Richmond residents join in solidarity against racist flyers

While Richmond RCMP continue to investigate the distribution of racist flyers to homes in Steveston, dozens of residents gathered Sunday to protest the offensive pamphlets.

"I'm a little ... surprised and sad for that because we love Canada," said Monika Wu at the Brighouse SkyTrain station where she and others held Canada flag signs that read, "We are proud Canadians,"and "No hate."

"We love this country, we love our multicultural society ... people come from different backgrounds and countries, we are [a] big family."

The flyer shows a caricature drawing of a man laughing and an image of a Chinese flag with the words, "The Chinese are taking over," in bold letters.

At the bottom it reads, "Let's save Richmond."

Richmond has one of the highest proportion of immigrants compared to other cities in Canada, with China being many peoples' country of origin.

"We care enough to stand up to tell people our commitment to this city," saidEdward Liu. "We are just like anyone else living here. We are Richmond citizens, we raise our kids here, we pay taxes for the services we receive, we are like any other resident here."

Linda Reid, the local MLA for Richmond East and speaker for the Legislative Assembly of B.C. also attended the rally to speak out against the racist materials.

"Horrible, cowardly, unethical, lacking any kind of personal integrity," she said.

"At the end of the day, this is how we choose to live together and we need to stand together and fight for what we believe in, which is equality of opportunity."

with files from Tina Lovgreen.