ABSTRACT

From the mid nineteenth century onward, with the rise of modern-day capitalism and colonial and imperial domination, social relations all over the world became more formally spatialised. 1 During this period, European authorities in metropole and colony established distinct and separate racialised spaces for the middle and working classes and for whites and Natives. Scholars have well documented these processes in geographical locales all over the world, revealing the ways in which spatial strategies of exclusion including racial segregation and containment figured prominently in European colonial and imperial projects. 2 Yet much of this literature has emphasised the role of exclusionary processes in colonial protectorates, where European expansion was aimed at the acquisition of resources and the exploitation of labour as opposed to large-scale and long-term white settlement. Keeping in mind that colonisation was uneven, differentiated, and complex around the globe, and thus cannot be uncritically dichotomised into ‘dependant’ versus ‘settler colonies’, 3 it remains important to explore how racial segregation figured in the making of ‘white settler societies’ like Canada, where colonisation went far beyond the appropriation of resources and labour, and was ultimately about European control over land. 4