Free land, hard winters and closed doors. Learn the words that tell the story of who was welcomed to Canada, who was kept out, and how newcomers built lives on the prairies and in the cities.
These terms were extracted from Canadian History: Post-Confederation by John Douglas Belshaw, eCampusOntario (originally published by BCcampus, 2016) which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
A person whose first language is neither French nor English.
These newcomers – described as allophones – were a significant demographic and were courted by both the Liberals and the Parti Québécois, especially during the referendums on Quebec sovereignty.
An individual who advocates the dismantling of the state and the creation of a structure based on voluntary association and participation.
The communal-ownership model preferred by the Doukhobors was to be respected, as was their anarchist reluctance to engage with the bureaucratic machinery of the state.
A retreat from modernization and modernity, often associated with rural and traditional values, spirituality, and social hierarchies.
And the survival of pre- or antimodernist belief systems and inclinations.
Refers to any of several anti-urban agrarian movements in which city dwellers are encouraged to return to simpler, pre-modern ways of living.
These were themes that would reappear sporadically in the 20th century in the context of back-to-the-land movements, especially in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Located west of Saskatoon covering a massive area that extended to and across what would become the Saskatchewan-Alberta border, the colony was populated by some 2,000 immigrants recruited directly from Britain.
It was, however, the failure of the Barr Colony project, an attempt to settle British farmers in a Prairie block, that drew the greatest criticism of Sifton’s office and further confirmed the Canadian belief that British immigrants made for poor farmers.
An initiative in settling the West with groups drawn from the same ethnicity or creed allocated contiguous lands so as to take advantage of cultures of mutual support.
The Eastern Europeans’ arrival in bulk numbers, their enthusiasm for mutually-supportive block settlements, and their overall record of success, however, converted Sifton to their value.
Unlicensed, typically illegal production of alcohol. Also, in some instances, the sale of the same or of other illicit goods.
Bootlegging — the production and sale of alcohol — is an example of an ancient rural practice that became criminalized in the early 20th century and used as an excuse to police the ethnic “other”.
Colloquial term for enclaves of Chinese immigrants. In Canada and primarily in British Columbia, these appeared from 1858 on, with the greatest increase occurring during the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Created by external forces (Euro-Canadian civic authority limiting Chinese property ownership and business licenses to a small area) and internal needs (the concentration of Chinese financial and social institutions).
Chinese populations were contained (sometimes by choice but usually by civic regulations) to small urban areas — Chinatowns.
An organization that coordinated the interests and politics of the various community organizations in Chinatowns, and provided different levels of social support for its members.
Buddhist temples and clan halls (or tongs) provided cultural anchors while the Chinese Benevolent Association provided some degree of political coordination in what was a largely hostile, anti-Chinese environment.
In a society comprised of some diversity, refers to the most influential group whose culture other groups seek to adopt or are obliged to assimilate into. See also, reference group.
That these were not considered “ethnic enclaves” speaks to the position of British culture in English-Canada as the reference or cultural context group.
Regulation passed by the federal government in 1908 to restrict immigration from India and Japan; required immigrants to reach Canada by means of a single, continuous, unbroken voyage. Would affect long journeys that necessitated a stop in either Japan or Hawaii. Tightened in 1914, leading to the challenge posed by the Komagata Maru.
Neither a Head Tax nor a Gentlemen’s Agreement were possible in the case of India, so the method used to block migration was the continuous voyage requirement of the amended Immigration Act of 1908.
A challenge to mainstream culture posed by a group’s rejection of dominant values. In the 1960s youth movements and specifically the hippy movement constituted a counter cultural moment.
Others followed, including counter culture, back-to-the-land advocates who were more pulled than pushed into Canada (see Section 9.16).
In contrast to the concept of a “melting pot,” refers to a multi-ethnic and multicultural society in which differences are permitted to continue, rather than face assimilation into a single typology.
The idea of a cultural mosaic – as opposed to the American melting pot –>would have been anathema to most English and French Canadians before the 1960s.
Peoples (principally in Europe) dislocated by World War II; refugees.
