Pier Perspectives Blog

  • “The Immigration Act a weapon”: Panama Maru and the Exclusion of Immigrants, 1913

    In 1913, Canadian immigration authorities attempted to exclude a group of passengers aboard Panama Maru, mainly Sikhs. Tested in a deportation hearing, their efforts failed on a technicality. The admission of the passengers ushered in a rapid rewriting of clauses intended to exclude Asian immigrants which were central to the better-known 1914 exclusion of Komagata Maru.