Tom MacInnes
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Thomas Robert Edward MacInnes (né McInnes) (October 29, 1867 — February 11, 1951) was a Canadian poet and writer.
Born Thomas Robert Edward McInnes near Dresden, Ontario, he was raised in New Westminster, British Columbia.
He wrote various regional stories about Canada, as well as poetry and philosophical essays on the words of Lao Zi. In 1909, MacInnes was commissioned by the British Columbia provincial government to "investigate and report upon the nature and present status of the Indian Title to certain lands known as 'Indian Lands' in Canada, with special reference to British Columbia." (Foster, 177) The report he submitted, Report on the Indian Title, is historically significant because it is an early acknowledgement produced through official white channels that BC natives were unfairly - and illegally - dispossessed from the lands they occupied since time immemorial. The government of the day, however, did not release the report, nor accept its conclusions.
MacInnes did not take an active interest in native land claim issues after 1909, but he would achieve local notoriety in British Columbia for his views on race, which radically departed from the progressive outlook contained in his land title report. His book, Oriental Occupation of British Columbia (1927), for example proposes that British Columbia adopt apartheid-like policies in dealing with what he perceived to be an undesirable influx of Chinese immigrants.
It seems MacInnes's views of non-whites may have been shaped from his experiences living in China between 1916 and 1927. In China, he was working with nationalist leader Sun Yat Sen to develop a tramway system in Canton, and was the only foreign director of the Kwontong Tramway Company from 1919 to 1924. To the entrepreneur's chagrin, control of the project was "seized by Bolsheviks and blackguards," of the Communist Party of China during its protracted revolution under the leadership of Mao Zedong. If this experience may have turned MacInnes against Asians, it definitely shaped his view of Communists. Back in Vancouver, he became a leading activist in the fascist scene, broadcasting his views in a weekly radio show. He was banned by the CBC in 1937 for his extreme antilabour views, but was able to resume his broadcasts after threatening legal action. He was active in the Nationalist League of Canada, Canadian Union of Fascists, and the Asiatic Exclusion League, although he claimed his role in the latter was as an agent provacateur.
MacInnes' father, Thomas Robert McInnes, served as Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia from 1897 until 1900.
[edit] Bibliography
- A Romance of the Lost - 1908
- Lonesome Bar - 1909
- A Romance of the Lost and Other Poems - 1909
- In Amber Lands - 1910
- Rhymes of a Rounder, A Fool of Joy - 1918
- Roundabout Rhymes - 1923
- The Complete Poems of Tom MacInnes - 1923
- Chinook Days - 1926
- Oriental Occupation of British Columbia - 1927
- High Low Along: A Didactic Poem - 1934
- In the Old of My Age - 1947
[edit] Sources
Hamar Foster, "A Romance of the Lost: The Role of Tom MacInnes in the History of the British Columbia Indian Land Question," Essays in the History of Canadian Law, Vol. VIII. Ed. G. Baine Baker and Jim Phillips. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999, 171-212.
Peter Ward, White Canada Forever: Popular Attitudes and Public Policy Toward Orientals in British Columbia, 3rd ed. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002.
