Canadian Holy War: A Story of Clans, Tongs, Murder, and Bigotry

Ian Macdonald · Betty O'Keefe

Feb. 2011 · Heritage House Publishing Co

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Scottish nursemaid Janet Smith was the victim of a 1924 tragedy that ignited racial tension in a very young Vancouver. At the core of the issue were the mysterious circumstances surrounding Smith's death, particularly the fact that the only other adult in the house at the time was the Chinese houseboy. When Smith's death was followed by the assassination of Davie Lew, a well-known Chinese man, it only strengthened the European view that Vancouver's Asian community was a hotbed of violence and corruption.

Newspaper editors and most of Vancouver's white community raised an outcry, charging the police with incompetence and demanding arrests, while Presbyterian indignation called for law and order as well as an end to Chinese immigration. Before the summer was over, the tongs of Chinatown and the clans of Canada's West Coast were set to defend their own, and one Scottish minister went so far as to declare it a time of "holy war."

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Ian Macdonald was born in Glasgow, Scotland. He was a reporter for the Victoria Times Colonist, the Vancouver Province, and the Vancouver Sun. He was parliamentary correspondent in Victoria and bureau chief in Ottawa for the Ottawa Sun. He worked in media relations for federal ministers and the prime minister’s office, and was head of Transport Canada Information. Ian has written for magazines, radio, television and film.

Betty O'Keefe was a Vancouver Province reporter for seven years in the 1950s, working as children's columnist, features writer and church editor. She then worked in corporate communications for 15 years and was commissioned to write two corporate biographies: Brenda: The Story of a Mine and The Mines of Babine Lake. Betty was the first woman to head the public-relations committee for the Mining Association of BC and the first woman to chair the information department of the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association.