Chatelaine magazine, Alberta magistrate Emily Murphy, the local Council of Women and the Regina Women's Labour League all spouted racist paranoia about the perils of white women in the clutches of "yellow" men.
Petite and elegant Viola Desmond, a beautician from Halifax, was bodily dragged out of a New Glasgow movie for the crime of sitting downstairs in a seat she had paid for. She was manhandled, bruised and jailed overnight (she sat bolt upright all night, wearing her white gloves) before a travesty of a trial. Her later legal challenge of Canada's colour bar failed dismally-and that was 1946.
Eliza Sero, a Mohawk widow and mother of eight, whose oldest son died in the trenches of World War One, went to court to protest the seizing of her costly seine net from reserve fishing grounds near Belleville. She, too, lost.
If we want to break through the Canadian mythology of racelessness and come to grips with the whole of our past, both the splendid and the rotten, we could do no better than open Backhouse's book.
Michele Landsberg is a feminist author and Toronto Star columnist.
