almost any mythology,

9:45

right, I mean, we've been to places that are

9:47

are famous for various reasons, and there

9:50

are often people who are like, yes, I am descended

9:52

from person X, Y or Z, and it's like,

9:55

um, I have some questions

9:57

that person did not live here though, right,

10:00

Like there's some possibilities

10:03

going on, But who am I to take

10:05

that away from them? Yeah, at least

10:07

were real and complicated women in their

10:09

stories have been really pretty heavily mythologized.

10:12

To move on.

10:15

On November seventeen,

10:17

We put out a two part podcast on the Fort

10:19

Shaw Indian School girls basketball

10:22

team, and a big part of that episode

10:24

was the system of boarding schools established

10:26

in the United States to separate Native

10:29

children from their cultures into so called americanized

10:31

them. Colonel Richard Henry

10:34

Pratt, who was a major figure in

10:36

establishing this whole system, summed it

10:38

up as quote, killed the Indian and

10:40

save the man. Canada

10:43

had a nearly identical system of boarding

10:45

schools known as residential schools, as

10:48

was the case in the United States. Mission schools

10:50

in Canada went all the way back to the early

10:52

colonization of New France, but

10:55

in terms of a more formalized, systemic

10:57

program that started in the eighteen thirty

11:00

expanding dramatically in the eighteen

11:02

eighties after changes to federal policy

11:04

regarding both education and Indigenous

11:07

people. By nineteen thirty one,

11:09

when the Canadian system was at its largest,

11:11

there were about eighties schools. With

11:13

the exception of Newfoundland, Prince Edward

11:16

Island and New Brunswick, every Canadian

11:18

province and territory had at least one

11:20

school. Over the course of the program,

11:23

about a hundred and fifty thousand

11:25

children were separated from their families

11:27

for months or years at a time,

11:30

and the last of these schools did not shut down until

11:32

nineteen ninety six. These schools

11:34

were part of a government program, but until

11:37

nineteen sixty nine they were run by churches,

11:39

primarily the Roman Catholic Church,

11:42

the Anglican Church, the United Church

11:44

of Canada, and the Presbyterian Church.

11:47

The Methodist Church also operated

11:49

some schools up until nineteen twenty five.

11:52

These schools had the same goals

11:54

as the ones in the United States did, to

11:56

separate Canada's first nations Inuit

11:59

and may teach children from their cultures, to

12:01

christianize them, to teach them English and French,

12:04

and to assimilate them into Euro Canadian

12:06

society. Conditions at the schools

12:08

were often very cruel. There were also documented

12:11

cases of physical and sexual abuse.

12:13

As many as six thousand children

12:16

died in these schools, including from disease

12:18

and malnutrition, and some of these

12:20

students were experimented on. There

12:23

was a series of experiments carried out in the

12:25

nineteen forties and fifties that studied

12:27

the effects of malnutrition,

12:29

and these were conducted with the government's knowledge.

12:31

Basically, somebody visiting the school had noticed

12:34

that the children were malnourished, and instead

12:36

of fixing the problem, only

12:38

supplemented the diets of parts of some

12:40

of the children to study what happened

12:42

with the others. In the nineteen nineties,

12:44

the Canadian government convened a Royal Commission

12:47

on Aboriginal Peoples in response to

12:49

a call from Phil Fontane, who

12:51

would later become the National Chief of the Assembly

12:53

of First Nations. Advocacy

12:56

had already been going on at that point, but

12:58

Fontane was really the key figure bringing

13:00

it to national attention. The

13:02

Commission issued a report about the schools

13:05

and recommended a public inquiry,

13:07

although the public inquiry never happened.

13:09

A later class action settlement resulted

13:12

in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement

13:14

Agreement, which came into effect in September

13:16

of two thousand seven. This agreement

13:19

included the Common Experience Payment,

13:21

which was a one point nine billion dollar

13:23

compensation program for people who had been

13:25

forced to attend these schools. Former

13:28

students were eligible for ten thousand

13:30

dollars for their first year or partial

13:32

year in attendance and three thousand

13:35

dollars for each subsequent year, and as

13:37

of September, one

13:39

point six billion dollars had been paid on

13:42

more than a hundred and five thousand cases.

