Alan Webster Neill
Alan Webster Neill (October 6, 1868 - July 7, 1960) was a Canadian politician. He was mayor of Port Alberni, MLA for that city in 1890s[1] and MP for it from 1921 to 1945.
He was first elected to the House of Commons of Canada in 1921 as the Progressive member for Comox—Alberni, British Columbia.[2]
In 1925 he was re-elected as an Independent and was re-elected four more times before retiring at the 1945 federal election. Throughout the six general elections he contested he was never opposed by a candidate for the Liberal Party of Canada.[3]
Neil was an ardent and vocal opponent of Japanese immigration to Canada saying in the House of Commons in 1922: "Is it better to fight now when Japan controls only one-half of British Columbia or to leave the fighting until ten years hence when she will, by peaceful conquest, have absorbed the whole of British Columbia and have thousands of her trained troops scattered throughout British Columbia and the other provinces beyond the Rocky Mountains?"[4]
He was a member of the anti Asiatic League, fighting against rights for Japanese and Chinese Canadians from at least the 1920s on. One of his colleagues in government once described Neill's statements as "flesh-creeping".
Prior to that , Neill was the Indian Agent for the West Coast of Vancouver Island enforcing federal government policies of assimilation and the residential school system.
A Middle School in Port Alberni was named A W Neill Middle School in his honour.
Neill Street is also named for him.
In 2002, Christopher Stevenson, a student at Malaspina University College, discovered evidence of Neill's racist legacy while doing a history paper on Japanese Internment for a university course. Some years later during a discussion on social media, he brought up his findings with Christopher Alemany , a city councillor for Port Alberni , and Rosemarie Buchanan, a school trustee with Sd70 (Alberni). They took the issue to their respective elected bodies for consideration and removal of his name from the street and school. City Council refused to take action, despite Alemany's efforts, but the school district kept the door open on changing the schools name, pending research and policy work on the issue of renaming generally. It remains before the SD currently.[5]
In 2018, it was discovered that Neill had a racist covenant placed on his house in Port Alberni (built in 1909), forbidding any persons of Asian descent from living in it, aside from servants. Alberni District Secondary School , Port Alberni, BC students Sarah Higginson, Katie Sara and Justin McFadden from Anne Ostwald's Social Justice class successfully petitioned to have the covenant removed from the house title.[6]
References
- Parliamentary Guide 1898/9, p. 268
- Alan Webster Neill – Parliament of Canada biography
- History of Federal Ridings since 1867
- Salt Spring's Japanese Community
- https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/indian-avenue-neill-port-alberni-chris-alemany-christopher-stevenson-1.3920977
- https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/port-alberni-vancouver-island-racist-covenant-property-title-1.5277395