In 2007, Chinese language media in Ontario began coverage about an interesting phenomenon: in and around popular Lake Simcoe fishing spots, reports of incidents where anglers of Asian decent were targeted for assault. Most commonly, Asian anglers or their equipment were thrown into the water. An inquiry by the Ontario Human Rights Commission found evidence of racial harassment that ranged from the use of racial slurs to stone-throwing.

Coverage of the issue increased when at the end of one incident, a car accident left a young man in a coma. Today, the defendant charged in that Sept. 16, 2007 incident was found guilty of assault and criminal negligence.

Toronto Star

The incident at the heart of the case involved a confrontation between a group of anglers and several local area youths in Georgina Township. When some of the anglers left in their Civic, Trever Middleton, of Sutton, Ontario, pursued in his Ford F-150 truck.

Middleton had claimed that he had tried to overtake the Civic on a narrow road to force it to stop. Police would testify during trial that they found impressions from the Civic’s licence plate on the front bumper of Middleton’s truck.

The Civic later hit a tree, ejecting passenger Shayne Berwick, who is now confined to a wheelchair due to severe brain damage.

The tragic result of this incident is paralleled by a recent case in Cook County, Illinois, which ended only this past Friday with the sentencing of local area man, John Haley. Haley was sentenced to 10 years on a conviction for involuntary manslaughter for the death 62 year-old Vietnamese immigrant, Du Doan.

Haley had been drunk when, in September, 2007, he had pushed Doan into Chicago’s Montrose Harbor. Like the Asian anglers in Georgina Township, Doan had been fishing; and like the youths there, Haley had probably been just looking for a lark.

In Cook County, Haley’s mother recounted how her son had led a troubled life, beginning at age 10 with the death of his alcoholic father. Haley is also serving a concurrent sentence for assault, from an identical incident involving another man, who survived his push into the water.

To a Canadian born to first generation Chinese immigrants, these two stories and their parallels are striking and provocative. On the one hand, sharing the ethnicity of those attacked, my first inclination was to repeat the calls to investigate the possible racial motivations in these cases. Whether or not to classify the Ontario incidents as racial motivated, or potential hate-crimes, was controversial when the incidents first came to light.

Although the timing of the two cases seems to be almost congruent, I feel more inclined to doubt that the Chicago incident was racially motivated. In that case, the defendant seems to have had a troubled life, and to have targeted more indiscriminately the victims of his drunken pranks. He has made remorseful statements – although these could equally be motivated by the first-degree murder charge on which his jury had acquitted him.

In contrast, what excuse does Middleton and his friends have? A belief that Asian anglers are more likely to over-exploit resources or fish illegally? An alcoholic father whose early death left him without positive male role models? Or simply the attitudes that are acquired when living in an area that, according to a 2006 census, is made up of only about 4% visible minorities – as opposed to the ~22% in Ontario at large.

In any event, despite the differences, I will likely be refraining from fishing – on either side of the border.