13:45

The agreement also set up an assessment

13:47

process for cases of physical, psychological

13:50

and sexual abuse. It established

13:52

a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and

13:55

set up a commemoration fund. There

13:57

have been some criticisms of this settlement,

14:00

though, including unethical lawyers who

14:02

took advantage of people seeking restitution,

14:04

and the exclusion of Newfoundland and

14:07

Labrador from the settlement. Yeah,

14:09

the argument was that that wasn't

14:11

part of Canada yet during

14:13

a lot of this time, but there were still people

14:15

there who were affected. Prime Minister

14:18

Stephen Harper formally apologized

14:20

for the boarding school system on Jounal eleventh,

14:22

two thousand eight, and several churches

14:25

that were involved in these programs have apologized

14:27

as well. The Truth and Reconciliation

14:30

Commission that was established under the settlement

14:32

agreement issued its final report

14:34

in TWI. Its introduction

14:37

began quote for over a century,

14:39

the central goals of Canada's Aboriginal

14:41

policy were to eliminate Aboriginal

14:44

governments, ignore aboriginal

14:46

rights, terminate the treaties,

14:48

and, through a process of assimilation,

14:51

cause Aboriginal peoples to cease to

14:53

exist as distinct, legal, social

14:55

cultural, religious, and racial entities

14:58

in Canada. The establishment

15:00

and operation of residential schools were

15:02

a central element of this policy, which

15:05

can best be described as cultural genocide.

15:08

This report went on to make ninety four recommendations

15:11

to repair the damage caused by the schools.

15:14

This report also noted a related practice

15:17

that became known as the sixties scoop.

15:20

From the nineteen sixties through the nineteen eighties,

15:22

thousands of Indigenous children in Canada

15:24

were taken from their families and placed in foster

15:26

care, then adopted by white families,

15:29

sometimes white families who lived in the United States

15:31

or the United Kingdom between

15:33

nineteen fifty in the mid nineteen sixties,

15:36

these Aboriginal children went from making

15:38

up about one percent of the children

15:40

in care in Canada to making up more

15:43

than a third of the children in care. And

15:45

that also has parallels to another past

15:48

episode in our archives, which is Australia's

15:50

Stolen Generations. What's followed a really similar

15:52

pattern from about nineteen ten to nineteen

15:55

seventy And we should also note that

15:57

there are ongoing issues with Indigenous

15:59

and Aboriginal children in the child

16:01

welfare systems in the United

16:04

States, in Australia and

16:06

Canada, all all three nations.

16:09

Um we mentioned these boarding schools

16:11

really briefly in those in that

16:13

too part are about the Fort Shot Indian

16:15

School program. But I wanted to take the

16:17

opportunity to go in a little more detail here today

16:20

and we will talk about something else that

16:23

similarly happened in Canada. After a quick

16:25

sponsor break

16:33

on February fifteenth and seventeen seventeen,

16:36

we did a two part podcast on Executive

16:38

Order nineties sixty six and the mass

16:41

incarceration of Japanese Americans

16:43

during World War Two. When we

16:45

posted these episodes on our social

16:47

media, one of the comments that we got was

16:50

this happened in Canada to which is not something

16:52

we had mentioned in that episode at all. But

16:54

it's not just that this happened

16:57

in Canada to The Canadian

16:59

incarc ration of its Japanese citizens

17:02

and residents directly followed

17:04

what happened to the United States during

17:07

World War One. The Canadian government had

17:09

passed the War Measures Act, which

17:11

granted very broad authority when it came

17:13

to restricting civil liberties during wartime.

17:16

During World War two, the War Measures Act

17:19

was used to incarcerate about twenty four

17:21

thousand people in Canada, nearly

17:23

all of them Japanese Canadians.

17:26

Other people incarcerated included German

17:28

Canadians who were members the Canadian Nazi

17:31

Party or German sponsored organizations,

17:33

and approximately six hundred Italians

17:35

who were suspected of supporting fascism.

17:38

About three thousand refugees from Germany

17:41

and Austria were also incarcerated,

17:43

many of them Jewish, and many of

17:45

the Jewish refugees were incarcerated

17:47

along with Nazi prisoners of war.

