Immigration has played and continues to play a key role in shaping the character of Canadian society. Although only a minority of Canadians have first-hand experience of immigration, all Canadians have a parent, grandparent or more distant relative who came to Canada as a stranger to a strange land. Because all Canadians share an immigrant past, there would be no Canada without immigration.
Tens of thousands of years before the coming of the first European settlers, ancestors of Canada's Native People migrated across a frozen icepack linking Asia to North America. Over many centuries they spread across the continent, forming a rich tapestry of cultural and linguistic groupings. Approximately 500 years ago, Europeans arrived in what would eventually become Canada. First came French colonists who carved out homes along the St. Lawrence River and its tributaries. They were followed by settlers from France and Britain who gradually established competing colonial outposts in the Maritime provinces. The 18th century victory of British arms at Quebec, followed by the British defeat in the American Revolution sent Loyalists northward to British North America (Canada) in search of new homes.
During most of the next century and a half, immigration continued. Settlers came mainly from Britain, including English, Scots and Irish. Some were drawn to the opportunities of the new world. Others, including many Scots and Irish famine immigrants, escaped the grinding poverty and starvation which followed crop failures or eviction from their lands. Americans also immigrated. Many were lured north to Canada by Canadian land agents or labour recruiters. Some immigrants came empty-handed and alone. Others came in family groups and with the resources necessary to begin life afresh in a new land. Some succeeded, while others struggled and reaped only misery.
While the majority of early immigrants came to Canada from Britain or the United States, other nationalities also came, including non-whites. Many immigrants from continental Europe were drawn to Canada by its economic promise, or as an escape from religious or political threats. In the years before the American Civil War, the Europeans were joined by thousands of black slaves who escaped by following the Underground Railway northward into Canada. After Canadian Confederation in 1867, thousands of Irish and Chinese labourers were imported as workers to build the Canadian Pacific Railway. On the Pacific coast, other Chinese joined the rush of fortune hunters from all over the world who trekked into British Columbia and later the Yukon interior after the discovery of gold.
After the turn of the century, hundreds of thousands of American farmers moved northward into the Canadian prairies in search of farm lands. At the same time, many from central and eastern Europe, seeking land, were recruited by Canadian immigration agents anxious to fill the west with farmers.
While Canada's western lands filled with settlers, other newcomers laboured in Canada's expanding lumber, mining, railway, manufacturing and construction industries. Some planned to stay and become Canadians; others wished only to save money and then return to their families. Meanwhile, the money these sojourners sent home helped support those who remained behind. But whatever their motives for coming to Canada and whether or not they ended up staying permanently, each newcomer played a role in the building of Canada.
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