Article content

Last year, two activists appeared in front of Richmond City Council with a 1,000-signature petition and a plea to force local businesses to advertise in one of Canada’s official languages.

“We, the new visible minorities, are experiencing exclusion,” said resident Ann Merdinyan, in front of a slideshow of the city’s Chinese-only signs. “WHY?” read the caption below a photo of a Chinese-only bus ad. “Is this INCLUSIVE TO ALL?” read another.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Richmond, B.C., considers banning Chinese-only signs amid uproar over city's 'un-Canadian' advertisements Back to video

Richmond’s mayor and councillors — most of them English-speaking white people — told the activists to take a hike.

“With a population of half our people or more being of Chinese origin you can’t be surprised you’ll see some Chinese language,” Mayor Malcolm Brodie, mayor of the Vancouver suburb that is Canada’s only majority-Chinese city.

We, the new visible minorities, are experiencing exclusion

Eighteen months later, something has changed. In a unanimous decision last week, Richmond reversed its earlier stance by directing its lawyers to figure out whether it could legally start cracking down on Chinese-only signs.