17:50

When it came to the Japanese Canadians, though,

17:53

all Japanese Canadians, regardless

17:56

of their citizenship status, were required

17:58

to register with the government in March

18:00

of nineteen forty one, and then

18:02

after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor,

18:04

Hawaii in December of nineteen

18:06

forty one, events in Canada followed the

18:08

same basic pattern that they did in the

18:11

United States that we talked about in detail

18:13

in those two episodes. A small

18:15

number of Japanese nationals were taken

18:17

into custody right away, and then

18:19

white business owners, farmers, and political

18:22

leaders on the Pacific coast of Canada started

18:24

pressuring the government to remove their

18:26

Japanese neighbors. These arguments

18:29

and language that were used were just virtually

18:32

identical to what was used in the United

18:34

States. First Prime

18:36

Minister William Lyon Mackenzie

18:38

King ordered the removal of adult

18:40

men of Japanese ancestry from Canada's

18:43

West coast on January fourteenth,

18:45

ninety two. Then

18:47

on February nineteenth, nineteen forty

18:50

two, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

18:52

signed Executive Order ninety sixty

18:54

six regarding the removal of all

18:56

Japanese Americans from the U s. West

18:58

Coast. Five days after

19:01

that, the Canadian Cabinet followed suit

19:03

in Canada and approved Order in Council

19:05

PC fourteen eighty six, which

19:08

the Prime Minister announced on February twenty

19:10

six. This broadened the earlier

19:13

removal to include everyone of Japanese

19:15

ancestry living within one hundred

19:17

miles of Canada's Pacific coast. The

19:20

British Columbia Security Commission was

19:22

created to oversee and manage the

19:25

expulsion and incarceration. About

19:28

sixty five percent of the twenty two

19:30

thousand Japanese Canadians who were

19:32

removed following this order had been

19:34

born in Canada, and in many cases

19:36

their property was confiscated and sold

19:39

or otherwise never returned to them. Japanese

19:41

fishers on the west coast of Canada were also

19:44

required to turn over their boats, which

19:46

was of course the source of their livelihood, and

19:48

these also were not returned. During

19:50

this removal. More than two thousand

19:52

single men were sent to work on road labor

19:55

camps, and about thirty five hundred

19:57

were sent to work on sugar beet farms

19:59

outside to British Columbia. Everyone

20:02

else was sent to segregated concentration

20:04

camps. As was true in the

20:06

United States, these Canadian camps were

20:09

very hastily built or were converted

20:11

from facilities like abandoned mining

20:13

camps. They were totally insufficient

20:15

to provide shelter from the elements and

20:17

the United States, the government had provided food,

20:20

clothing, and schooling for incarcerated

20:22

children, although overwhelmingly

20:24

these were inadequate at best. The

20:27

Canadian government provided the camps,

20:29

but no food or clothing, and no education

20:32

beyond elementary school for the incarcerated

20:34

children. There was also an organized

20:37

resistance to this in Canada, including

20:39

the creation of the niss A Mass Evacuation

20:42

Group. The incarcerations

20:44

in the United States and Canada ended

20:46

slightly differently. In the US,

20:48

many Japanese Americans returned to the

20:51

West Coast after the end of the war, even

20:53

though often they had to start completely over

20:55

and they faced ongoing prejudice and discrimination

20:59

in Canada. Japanese Canadians were

21:01

not allowed to return to British Columbia.

21:04

Instead, they had two choices to

21:06

settle somewhere in Canada outside

21:09

of British Columbia, or to return

21:11

to Japan. Although some people

21:13

did return to Japan voluntarily, thousands

21:16

were forcibly deported after refusing

21:18

to move out of British Columbia, which

21:21

had been their home. And I should also

21:23

note that some of them were not originally from

21:25

Japan. They were born in Canada and had never

21:27

been to Japan. Investigations

21:30

conducted after this incarceration was over

21:32

concluded that the property of Japanese

21:34

Canadians that had been sold during the war

21:37

was sold for far less than it was worth,

21:39

But the Canadian government really resisted

21:42

offering any kind of compensation or

21:44

acknowledgement for this, or in general,

21:46

for the incarceration. Then,

21:48

in September of Canada

21:51

reached a settlement agreement that included an

21:53

official apology and a redress payment

21:55

of twenty one thousand dollars for each person

21:57

who was affected, along with the estab

22:00

pulishment of a twelve million dollar funds

22:02

to create a Canadian Race Relations

22:04

Foundation. The United States

22:06

had taken similar steps in a law that was

22:08

signed in August tenth of the same year. So that

22:10

was another way that the two countries paralleled

22:13

each other and all of this so

22:15

moving on to our next uh

22:17

again not super delightful story.

