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I am going to have to invite myself over.
What have the Brits ever done for us?
- Thread starter Kirkhill
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I am going to have to invite myself over.
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50 years of owning Landrover and I have character and gear oil leaking out of every orifice.
GK .Dundas
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There may children reading this fora
Let's try and keep your sex life out of it shall we .....
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Lucas, Prince of Darkness.
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We have it at least once a week around here. The wife and I can both knock out a pretty good pudding
daftandbarmy
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My wife got really good at them, but we stopped having them since my daughter became celiac, as she absolutely loved them and it would be cruel to eat them in front of her.
OldSolduer
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CountDC
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Everyone needs a little cruelty in their life, builds character plus it teaches them that just because they have a problem doesn't mean everyone has to suffer. Unfortunately my wife doesn't agree so our kids get spoiled.
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John A. Macdonald was a Brit of his times. Which is to say he was a liberal.
The Truth About the Chinese Head Tax and Sir John A. Macdonald | C2C Journal
Greg Piasetzki looks at Canada’s Chinese head tax and the role played by Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald.
c2cjournal.ca
"Macdonald resisted demands for anti-Chinese policies from his provincial and federal opponents for many years"
"When the issue of Chinese competition with white labour was raised in Parliament in 1882, Macdonald responded,:
“No complaints have reached the Government of serious interference with white labor in British Columbia, from the influx of Chinese labor. In fact, there is such a want of white labor in British Columbia, that if you wish to have the railway finished within any reasonable time, there must be no such step against Chinese labor…At present it is simply a question of alternatives – either you must have this labor, or you cannot have the railway.” "
....
"University of Victoria law professor John McLaren explained in a 1991 article in the Manitoba Law Journal, “Between 1878 and the late 1880s, the Legislature of British Columbia enacted or approved a series of discriminatory measures designed either to bar the entry of Chinese into the Province, or to make life intolerable for those already resident.”
"The first of these was 1878’s An Act to Provide for the Better Collection of Provincial Taxes from the Chinese, which imposed a quarterly $10 tax on all Chinese residents over the age of 12. A key figure in this and subsequent racist laws was Noah Shakespeare, the Victoria, B.C.-based leader of the Workingmen’s Protection Association (WPA), an early labour association whose primary purpose was to lobby for restrictions on Chinese immigration.
"After the law was passed, Shakespeare got himself appointed tax collector on a commission basis; that is, he received a share of the taxes he collected. When Chinese residents refused to pay, he eagerly seized their property. Shakespeare went from leader of the WPA to mayor of Victoria and then MP in Ottawa, where he continued his campaign. Historian Patricia E. Roy has called him B.C.’s “first professional anti-Chinese agitator.”
"To their credit, Chinese residents launched various political and legal defences against this discriminatory legal movement. In 1878, after one of Shakespeare’s assistants seized the property of a merchant named Tai Sing, the victim sued. Tai Sing v Maguire was heard in the Supreme Court of British Columbia by Justice John Hamilton Gray. Gray struck down the Chinese tax act as intruding on federal jurisdiction over immigration, trade, commerce and treaty-making. Beyond the constitutional aspects, Gray also had this to say about the legislators’ motives: “From the examination of its enacting clauses, it is plain that it was not intended to collect revenue, but to drive the Chinese from the country.
"In another case involving anti-Chinese municipal action, R v Mee Wah, Chief Justice Mathew Baillie Begbie also decided that he need not rely solely on a lack of constitutionality to rule against it. That it turned on a matter of explicit racial discrimination was sufficient, he said, noting that the ordinance in question “only operates against a special race” and was therefore illegal.
The resolutions of these and other cases demonstrate the early Canadian court system’s admirable and robust defence of individual and minority rights in the face of rampant local prejudice. That this came long before the appearance of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms should underline the sense of fairness and justice inherent to the British parliamentary and justice systems. Note also that Macdonald was at the apex of this system in Canada, having appointed Justices Gray, Begbie and all the other judges in these cases.
As for his own thoughts on human rights, already when debating Confederation in 1865 Macdonald had explicitly noted the importance of protecting minority rights under the British parliamentary system:
“We will enjoy here that which is the great test of constitutional freedom – we will have the rights of minorities respected. In all countries the rights of the majority take care of themselves, but it is only in countries like England, enjoying constitutional liberty, and safe from the tyranny of a single despot or of an unbridled democracy, that the rights of minorities are regarded.”
...
"In 1884, the B.C. legislature passed an Act to Prevent the Immigration of Chinese, making it illegal for any Chinese person not already resident to enter B.C. This act was rightly vacated by Macdonald’s government under federal disallowance powers as unconstitutional. (Ottawa’s power to disallow provincial legislation on such grounds was much used in Macdonald’s time; today it remains on the books but has long since passed out of fashion.)"