Called DP Camps – for Displaced Persons – these were the focal point of efforts to sort the human chaos into emigrant streams.
An immigrant group comprised of pacifists belonging to a Russian dissident religious movement. Settled first on the Prairies then mostly relocated to British Columbia. Persecuted in the 20th century for their pacifism and their rejection of material culture.
These included Mormons from the United States, Mennonites from Central and Eastern Europe, and pacifist Hutterites and Doukhobors from Russia.
Refers to residential lands that lay beyond the suburban fringe.
At around the same time, Indo-Canadians coupled suburban living with exurban and rural agriculture, becoming a dominant feature in British Columbia’s farming sector.
In Canada, typically refers to French and British Canadians.
Although Canadian society has long been composed of diverse elements, the “two founding nations” narrative prescribed absorption, assimilation, and exclusion as strategies for managing newcomers.
Term formerly used to describe an area of what is now part of Ukraine and Poland, which produced many immigrants to Western Canada. Also the name of a part of Spain, which did not.
Differences of dialect were important too, but the centrality of religion to the peasant life in Galicia produced deep rifts between the immigrant communities when they arrived in Canada.
1908; also known as the Lemieux-Hayashi Agreement; the Japanese government agreed to restrict the number of people leaving Japan for Canada. A loophole allowing wives to join their husbands led to significant use of the "picture bride" system thereafter.
Heightened pressure from the non-Asian community caused the Canadian government to negotiate with Japan a Gentlemen’s Agreement (aka: the Lemieux-Hayashi Agreement) in 1908.
A fee levied by the British Columbian and then the federal government on Chinese immigrants, beginning in 1885 and continuing to 1923.
The Head Tax was the main instrument used by Ottawa to regulate Chinese arrivals down to 1923.
Over 100,000 children who were exported from Britain to Canada between 1869 and the late 1930s. Organized by charitable church organizations to alleviate overcrowding and to provide improved and more healthy alternatives. Stories of abuse abound, although many of the children who were distributed to farms across Canada did enjoy improved circumstances.
Tens of thousands of children — part of a migration referred to as the Home Children — were plucked from British slums and orphanages and placed into apprentice-like situations on Canadian farms.
Any right thought to belong to every person. Enshrined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1947.
The Nazi war crime trials in the late 1940 that revealed the extent of the Jewish holocaust under the Hitler regime proved to be a turning point and spurred efforts to develop language around human rights.
Along with the Mennonites and Amish, the Hutterites are an Anabaptist sectarian group; emigrated from Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century, where they faced oppression for their pacifist beliefs and the practice of adult baptism; many arrived in Canada after attempts to settle in the United States. A communal farming community that resists modernization.
These included Mormons from the United States, Mennonites from Central and Eastern Europe, and pacifist Hutterites and Doukhobors from Russia.
The campaign launched in the 1930s and early 1940s by the German National Socialist government aimed at the eradication of the Jewish population in Europe. Estimates of the number killed run to 6 million or more.
The Nazi war crime trials in the late 1940 that revealed the extent of the Jewish holocaust under the Hitler regime proved to be a turning point and spurred efforts to develop language around human rights.
In the United States, post-Civil War racial segregation laws that discriminated against African-Americans; most formal elements dissolved in the 1950s and ’60s in the Civil Rights Movement; was one cause of African-Americans emigrating to Canada in the Laurier and Borden eras.
Their numbers were not significant until about 1907, at which time conditions in the southern and central states deteriorated and word of opportunities on the Canadian prairies reached African-Americans struggling under Jim Crow Laws.
Along with the Hutterites and Amish, the Mennonites are an Anabaptist sectarian group; emigrated from Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century, where they faced oppression for their pacifist beliefs and the practice of adult baptism; settled in communities in Ontario, in Manitoba and across the Prairies, and in parts of British Columbia. A communal farming community that has resisted modernization, though with less intensity than the Hutterites.
These included Mormons from the United States, Mennonites from Central and Eastern Europe, and pacifist Hutterites and Doukhobors from Russia.