22:20

UH. At the beginning of our podcast on

22:22

Executive Order ninety six, we

22:24

set the stage by talking about the history of

22:26

immigration from Japan and other

22:29

parts of Asia to the United States, as

22:31

well as the history of discrimination against

22:34

these immigrants. A big part

22:36

of that discussion was the Chinese Exclusion

22:38

Act of eighteen eighty two, and

22:40

that act has come up in other episodes as

22:42

well, including our episodes on Levi

22:45

Strauss, the Bisbee Deportation,

22:47

and the history of Foreign Foods in the US.

22:50

This act banned all immigration

22:52

from China for a period of ten years.

22:55

It was the United States first major law

22:58

restricting immigration and the first time time

23:00

that the US banned people from a specific

23:02

nation. Canada faced a very

23:05

similar trajectory in the late nineteenth

23:07

century. Large numbers of Chinese immigrants

23:10

arrived in Canada, first with the gold rush

23:12

and then to work on the construction of the Canadian

23:15

Pacific Railway. As the number

23:17

of Chinese people in Canada increased,

23:19

so did anti Chinese prejudice.

23:22

A lot of white residents resented

23:24

Chinese immigrants under the idea that they were

23:26

stealing jobs. Then this sense

23:29

increased as the railway was finished

23:31

and these laborers started finding work

23:33

in other industries. Emotion was

23:35

made in Parliament to enact a law prohibiting

23:38

all Chinese immigration into British

23:40

Columbia, just as the United

23:42

States had done. Rather than simply

23:45

passed the law, Parliament established

23:47

the Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration

23:49

to evaluate quote all the facts

23:51

and matters connected to the whole subject

23:53

of Chinese immigration. Although

23:56

the Commission had been established after a call

23:58

to ban Chinese immigration and

24:00

heard a lot of racist testimony,

24:03

the Commission found that these racist stereotypes

24:05

were untrue and that overall Chinese

24:08

labor was beneficial to Canada.

24:11

It did recommend implementing a ten

24:13

dollar duty on immigrants from China

24:15

to pay for health inspection at the port and

24:18

other administrative costs. Some

24:20

of the study was actually conducted in San

24:22

Francisco, UH specifically

24:24

with officials from the Chinese consulate there,

24:27

but the Chinese Immigration Act

24:29

of eighteen eighty five ignored the findings

24:32

from the Commission and instead instituted

24:35

a duty of fifty dollars a person

24:37

specifically to act as a deterrent.

24:40

The act did allow some exceptions from

24:42

this duty, including diplomats, government

24:44

officials, tourists, and students.

24:47

It also imposed restrictions on the vessels

24:49

that were carrying Chinese immigrants

24:52

to Canada. There could be only

24:54

one Chinese person for every

24:56

fifty tons of the ship's weight. Ships

24:59

carrying European immigrants, on the other hand,

25:01

could have one immigrant for every two tons.

25:04

This was Canada's first major immigration

25:07

lots and to target immigrants based

25:09

on their nation of origin. The fifty

25:11

dollar fee did reduce the number of Chinese

25:14

people who tried to enter Canada, but

25:16

not for long. As the economy

25:18

of British Columbia continued to expand,

25:20

there was more and more demand for labor. There

25:23

weren't enough people in British Columbia to

25:25

meet this demand, so within five years

25:27

the number of Chinese immigrants to Canada

25:30

was increasing again. In response,

25:32

the Canadian government kept increasing

25:34

that duty, which had been fifty dollars,

25:37

and it rose all the way up to five hundred

25:39

dollars in nineteen o three. Then

25:41

twenty years after that, the Chinese

25:43

Immigration Act of banned

25:46

nearly all Chinese people from entering

25:48

Canada at all, with the exception

25:50

of students, merchants, diplomats,

25:52

and Canadian born people who were returning

25:55

to Canada. There were also

25:57

some exceptions to the exceptions.

26:00

Urchants excluded, laundry, restaurant

26:02

and retail operators. The three

26:05

Act also required everyone of Chinese

26:08

descent to register for an identity

26:10

card, regardless of whether they were Canadian

26:12

citizens. This Act was repealed

26:14

in ninety seven, although there continued

26:17

to be traces of these restrictions in Canadian

26:19

immigration law until nineteen sixty seven.