"Also in 1884, to raise the heat on Macdonald’s government MP Shakespeare placed a motion before the House of Commons demanding a federal head tax on Chinese immigrants. (A similar motion the year before had been deferred.) His lengthy argument reviewed the experiences in other countries, including a complete ban imposed by the U.S., various head taxes in Australian territories and outbreaks of racial violence in the Philippines and Java. In speaking in favour of Shakespeare’s motion, MP Edgar Baker of Victoria reviewed the economic complaints against Chinese immigrants:
"“Now, the Chinese work for $1 or $1.25 per day; and it must be remembered that they can live on from 10 to 15 cents per day, according to their mode of living, and they think they live most sumptuously. With white people it is different. Most of them have wives and families, and they can only expect to get the current wages of the place which are $2 to $2.50 per day…
"They come for a brief period; they live on a very small amount of money; and after passing two or three years, they go back to China, taking with them from $750 to $1,000 each, and remain there for the rest of their lives…Another reason that makes them undesirable is, that they will not marry with any of the women in the country. If they did, I have no doubt a very desirable race would spring up.”
Shakespeare and Baker represented the unfortunate mainstream in B.C. politics regarding Chinese immigration.
"No doubt the politically astute Macdonald realized he could not ignore this issue forever. He tried to delay the inevitable by arguing that other public works projects, such as a Vancouver Island railway and a drydock, still required ample supplies of Chinese labour. To no avail."
....
"Eventually, he was forced to accept reality and offer Shakespeare a deal: if he withdrew his motion, a “Commission should be issued” to investigate Chinese immigration.
"The Royal Commission
"On July 4, 1884, Macdonald’s government appointed the Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration with two commissioners at its head. One was Joseph-Adolphe Chapleau, federal Secretary of State and former premier of Quebec. Chapleau was a close ally of Macdonald who later stuck by him during the violent protests in Quebec over the execution of Louis Riel. The other was Justice Gray, who had ruled in favour of Chinese interests in the Tai Sing case. The crafty Macdonald had thus given himself a twofer: in getting Shakespeare to drop his troublesome motion he had created a commission guaranteed to provide a result consistent with his own views. Early that August, Baker groused in the Victoria Daily Times that “it was an insult to us to have this commission appointed” with such liberal-minded folk in charge.
.....
Macdonald has been handed responsibility for Canada’s racist immigration policies, in particular the Chinese head tax. It was imposed – reluctantly – in 1885 by Macdonald’s Conservative government, levying a fee of $50 on Chinese workers seeking to immigrate to Canada. But his Liberal successor, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, raised the head tax to $100 and later $500. And in 1923 Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, another Liberal, replaced the head tax with an outright ban on all Chinese immigration. Yet it is Macdonald alone who takes the blame.
daftandbarmy
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Not killing 300,000-ish French colonists after The Conquest ca.1760 and, largely as a result, making a pretty unique and inspiring country that attracted millions of immigrants looking for a better deal than anything the Old Country could offer … Canada.
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It is a crime against humanity that Sir John A and Matthew Begbie have been slandered in their graves…
Oldgateboatdriver
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They didn't do that out of the kindness of their heart. They did it as a survival necessity.
At the time of the conquest, the 300,000-ish colonist already knew the "real" French didn't care for them and had already decided they were here to stay, on their own, and under the boot of whatever European country. They looked at the French elites that led them as occupier. So long as they were left free to farm their land, cut their wood, hunt and trade their skins, they couldn't care less who the occupier was. That is why (little known and seldom repeated fact) they didn't even bother to intervene in the conflict they saw between the French regulars and the English regulars that led to the "conquest".
If they had intervened, on the French side, the English (those who survived) would be on their way back to England with their tails between their legs.
That's because the 300,000-ish colonists, or about 95% of them, had guns, powder and bullets of the same quality and level as the soldiers of France and England, but had learned to fight with the First Nations - by skirmishes in the forest - rather than in slowly advancing platoons in line.
That's also why the English, outnumbered 60 to 1, did everything to keep on the good side of the colonists after the conquest.
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All we can do is keep telling the other story.
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They were encouraged by all those French that had found refuge under the Union Flag - people like John Ligonier of Castres, Commander-in-Chief of the (British) Forces.
daftandbarmy
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Indeed... and growing unrest in the 13 colonies made a peaceful coexistence with New France, through guaranteeing their language, religion and legal systems, a high priority.
A great example of the compromises and accidents that litter Canadian history dominated by two ever present themes:
- British efforts to save money while maintaining a regular income from North American resources, and
- Aggressive American expansionism
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“That's also why the English, outnumbered 60 to 1, did everything to keep on the good side of the colonists after the conquest”and Canada and the Quebec Anglophone community in particular, are now and have been reaping the consequences of that particular decision for the past60 years
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