Donica Belisle

Indenture and Canadian Sugar in Navua, Fiji

The Vancouver-Fiji Sugar Company ran a mill and plantations at Navua, Fiji, from 1905 to 1922. It was a subsidiary of BC Sugar, western Canada’s largest sugar corporation. People from India, brought to Fiji under indenture, lived and worked on the Vancouver-Fiji Sugar Company’s plantations until 1920, when indenture officially ended in Fiji. This research addresses the Vancouver-Fiji Sugar Company, the people on its plantations, and the communities that emerged in Navua. It asks how a Canadian corporation profited from indenture, and how girmitiyas (indentured people from India in Fiji) pressed for its abolition and fairer terms. Research on BC Sugar’s Vancouver refinery and its advertising is in Cane Sugar in Western Canada. See also Essays.
Loaded sugar cane cars on a tramway, with the Vancouver-Fiji Sugar Company mill behind, Fiji, 1910s.
Sugar cane on train, with mill behind, Fiji, 1910s. City of Vancouver Archives, AM1592-S5-F009, item 2011-092.2032. Public domain.
Book · Essays · Review Essays · Talks · Exhibitions

Book

Sugarcane field.

Indenture and Canadian Sugar in Fiji: People, Power, and Profit across the British Empire. Forthcoming.

This book is about the people and places that grew western Canadian sugar. Blending the approaches of commodity history, indenture history, and reparatory history, it focuses on two Canadian corporations, BC Sugar and its subsidiary, the Vancouver-Fiji Sugar Company, which operated in Navua, Fiji, from 1905 to 1922, and shows how they, together with the people and lands they depended on, helped build western Canada’s sugar trade.

The Vancouver-Fiji Sugar Company mill with its tall chimney stack, seen across the Navua river, with two small rowboats on the water and a tree fern in the foreground, 1900s.
The Vancouver-Fiji Sugar Company mill at Navua, seen across the river, 1900s. City of Vancouver Archives, AM1592-S17-01, item 2011-092.1589. Public domain.

Essays

  • 2024
    Violence and Profit: Canada’s Debts to the Girmitiyas of Fiji
    British Columbia History Magazine, Summer 2024. Open Access
    BC Sugar was the nation’s fifth largest sugar company. But what many Canadians don’t know is that it also had sugar plantations abroad. This essay documents this history.
  • 2023
    Canadian Sugar Was Built on Violence
    Originally published as “Uncovering the Violent History of the Canadian Sugar Industry,” The Conversation, 15 March 2023. Republished in Salon, the Vancouver Sun, and other outlets. Updated July 2026. Republished with the new author’s note in NiCHE, 21 September 2026. Open Access
    This essay follows BC Sugar to its overseas plantations.

Review Essays

Talks

  • 2025
    “Indian Indenture and Canadian Violence in Colonial Fiji”
    With Rizwaan Abbas. Invited Lecture, Montreal History Group May Day Conference, York University, Toronto, June 2025.
Two library shelves of books on Fiji and the Pacific, with worn spines and call-number labels.
Fiji histories on the shelves of the University of the South Pacific Library, Laucala Campus, Suva, 2023. Photograph by Donica Belisle.

Exhibitions

  • 2025
    “Echoes of Home: Tracing Girmitiya History.”
    Exhibit, Surrey City Hall, Surrey, British Columbia, June 2025. Presented by The Nameless Collective and No Ties 1879. Contributed research findings on the Vancouver-Fiji Sugar Company’s plantations at Navua, Fiji, and images from the City of Vancouver Archives.

How to Cite

Belisle, Donica. “Indenture and Canadian Sugar in Navua, Fiji.” Donica Belisle. donicabelisle.ca/sugarandnavua.html. Accessed