26:22

We're going to get to some more Canadian history after

26:24

we pause for a little sponsor break.

26:33

In eleven, previous hosts

26:35

Sarah and Dablina released an episode on the

26:37

New York Draft Riots. We

26:39

rereleased that episode as a Saturday Classic

26:41

on July seven, eighteen,

26:44

and, like its name suggests, the

26:46

New York Draft Riots of eighteen sixty three

26:48

started because of the Civil War draft.

26:50

But the riot was not only

26:53

about the draft. Another big

26:55

factor was discontent among working

26:57

class people who were facing increasing

27:00

competition for jobs as escaped

27:02

slaves and other people of African descent

27:04

were moving into New York. Race

27:06

also was a huge part of it, and the

27:08

rioters primarily targeted the black

27:11

community. The Shelburne

27:13

Riots of seventeen eighty four weren't

27:15

identical to the New York Draft riots,

27:17

but they had a lot of similarities

27:20

and parallels, including connections to war,

27:23

labor, and race. During the Revolutionary

27:25

War, roughly a fifth of the black

27:27

residents of the British colonies fought

27:29

on the side of the Loyalists, who

27:31

wanted American colonies to remain part

27:33

of Britain. The vast majority

27:36

had been enslaved and expected that after

27:38

the war was over they would be granted their

27:40

freedom in exchange for their service.

27:43

But when the loyalists side lost the war

27:45

and the colonies became independent, some

27:47

of those people were recaptured and returned

27:49

to slavery. Many of those that weren't

27:52

ultimately made their way into Canada. In

27:54

particular, in seventeen eighty three, about

27:57

fifteen hundred black Loyalists

27:59

settled in Nova Scotia, many

28:01

of them concentrated in Shelburne County,

28:03

which was home also to about sixteen

28:06

thousand white loyalists. Most

28:08

black Loyalists made their homes in a community

28:10

that was not far from the town of Shelburne

28:13

called Birchtown, and soon that became

28:15

the largest community of free black people

28:17

in North America. However, slavery

28:20

also existed in Canada, including

28:23

in Shelburne. Slave owners

28:25

in Shelburne felt threatened by the free

28:27

black community in Birchtown and the effects

28:29

that it might have on their enslaved workforce.

28:33

Nova Scotia's white residents also tended

28:35

to view all people of African descent as

28:37

slaves, regardless of whether

28:39

they were enslaved or free. Working

28:42

class white residents also faced increasing

28:44

competition for paying work from this growing

28:47

black community, especially since

28:49

people who needed to hire labor could

28:51

do it much more cheaply by exploiting

28:53

the black population. Another

28:56

complication in all this was soldiers who

28:58

were returning home from the Revolutionary a

29:00

War who no longer had employment

29:02

or income. A lot of people in the area

29:04

had also been promised land grants,

29:06

but those grants had been repeatedly delayed,

29:09

and a lot of the land turned out not to be

29:11

suitable for farming. So in both New

29:13

York in eighteen sixty three and Shelburne

29:15

nearly eighty years earlier, white

29:17

residents were increasingly resentful of

29:20

a growing population of free black

29:22

residents as a result of a war and

29:24

the effect it was having on their lives and income.

29:27

In New York, the draft tipped

29:29

this resentment into violence. In Shelburne,

29:32

that spark came from the intersection of religion

29:35

and racism. Baptist preacher David

29:37

George had been born in Virginia in seventeen

29:40

forty two and was enslaved from birth.

29:42

He escaped to South Carolina and lived

29:45

in hiding for several years before being captured

29:47

and sold back into slavery. He fled

29:50

to British occupied Savannah during the Revolutionary

29:52

War in seventeen seventy eight, and then traveled

29:54

to Charleston, where he was evacuated

29:56

along with about five thousand black residents

29:59

in seventeen eighty two. Although

30:01

most of these evacuees wound up being enslaved

30:04

again and sent to the Caribbean, George wound

30:06

up in Nova Scotia. He established

30:08

his church in Shelburne rather than in Birchtown,

30:11

and some of his congregation built their homes

30:13

on church property, and at

30:15

first the white residents of Shelburne

30:17

mostly left them alone, but

30:20

eventually George started baptizing

30:22

white loyalists. The idea

30:24

of a black minister baptizing white people,

30:27

especially at a church in quote

30:29

their part of town, outraged

30:32

many white residents. In July

30:34

sight four, a group of white loyalists

30:37

tried to forcibly remove a white

30:39

woman who was about to be baptized by David

30:41

George. Then, on the twenty sixth

30:44

of that month, a group of about forty white

30:46

loyalists attacked Georgia's house,

30:48

physically pulling it down using a ship's tackle.

