Pacific Canada In Canadian History

A New Academic Study of Canada

Apr 10, 2009 Allan Cho

"Pacific Canada" is a term that reflects the diversity and regional differences across Canada. The city of Vancouver is one such example of such diversity.

Recently, scholars have taken on the term “Pacific Canada” as an academic study with its own set of articulations and engagements with the long history of interactions of peoples on the West Coast of Canada. What is once viewed as a geographical circumference around the Pacific Rim has expanded into an intellectual study of migration patterns and influences.

Although part of Pacific Canada deals with the historic parallels with what has happened south of the border in the United States, it also builds upon existing institutional and scholarly interest that focuses on the long history of trans-Pacific migration to Canada.

From Atlantic-Canada to Pacific-Canada

It was not until very recently that the history of First Nations and migrants from Asia were excluded and marginalized from the mainstream narrative Canadian history. Just as Vancouver is recognized for its own history as a global city that has been tied to both the Pacific and Atlantic worlds, other Canadian cities such as Toronto (which not has more Chinese Canadians than Vancouver) and small towns throughout Canada were built along railroad lines and tied to the trans-Pacific world through trade.

Pacific Canada is intended to study the many erased or ignored histories. While French-Native descendents the Metis are a prominent fixture in official Canadian histories, local engagements between Chinese migrant men and Native women who entered into intimate relations in rural British Columbia.

Trans-Pacific Asia

By refocusing our geographical lenses, this forces us to see parallels beyond the histories of French/English Canada, to larger histories in the other parts of the Americas and across the southwest Pacific. Pacific Canada as a term calls not for a focus on the settler history of Asians in Canada; rather, it address the role of trans-Pacific migration in multiple directions throughout the Pacific region, and places the long history of racism and exploitation of Asian labour within the much grander context of expropriation and displacement of First Nations people by European colonialism across the Americas and the Pacific Islands.

In conclustion, Pacific Canada is encompasses the circular flow of not only migrant bodies, but also global capital, consumer goods, and regional cultures as a result of trans-Pacific migration. If we look closely, pacific coastal cities such as Vancouver, Los Angeles, and San Francisco are more similar to cities on the side of the Pacific such as Hong Kong, Sydney, and Shanghai, than to the hinterlands in which each of these cities surround. Vancouver is therefore a good case study of what we can call a 'Pacific Canada'.

Sources:

“Refracting Pacific Canada,” Introduction and Guest Editor, Special Double issue of BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly no. 156/157 (Winter/Spring 2007/2008)

"Towards a Pacific History of the Americas," Introduction to special issue of Amerasia Journal entitled "Pacific Canada: Beyond the 49th Parallel," guest edited with Guy Beauregard (Los Angeles: Asian American Studies Center, Winter 2007)

"Los Angeles and American Studies in a Pacific World of Migrations," American Quarterly vol. 56, no. 3 (September 2004):531-543.

The copyright of the article Pacific Canada In Canadian History in Canadian History is owned by Allan Cho. Permission to republish Pacific Canada In Canadian History in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Pacific Canada Refacted

Vancouver Chinatown