Historically, Black Canadians, being descended from either Black Loyalists or American run-away slaves, had supported the Conservative Party as the party most inclined to maintain ties with Britain, which was seen as the nation that had given them freedom. The Liberals were historically the party of continentalism (i.e. moving Canada closer to the United States), which was not an appealing position for most Black Canadians. In the first half of the 20th century, Black Canadians usually voted solidly for the Conservatives as the party seen as the most pro-British. Until the 1930s–1940s, the majority of Black Canadians lived in rural areas, mostly in Ontario and Nova Scotia, which provided a certain degree of insulation from the effects of racism. The self-contained nature of the rural Black communities in Ontario and Nova Scotia with Black farmers clustered together in certain rural counties meant that racism was not experienced on a daily basis. The centre of social life in the rural black communities were the churches, usually Methodist or Baptist, and ministers were generally the most important community leaders. Through anti-Black racism did exist in Canada, as the Black population in Canada was extremely small, there was nothing comparable to the massive campaign directed against Asian immigration, the so-called "Yellow Peril", which was a major political issue in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in British Columbia. In 1908, the Canadian Brotherhood of Railroad Employees and Other Transport Workers (CBRE) was founded under the leadership of Aaron Mosher, an avowed white supremacist who objected to white workers like himself having to work alongside black workers. In 1909 and 1913, Mosher negotiated contracts with the Inter Colonial Railroad Company, where he worked as a freight handler, that imposed segregation in workplaces while giving increased wages and benefits to white workers alone. The contracts that Mosher negotiated in 1909 and 1913 served as the basis for the contracts that other railroad companies negotiated with the CBRE. To fight against the discriminatory treatment, the all-black Order of Sleeping Car Porters union was founded in 1917 to fight to end segregation on the railroad lines and to fight for equal pay and benefits.