30:51

They went on to tear down other homes that

30:53

had been built on the church property, destroying

30:56

about twenty houses. This

30:58

swelled into a riot that lasted

31:00

for about ten days, with the white residents

31:02

of Shelburne trying to drive the black residents

31:05

out of both Shelburne and Birchtown. Eventually,

31:08

four companies of the sevente Regiment

31:11

and later a naval frigate were dispatched

31:13

to restore order. The rioters did

31:15

not succeed in evicting the black community

31:17

from Nova Scotia, but that

31:20

community did continue to face racism

31:22

and discrimination in the years that followed.

31:25

Economic changes also made life more

31:27

difficult. Seven years after the

31:29

riot, when black residents were offered

31:31

the chance to relocate to a colony in Sierra

31:34

Leone, about half of them accepted.

31:37

We've talked repeatedly on this show

31:39

about how the term race riot is really

31:41

a misnomer because it makes it sound like

31:44

people of multiple races were equal

31:46

aggressors and some kind of mass violence.

31:49

Overwhelmingly, though, these incidents

31:51

of mass violence are really the result

31:53

of a white mob attacking members of

31:55

an already oppressed race or religion

31:57

or ethnic group. That said,

32:00

the Shelburne Riots are often described

32:02

as North America's first race riot.

32:04

This also has a connection to another previous

32:07

episode. Nova Scotia

32:09

is where a large number of Maroons wound

32:11

up after the Maroon Wars in Jamaica, which

32:14

we talked about in February of seen.

32:17

And now we will move on to our last and

32:19

less appalling, h impossible

32:22

episode on this show. For a long

32:24

time, every time we mentioned Paul

32:26

Revere on our social media

32:29

or whatever, folks would ask what about Sybil

32:31

Lettington? So we talked about her in our

32:33

second ever installment of six Impossible

32:35

Episodes on September six. There

32:39

were already episodes in the archive about Paul

32:41

Revere and his famous ride.

32:43

Now it is just as likely that mentioning

32:46

either Paul Revere or Sybil Lettington

32:48

will prompt people to ask what about Laura

32:50

c Cord. Paul Revere was one

32:53

of three men who rode to raise the alarm

32:55

of a British attack on Lexington, Massachusetts,

32:58

on April eighteenth, seventeenth seventy

33:00

five. Sybil Luttington

33:02

rode to raise the alarm of a British attack

33:04

on Danbury, Connecticut, on April

33:07

seventeen seventy seven, although,

33:10

as we noted when we talked about her, there

33:12

is no primary source documentation

33:14

of that ride. And in eighteen thirteen,

33:17

Laura see Cord raised the alarm of an

33:19

incoming American attack on British

33:21

forces on foot. This

33:24

was during the War of eighteen twelve. S Cord

33:26

was the wife of James c. Cord, who

33:28

had been serving as a sergeant in the First

33:30

Lincoln Militia when he was

33:32

injured in the Battle of Queenston Heights.

33:35

His wife rescued him from the battlefield

33:37

personally. After the fighting was over,

33:40

while Laura was nursing James back to health,

33:43

American troops occupied Queenston

33:45

in present day Ontario, where they lived.

33:48

After the c Cords were forced to house some

33:50

American officers, Laura overheard

33:52

them talking about a planned attack

33:54

on British forces at beaver Dam's,

33:57

who were under the command of James Fitzgibbon.

