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While going over the papers for their new home on Victoria’s tree-lined Lynnfield Crescent six years ago, Rob Boyd and Gail Mudie were caught by the document’s mention of a curious “encumbrance.”

In between restrictions on the building of “chicken houses” and other unapproved dwellings, the house’s 1941 title explicitly forbade the home from being remotely associated with “Asiatics.”

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Specifically, the owners were forbidden to “sell, let or sublet to, or permit the said lands to be occupied by persons who are of the East Indian or Asiatic race or origin or to any corporate body, the shareholders of which are of East Indian or Asiatic race or origin.”

“I was surprised to see it in print,” said Mr. Boyd, a native Victorian. “It’s not just in the history books; it’s right on our land.”

It was an experience that is surprisingly common to homeowners on the West Coast. In a region hosting some of Canada’s most diverse and liberal neighbourhoods — and in a market where much of the home-buying is done by Asians — a number of still-valid Vancouver property titles retain the awkward marks of a “whites-only” age.