It is #SikhHeritageMonth and this is the story of Sikhs gaining the vote!
The first Sikh immigrants to British Columbia were permitted to vote in civic elections. This right to vote would not last long as the province began to strip rights away from the Sikh people.
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In March 1907, BC Premier William Bowser introduced legislation to deny the provincial vote to any immigrant from India who was not of Anglo-Saxon descent.
Vancouver took the vote away from Sikhs the following month.
The Sikh people couldn't vote federally either.
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At the 1921 Imperial Conference in England, a resolution was passed to grant South Asians in the British Empire the right to vote.
Canada simply ignored the resolution.
Some MPs, like Samuel Jacobs, Canada's 1st Jewish MP, supported giving Sikhs the vote.
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In 1924, BC passed the Provincial Elections Act to deny the vote to all Asians except Japanese veterans of WW1.
Men such as Dr. D.P. Pandia (pictured), Kapoor Singh Siddoo, Mayo Singh & Kartar Singh Hundal campaigned to get the vote for Sikhs and others.
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In the 1940s, Sikhs, such as Naginder S. Gill (pictured) continued to pressure the government to grant the vote to South Asians.
India PM Jawaharial Nehru joined the cause of gaining the vote.
On April 2, 1947, South Asians gained the provincial & federal vote.
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Outside of Canada, many assume that the entire country uses bagged milk.
The truth is, only part of Canada have bagged milk in the fridge.
But why? Well, it comes down when Canada made the transition to the metric system.
This is the story!
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The story of milk bags in Canada begins in the 1960s. At the time, milk came in glass bottles primarily. Some producers sold milk in cardboard or plastic jugs.
In Canada's Centennial Year of 1967, DuPont introduced milk bags to the country.
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This turned out to be a good move because in the 1970s, Canada moved towards the metric system. While other companies had to redesign all of their bottles, jugs and cartons, milk bag packaging machines only needed to be resized at a very low cost.
Today is Persons Day.
This day honours The Persons Case, which ended in a victory for The Famous Five on Oct. 18, 1929. The ruling declared women to be persons under the law and qualified to sit in the Senate.
This is the story of that case.
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When the British North America Act of 1867 was passed, it used the word "persons" to refer to more than one person, and "he" to refer to one person.
It was argued that only a man could be a person, which excluded women from many things.
Enter The Famous Five.
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Henrietta Edwards was born in 1849.
She was a Red Cross leader during the First World War, a founding member of the Victorian Order of Nurses and helped create Canada's first YWCA.
On Oct. 4, 1957, the Avro Arrow was unveiled with the intention of it being the RCAF's primary interceptor in the 1960s.
Less than two years later, the program was abruptly cancelled and 14,528 Avro employees were put out of work.
This is the story of the Arrow.
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In the 1950s, with the dawn of the nuclear era, there was a concern that the Soviet Union would attack North America with bombers over the Canadian Arctic.
To deal with this possibility, the RCAF commissioned Avro Canada to build an all-weather nuclear interceptor.
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It needed to fly higher and faster than any aircraft of its class. With the Arrow contract, Avro quickly expanded and had 20,000 people working for it by 1957. Nine models, one-eighth the size of the finished plane, were tested in rockets over Lake Ontario.
In 1885, Montreal was ravaged by smallpox.
To stem the spread of the disease that had killed thousands so far, public health officials enforced vaccinations. Those that mistrusted the vaccine rioted in the streets.
This is the story of the Montreal Smallpox Riots.
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On Feb. 28, 1885, George Longley, a conductor with the Grand Trunk Railway, arrived in Montreal feeling sick. After visiting a doctor, he was diagnosed with smallpox. While he survived, the disease quickly began to spread throughout the city, infecting thousands.
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At first, the City of Montreal did not pay to provide vaccinations to fight the epidemic. In response, Sir William Macdonald donated $25,000 to pay for the vaccines.
Through the spring and summer, the disease killed upwards of 100 people per week in the city.
Today is British Home Child Day.
This is the annual day that Canada acknowledges and honours the over 100,000 children who were sent from the UK to Canada to work on farms and in homes.
They were separated from siblings and many were abused.
This is their story.
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The Children's Friend Society was founded in London in 1830 to suppress "juvenile vagrancy" through "reformation and emigration". In 1833, 230 children were sent to Toronto and New Brunswick.
It was a few decades before more children were sent to Canada.
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In the 1860s, philanthropist Annie MacPherson was appalled at the conditions children were forced to work in at factories in London. She decided to help them and believed sending them away from the cities and even Britain was the best option for a better life.
On Sept. 22, 1994, a show debuted on CTV featuring a street-wise Chicago cop and a Mountie on the trail of the man who killed his father.
The critically-acclaimed hit reshaped Canadian television and made a star out of Paul Gross.
This is the story of Due South.
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The idea for Due South came from one of the biggest movies of the 1980s. In 1986, Crocodile Dundee debuted and was a massive hit. Robert Lantos, chair of Alliance Communications, saw that success and spoke with CBS President Jeff Sagansky about creating a similar show.
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Lantos wanted something involving a stereotypical Canadian working with Chicago Police. Sagansky liked the idea and took it to Paul Haggis and told him to make a series about a Mountie or trapper, or something Canadian like that. From there, Due South was born.