1942: British Columbia

The war was brought home to British Columbia on the evening of June 20, 1942, when a Japanese submarine shelled Estevan Point on Vancouver Island. It was the first attack against Canadian soil in the history of the Dominion. The shelling appears to have been directed primarily against the radio-telegraph station on Estevan Point, but none of the shells actually struck the building. Some windows were broken by concussion, but otherwise no damage was reported. An airfield is located near Estevan Point, but it escaped attack. Although blackouts were established throughout the coastal regions following the attack, there were no reports of other enemy visitors in the region during 1942.

Considerable difficulties were encountered during the year in working out a satisfactory program for dealing with British Columbia's 24,000 Japanese residents — comprising more than 90 per cent of all of the Japanese in Canada. Most of the Japanese were evacuated from coastal regions to interior provinces — particularly Alberta and Ontario — by the British Columbia Security Commission. The evacuation was not carried out, however, without serious disturbances. On May 13 a group of Japanese detained in the Immigration Building at Vancouver staged a riot, smashing windows and throwing chunks of plaster from the walls of their quarters into the street. Leaflets and other literature were distributed in the city protesting against the manner in which families were broken up in the evacuation proceedings. Difficulty was also encountered persuading the interior provinces, particularly Ontario, to accept the Japanese as a wartime measure. This was overcome by the signing of agreements between British Columbia and the other provinces providing for the return of the deportees at the end of the war. In October, however, a group of leading British Columbian citizens under the leadership of Mayor J. W. Cornett of Vancouver began to agitate against the return of Japanese after the war. Ian Mackenzie, British Columbia's representative in the Cabinet at Ottawa, declared that he favored the deportation of all Japanese — an impossible program in view of the presence among them of a considerable number of Canadian citizens of Japanese ancestry. But as a result of this agitation Japanese who have suffered deportation will undoubtedly face great difficulty in reestablishing themselves in British Columbian economic life.

Largely as a result of the war, the government of British Columbia during the year abandoned its ambitious attempt to discover oil in the Peace River district. The project was first undertaken by former Premier T. D. Pattullo as part of his drive against the oil interests, a fight that culminated in a program of provincial price control under a newly established Public Utilities Commission. Abandonment of the project was ordered by the coalition government headed by Premier John Hart after $600,000 had been spent without results.

The Sun Publishing Company, Ltd., pleaded guilty on Apr. 21 to a violation of the Defense of Canada Regulations by permitting the Vancouver Sun to publish on Mar. 13 certain information regarding the armament, condition, and equipment of certain of his Majesty's forces.

A report of the provincial department of labor issued late in August revealed the extent to which British Columbia benefited from the war expansion boom. Payrolls in the year 1941 were $230,000,000, surpassing those of the previous year by $51,000,000. All but one of the twenty-five employment categories showed a gain for the year, the largest advance being in shipbuilding. A particularly striking gain was noticeable in the employment of women.

The province voted overwhelmingly to release Prime Minister King from his commitment not to send drafted men outside of Canada in the Dominion-wide plebiscite held on that issue on Apr. 27.

The population of British Columbia in 1941 was 809,203 as compared with 694,263 in 1931, according to the figures of the decennial census released early in the year. This was one of the largest increases enjoyed by any of the provinces.