Take a chance on me

About ten minutes ago I started writing this post using very stiff and academic sounding language that was totally false to the personal nature of the content. I dressed my own personal obsessions and questions in formal language of academia. The truth is I finally found the official document that answers a question that has bugged me for roughly three years. Here it is.

It all came to ahead this week. Canada citizenship is only 60 years old. There was a special ceremony this week to commemorate this event. The issue of citizenship has been on my mind because of my father's history in this country. As far as I can get out of my grandmother and the rest of the family, my family immigrated from Japan to British Columbia (BC), the western most province in Canada, around the turn of the last century. As far as I can recall, my father's family lived in the greater Vancouver area. After the attack on Pearl Harbour, the government interned all peoples of Japanese ancestry and moved them to "ghost towns" in the interior of BC, selling off all their proprieties to their white neighbours. Anti-Asian sentiments had been building on the west coast of Canada throughout the 19th century, and these forces used the attack on the American naval base as an excuse to finally "rid" themselves on this problem. Anyway, my grandmother and grandfather were married in one of these camps and my father was born after the war while my grandparents slowly moved their family east to their final destination of Toronto. They were forced to this as the government made a provision stating that the Japanese-Canadians couldn't return to their former homes in BC. They were, however, allowed to return to Japan.

My interest in this period in history, aside from the obvious reasons, is that before Canadian citizenship became law Canadians were British subjects and could get a British passport. Getting a British passport was something I was very interested in acquiring. It would make travelling around Europe much easier and I don't know... it was just something I wanted to see if I could get. Japanese-Canadians had their citizenships revoked after Pearl Harbour, so I thought I might have a chance via my father (my mother was born too late) but because of the above document, I don't have a chance. It was a pipe dream I had that now can be laid to rest. Amen.