33:59

Since Ja names her husband James c Cord

34:01

was still recovering, Laura decided

34:04

that she would raise the alarm herself. Beaver

34:06

Dams was about thirty two kilometers

34:09

or twenty miles away, and

34:11

Laura Secord made this trip on foot through

34:13

occupied territory, taking a really winding

34:16

route over difficult terrain to try to

34:18

avoid detection. She arrived

34:20

on June twenty or thirteen,

34:24

and on the incoming American

34:26

force was ambushed by a First Nations

34:29

fighting force that was allied with the British. The

34:31

American force, which numbered about five hundred

34:34

men, ultimately surrendered before

34:36

British reinforcements arrived. As

34:39

was true of Sybil Luddington. There was no

34:41

mention of se cords warning in the official

34:43

report. However, unlike

34:45

Leddington, Secord petition the government

34:48

for a pension leader in her life. This

34:50

led James Fitzgibbon to testify that yes,

34:53

se Cord had warned him of the incoming

34:55

attack, so we do have an official

34:57

statement from someone who was actually there.

35:00

It's not clear whether c Cord's warning arrived

35:02

ahead of the indigenous scouts who also

35:04

brought fits given the same intelligence,

35:07

but her trip definitely did happen. The

35:10

petition for her pension was also

35:12

unsuccessful, but Albert Edward, Prince

35:14

of Wales, who would later become Edward the seventh,

35:17

did award her one hundred pounds. Another

35:20

parallel between Sybil Luttington and Laura

35:22

cie Cord is that they have both become really heavily

35:25

mythologized and commemorated, especially

35:27

in a whole lot of children's literature. There's

35:30

also a candy company that bears

35:32

laurasie Cords name. I think listeners

35:34

have sent us laurasie Cord

35:36

chocolate before that company was started in

35:38

nineteen thirteen by Frank P. O'Connor

35:41

who named it after her, And

35:44

those are our six things that also

35:46

happened in Canada, which I guess

35:48

is really five things that also happened in Canada

35:50

and one thing that also happened in

35:52

the United States, most of

35:54

them terrible. Yes, do

35:57

you have terrible email? I

36:00

mean it depends on whether you find Sir

36:02

Walter Raleigh's head funny,

36:05

terrible, or terrible. So

36:08

this is from Susannah, and Susannah says,

36:10

Hello, Holly and Tracy, thank you for your podcast

36:12

on Sir Walter Raleigh. I grew

36:15

up in a small English town that was home

36:17

to Sir Walter for a while, then immigrated

36:19

to the US and specifically to Raleigh,

36:21

North Carolina. Given this, if you would

36:24

think I would know more about him, alas

36:26

I did not. What you said you knew

36:28

in the opening was about all I

36:30

knew, with the addition of thinking that he

36:32

was beheaded for his marriage to Bess.

36:35

Thank you for filling in all my gaps. I

36:37

would like to take a moment to

36:40

pause and say, I am so glad

36:43

I'm not the only person who seems like I

36:45

should know a lot more about Sir Walter Raleigh

36:47

than I did when I started on that episode.

36:50

To return to the letter, I wanted

36:52

to let you know about a Sir Walter Raleigh

36:54

legend that I grew up with. Sir Walter

36:56

Raleigh was given Sherburne

36:59

Castles. Sent a link to

37:01

that website, which is in the town I am from.

37:04

Rumor has it that in the nineteen seventies

37:06

some Americans were working on the lake. As

37:08

they were working, Sir Walter in ghost

37:11

form, walked on the lake toward them,

37:13

holding his head under his arm.

37:16

The Americans ran and refused to finish

37:18

the work on the lake. I'm sure this is not

37:20

true, but it is a fun story. I myself

37:23

have had an experience with ghosts in this castle,

37:25

so maybe it was a different ghost and

37:27

not Sir Walter. Side note, my uncle

37:29

worked at this castle for his whole working career

37:32

and he has many many ghost

37:34

stories. Thank you for all your amazing episodes.

37:37

I also saw you live and rally a

37:39

few months ago, which I really enjoyed. Susannah.

37:41

Thank you Susannah for this note and for this

37:44

story that I found very funny. Just the

37:46

idea of some workers and lake being like no gooda

37:49

go that cracked me

37:51

up. A little bit, and also thank you for coming to our show

37:53

and rally. We had a very good time there. Indeed,

37:56

if you would like to write to us about this or any

37:58

other podcast where a history pie gasts at how

38:00

stuff Works dot com and then we are all over

38:02

the internet at missed in History. That is

38:04

where you will find our Facebook, our

38:06

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38:09

You can come to our website miss in history dot

38:11

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38:13

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38:16

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38:18

can find it. Subscribe to our podcast

38:21

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38:23

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38:30

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38:32

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