A movement or individual committed to preserving privileges to established members of a community over newcomers; often translates into anti-immigration attitudes; many nativists are themselves merely earlier immigrants; has nothing to do with Native peoples.
Nativist responses worked to denigrate the outsider and to advance the nativist’s own claim to inclusion in the mainstream.
Term used since the late 1960s to describe recent immigrants, particularly those arriving from non-traditional sources like South Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
Under these circumstances the new legislation was to prove key in attracting large numbers of new Canadians from sources that were considered “non-traditional”.
On the west coast of Vancouver Island; traditional territory of the Nootka (Nuu-chah-nulth) First Nation; site of sustained contact between European, Mexican, and American traders and Aboriginal peoples, along with a significant population of imported Chinese labourers in the late 18th century.
Indeed, 50 carpenters and shipwrights from Canton became the first permanent resettlers on Canada’s West Coast when the English sea captain John Meares abandoned them at Nootka Sound in 1789.
An anti-war position; pacifists typically will not volunteer for and refuse to be conscripted into conflict. Many eastern European religious groups brought pacifist beliefs with them to Western Canada before 1914.
Germanic settlers moved into the Ukraine, and minority religious sects — often associated with pacifism — established farming communities with strong cooperative sensibilities.
In contrast to dualism, supports the concept of a community or state made of diverse parts, particularly as regards aspects like ethnicity, creed, and/or language.
So, while he might decry special privileges to any minorities because it served to perpetuate that minority status, a growing chorus of Liberal Party voices called for more pluralism.
A set of beliefs and practices that involve the creation of largely arbitrary categories of human peoples and assigning to them behaviours, traits, and tendencies that are essentialized — that is, thought to be an inherent and immutable part of who they are. For example, laziness, alcoholism, unbridled libido, personal restraint and self discipline, deceitfulness, superior or inferior intelligence, greed, corruptibility, cowardice, and courage have, at various times, been regarded as unchangeable qualities of one race or another. As an ideology, argues that the assumed existence of these differences justifies — and necessitates — the development of social policies that reduce the impact that might be had by the less desirable races.
Describe the role played by racism and nativism in the history of immigration.
In a society comprised of some diversity, refers to the most influential group whose culture other groups seek to adopt or are obliged to assimilate into. See also context group.
For many newcomers, English-speaking Protestants were the reference group whose culture they were pressed to adopt.
Fear of China or Chinese.
The restriction echoed Sinophobic associations between the Chinese community and drug trafficking.
Immigrants whose intent is to work for a period of time, accumulate savings, and return to their home country (or province). Historically associated mostly with Chinese labourers who were brought to Canada under contract to the Canadian Pacific Railway, for example.
While some Chinese arrivals saw themselves as sojourners — temporary immigrants who would return to their country of origin once they’d amassed some money — many more were in for the long haul.
Or Freedomites; a radical anarchist faction within the Doukhobor diaspora in Canada; broke away from the main settlements in Saskatchewan and resettled in southeastern British Columbia; anti-materialist protests and anti-statism led to confrontations with the provincial government in the 1920s, and 1950s-1960s.
The communities fractured and the largest part, calling itself the Sons of Freedom, migrated to the southeast of British Columbia.
A labour market in which employers have the option of hiring cheaper labour that is differentiated by race, ethnicity or, possibly, creed. Doing so improves profits and it will embitter relations between the two labour supplies. Used as a theory (split labour market theory) to explain racial divisions between workers.
Organized labour and even native farm labourers regarded most immigrants as part of a plot to reduce workers’ living standards by creating a split labour market.
At the end of both World Wars, European women — principally British — who married Canadian servicemen and relocated to Canada when their husbands returned home.
There were, too, 41,000 war brides and nearly 20,000 children fathered by Canadian soldiers stationed in the UK during the war.
Internationally-convened trials to address allegations of crimes against humanity including (but not limited to) murder of civilian populations and enslavement.
The Nazi war crime trials in the late 1940 that revealed the extent of the Jewish holocaust under the Hitler regime proved to be a turning point and spurred efforts to develop language around human rights.