news Description
  • June 15, 2023

Toronto Book Launch of White Riot:
The 1907 Anti-Asian Riots of Vancouver

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/toronto-book-launch-of-white-riot-the-1907-anti-asian-riots-of-vancouver-tickets-622563573407

On Thursday, May 18 from 5:30-7:30pm, the Asian Canadian Labour Alliance and Arsenal Pulp Press are pleased to present the Toronto launch of WHITE RIOT: The 1907 Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver by Henry Tsang, a book of essays and photographs that document the anti-Asian riots in Vancouver in 1907 in the context of contemporary anti-Asian sentiment.

This FREE event takes place at the D.G. Ivey Library, New College-University of Toronto, 20 Willcocks Street. Books available for purchase and signing by Henry, Asian Canadian Labour Alliance, and other contributors in attendance.

FREE roti dinner (vegan and gluten free options available) will be served at 5:30. Program starts at 6:00pm.


White Riot: The 1907 Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver explores the conditions leading up to and the impact of a demonstration and parade in Vancouver, Canada, organized by the Asiatic Exclusion League and the ensuing mob attack on the city’s Chinese Canadian and Japanese Canadian communities. Emblematic of a systemically racist era, White Riot reveals the social and political environment of the time, when racialized communities were targeted through legislated as well as physical acts of exclusion and violence.

Based on 360 Riot Walk, a 360-degree video walking tour by artist and author Henry Tsang, White Riot offers an intersectional approach to this pivotal moment in the history of racialized communities and a cultural and social context for understanding for the current wave of anti-Asian sentiment.

Includes essays by the Asian Canadian Labour Alliance, Paul Englesberg, Melody Ma, Angela May and Nicole Yakashiro, Jeffery R. Masuda, Aaron Franks, Audrey Kobayashi and Trevor Wideman, and Andy Yan, with a foreword by Patricia E. Roy.