In our final week of new material in the course for this term we will turn our minds to the concept of the "trust" and examine its features by looking at the history of the dispossession and internment of Japanese Canadians.
RCMP officer posting an evacuation notice to "male enemy aliens". Vancouver Public Library Historical Photographs @ Flickr Commons.
Learning Objectives
Learning objectives are statements about the skills, knowledge and attitudes learners will acquire or develop when they complete this lesson.
By the end of this week, you should be able to:
- Discuss the historical origins of the trust at common law and equity.
- Interpret and describe the basic structure of a trust, including the legal owner, the beneficial owner, the trust property and associated rights and obligations.
- Outline the legal structures established by the Canadian government to dispossess and alienate Japanese Canadians during WWII and critically analyze these structures from the perspective of trust law.
- Discuss and critically assess the relationship between ownership, recognition and citizenship.
In our final week of new material in the course for this term we will turn our minds to the concept of the “trust” and examine its features by looking at the history of the dispossession and internment of Japanese Canadians during the second world war. The targeting of Japanese Canadians living in British Columbia as “enemy aliens” remains one of the least-discussed examples of state-executed systematic racism in Canada’s history. In exploring this history, we will also begin to encounter the mid-century transition toward a new grammar of Anglo-Canadian legal thought: the modern style. As we will see, this period of Canadian history also has something important to tell us about the connection between property, ownership and citizenship.
Weekly Problem: A Letter to the Prime Minister
After you have read through the background for this week's lesson above, your next step is to review the weekly problem.
A letter to Prime Minister WIlliam Lyon Mackenzie King serves at the starting point for addressing the history of Japanese-Canadian dispossession and internment.