Canada's Continuous Journey Regulation shuts out Indian immigration

Who: The Government of Canada, acting on a report by William Lyon Mackenzie King, then Deputy Minister of Labour, according to Pier 21, the Canadian Museum of Immigration. Those shut out were immigrants from India: South Asian Canadian Heritage says about 5,000 South Asians had settled in British Columbia by 1908, about 90 percent Sikh.

What: On 8 January 1908 an order in council barred any immigrant who, in the opinion of the Minister of the Interior, did not come by a continuous journey from the country of birth or citizenship, or on a ticket bought before leaving it, according to Wikipedia. It named no race and no country, but no ship sailed directly from India to Canada, so it blocked Indian immigration (Pier 21). Wikipedia adds that London warned Canada of possible nationalist anger in India, so officials chose to halt Indian immigration indirectly. The Sikh Heritage Museum of Canada says they also pressured the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company to end its service from India.

A second rule required Asian immigrants to hold $200. The museum says white immigrants needed only $25, and Canadian Sikh Heritage says $20. Wikipedia dates that order to 3 June 1908. The courts pushed back at first: on 24 March 1908 Justice Clement quashed the deportation orders of 105 Calcutta passengers of the SS Monteagle, because the Act did not authorise the Minister's decision. Parliament amended the Act on 10 April 1908, and a new Immigration Act in 1910 came with both rules reissued.

• November 1913: in the Panama Maru case Chief Justice Gordon Hunter ruled both orders invalid, and Ottawa reissued them in January 1914.
• 1914: Gurdit Singh chartered the Komagata Maru to test the rule, and only 22 of its 376 passengers were allowed to land, according to the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism.
• 1919: wives and children under eighteen were allowed in.
• 1921 and 1947: the $200 order was repealed on 25 July 1921 and the continuous journey order revoked on 26 November 1947, according to Wikipedia.

Where: Made in Ottawa and enforced at Canada's ports, above all Vancouver and Victoria on the Pacific coast.

Why it mattered: The rule ended Indian immigration for decades. Wikipedia's account of the 1907 violence says 2,623 Indian and South Asian immigrants entered Canada in 1907 to 1908 and six in 1908 to 1909, and Pier 21 says only 112 Indian immigrants entered between 1910 and 1920. Men could not bring their families: Canadian Sikh Heritage says only nine Punjabi women came to British Columbia between 1904 and 1920. Pier 21 says Canada's continuous journey rule responded to anti-Asian sentiment after the Vancouver violence of September 1907.