i've been in more than a few places on three road north of Cook where all the signs are in chinese and when I tried to order I was answered in the same language as the signs.
Mel, when you are in town next time, I'll volunteer to be your tour guide and translator.
We'll order all the weird Asian foods that you won't find at Cookies.
I wouldn't really call that racism. I can't read those signs either and also won't patronize those places. Racism is when one is walking home from a new school in the suburbs, minding one's own business, when out of the blue, one would be swarmed simultaneously by dozens of kids that one didn't know, taunted, and pushed to the ground, and spit on, and called racist names, just for no reason other than one was different race. That's racism. 
Yes and no. Racism is defined differently by everyone. When the abuse becomes physical, it's considered hate crimes. I define racism as motives that make others feel terrible about being who they are to the point that they are embarrassed about their own race. This can be done verbally, or simply carried out by ignoring and isolating the person because he or she is different to the rest of the crowd.
I don't see too much of it in BC to be honest, or perhaps I just haven't lived outside of Metro Vancouver.
People here seem to be very willing to accept and learn about other cultures. You go into a Chinese restaurant, it's not unusual to see Caucasians, Chinese, East Indians all dining in there. I actually find that minorities in Canada often call it racism too quickly whenever there are conflicts or misunderstandings. Somehow we are quite sensitive about the words we use here and are afraid of offending anyone unintentionally. To be honest I haven't really seen too many incidents that I would consider as racist compared to what I experienced in Australia (over 15 years ago, things are probably quite different now). Being spat on by pedestrians while riding past them on your bicycle, being heckled on the street while everyone else looked on without any interest to intervene, being ignored at restaurants and shouted at when asking for service were some of the more minor doodoos that we had to put up with back there.
To those who have never been recipients of racism, of course it's hard to understand why anyone normal would fire out racial slurs for no apparent reasons. In fact, that's how it happens most of the time when minorities experience racism.
For the Chilliwack River, conflicts arise at times because we have anglers from different cultures participating in this fishery. Different cultures have different habits, different space of comfort, different ideas on what fishing is about. These differences will clash with each other again and again. Asians usually see fishing as a celebratory social gathering where people can catch fish together and have fun at the same time. That obviously only works somewhat for the salmon fishery and does not work for the steelhead fishery. Asians also see fishing as a way of harvesting food, even if it is recreationally. There are definitely issues that need to be addressed, education needs to be done, some tolerance needs to be shown. Overall, based on what I have observed from both the rivers and a popular Chinese fishing forum in BC, I have to say the Chinese community is trying quite hard to make sure rules are followed and nobody is stepping on others' toes. There will always be some who choose not to fit in and do whatever they want, but don't use their actions to generalize the rest.
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Topic: Haters on the River (Read 21944 times)