THE City of Vancouver that pioneering property magnate Jonathan Rogers helped build was very different from the multi-cultural Canadian metropolis of today, with its soaring property market dominated by rich Chinese buyers.

    And Rogers would not have approved.

    An 86-year-old covenant that Rogers attached to the sale of one of his many properties has revealed that he tried to ban any “Chinese, Japanese or other Asiatic” from ever owning or living on the site.

    The home, which Rogers sold to housewife Fannie Smith for C$775 in 1928, is back on the market for C$2.548 million (US$2.32 million). Two offers have been made in the past month — ironically, from a Chinese immigrant and a local family of Taiwanese origin.

    The old document, provided by real estate agent Wayne Hamill, casts a light on a time when Chinese immigration to Canada had been almost totally banned.

    The covenant requires that the buyer, “or his heirs, administrators, executors, successors, or [illegible], will not sell to, agree to sell to, rent to, lease to or permit or allow to occupy the said lands and premises, or any part thereof, any person of the Chinese, Japanese or other Asiatic race or to any Indian or Negro.”

    Such covenants, designed to protect Vancouver’s white identity, were then completely legal but have long since been rendered invalid by anti-discrimination laws. Addendums noting their invalidity are added by the BC Land Title and Survey Authority whenever they are noticed, but because such documents have not been digitized, it is impossible to simply modify them en masse.

    “What would normally happen is that a lawyer at some point would have caught this restrictive covenant, and although the covenant can’t actually come off the property, you would add an addendum, rendering it non-effective, non-binding,” said Hamill. “But you can’t just black it out.”

    The existence of the racist covenant on the property was reported by the CBC last month, but the illustrious identity of the seller who imposed it was not noted.

    Hamill said he thought that the 1928 seller was the tycoon of Rogers Sugar fame, but that man, Ben Rogers, is not connected to Jonathan Rogers, one of the most prominent figures in Vancouver’s early history.

    Jonathan Rogers, a Welsh immigrant who arrived in Vancouver in 1887, made a fortune out of property speculation and construction. He was the city’s first great property baron.

    Rogers, who died in 1945, was also prominent in city politics. (SD-Agencies)