The passengers were turned away on the grounds of the “continuous journey clause” that only allowed travellers on a trip without interruption to land in Canada.
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“Mr. Speaker, today I rise in this House to offer an apology on behalf of the government of Canada, for our role in the Komagata Maru incident”, Trudeau said.
He noted in Parliament on Wednesday that Canada’s current defense minister, Harjit Sajjan, once commanded the reserve regiment that turned back the Komagata Maru and thanked him for helping the Komagata Maru incident get national attention. “I feel great, excited”, Sandhu said. “I expected not to be and I’m still processing it”.
Fast forward more than a century and South Asians are the single largest visible minority community in the country, with Statistics Canada estimating that they will represent one in every three people in the Toronto area alone by 2031.
“But the history of our country is one in which we constantly challenge ourselves, and each other, to extend our personal definitions of who is a Canadian”, continued the Prime Minister.
To cut a long story short, in May of 2006, when Stephen Harper was Prime Minister, the Professor Mohan Singh Memorial Foundation of Canada held a solemn ceremony in Stanley Park to mark the 92nd anniversary of the arrival of the Komagata Maru in Burrard Inlet.
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivers a formal apology for the Komagata Maru incident in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada, May 18, 2016. The Liberal promise to do so was on Randhawa’s mind last fall as she prepared to cast a ballot for the first time in a Canadian election. “Still, we offer it sincerely”.
“For all these things we are truly sorry”, Trudeau said.
For Kazimi, who was born and raised in India and moved to the GTA for a scholarship studying film production at York University, “what was even more surprising, actually, was the way his words opened up the conversation”.
Opposition leaders also apologized.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a formal apology yesterday for an incident in which a shipload of Indians were refused entry into Canada more than 100 years ago.
“Before entering political life, the Minister was the commanding officer of The British Columbia Regiment Duke of Connaught’s Own – the same regiment that once forced out the Komagata Maru”, Trudeau said.
A Japanese steamship, the Komagata Maru, arrived in Canada on 23 May 1914 from Hong Kong, carrying 376 migrants. At the same time, Canada was welcoming record levels of European immigration.
The filmmaker asserts that what the rules really “sought to do was block immigration from British India at the time, without mentioning race”.
Deo is past-president of the Khalsa Diwan Society, which in 1914 brought food and supplies to the Japanese steamer while lobbying unsuccessfully for Canadian authorities to let the passengers disembark. We believe it is essential that the Komagata Maru incident, as well as the anti-immigrant sentiment that fueled this incident, be made a part of our provincial education curricula. It was ultimately forced to return to India. A riot ensued, and 19 passengers were killed and more than 200 arrested. He said “it is important that this chapter is neither forgotten nor ignored”.
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Mr. Sandhu has lobbied the federal government for more than 20 years for an apology, saying his community is not looking for financial redress.
