Part 20

In 1815 the government began to assist immigrants by giving free passage and a grant of one hundred acres of land after arrival with a promise of free rations for the first six or eight months and a like amount of land to each male child on his reaching the age of twenty-one. A wise restriction required a deposit of a little less than one hundred dollars by the immigrant, to be returned to him after two years if he had complied with the terms of the contract on his behalf. These provisions were availed of mainly by Scotchmen going to Ontario. The scheme, however, had the advantage for our present purpose of establishing for the first time records of immigration, which thenceforth can be traced in detail.

In 1819 the emigration from British ports to Canada was in excess of 20,000, and continued for years at about this rate in spite of the booms which Australia and New Zealand were enjoying at the same time. There was a substantial movement of emigration toward Canada in the years 1830-34. In the nine years preceding 1837, more than a quarter of a million emigrants from the British Isles arrived at Quebec on their way westward, more than 50,000 of them in a single year.

Primogeniture in England has been a powerful factor in building up the British Commonwealth. The oldest son of a landed family inherited the estate and the titles, if any, and stayed at home. The younger sons, left to shift for themselves, were ready to emigrate. The colonies have thus received a great many more settlers of first-class ability than would otherwise have been the case. At the same time, the perpetuation of family continuity, through the preservation of the ancestral home intact, has been a strong psychological factor in maintaining a vigorous family life in the upper classes of Great Britain.

By 1840 the population of Canada was approximately a million and a half. During the next generation nearly a million more immigrants arrived from British ports--the great Irish migration changing the racial character of this movement markedly from about 1845. Prior to that time the newcomers were pre-dominantly English, with Wiltshire and Yorkshire largely represented. When the potato famine caused the Irish to seek refuge elsewhere, they naturally turned their steps to England, as the most easily and cheaply accessible of havens. Great Britain could absorb only a limited part of these and began to direct them to Canada, which, indeed, they preferred to the United States because the Catholic Church was strong there.

The emigrants were weak and in 1849 one-sixth of those who started are said to have died on the voyage. The number of Irish who left the United Kingdom in that year was 215,000, of whom nearly half were bound for Quebec. Canada became alarmed at being made the dumping ground of an enfeebled and destitute population so much in excess of its capacity to absorb, and, by increased taxes and other means, slowed down this immigration, which then headed toward the United States. Thereafter many of the Irish who had already gone to Canada moved on down into the Union, so that in the end Canada received a smaller part of the Irish Catholic migration than might be thought.

The census of 1871 furnishes a convenient point at which to take a review of the population. It then totalled 3,485,761 in the four original provinces (Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia). British and French together, in the ratio of two to one, made up 92 per cent. The only foreign element which contributed as much as 1 per cent of the whole was the German, numbering more than 200,000 people, or 5.8 per cent.

The French Habitants have always formed a somewhat indigestible mass, but half a century of struggle had resulted in a workable system of government and compromise in the administrative life of the country. The dominant element was the British, and save for the great mass of French there was no large foreign block to menace the country's unity.

In sharp contrast to the settlement of the West of the United States, the occupation of the prairie and mountain provinces of Canada has been marked by law and order. In our West, especially in the mining districts, law was largely disregarded and its place taken by private justice, administered by individuals.

In Canada the Mounted Police have played a most efficient rôle in controlling both the settlers and the Indians. At the time of the Klondike rush in 1898, when hordes of gold seekers scrambled over the passes to the head waters of the Yukon, a handful of Mounted Police maintained a discipline for which the Americans themselves were very grateful. In the same way the administration of the mining laws of the Klondike, which is in Canadian territory, was admired and envied by the Americans there.

The Canadian treatment of the Indians in the western provinces was also marked by an absence of the bloody wars which characterized our westward advance. The only uprising against the Whites was the Riel Rebellion in Manitoba, in 1869, which was by the half-breeds rather than by the Indians and which had special underlying causes. All this has been accomplished without the Whites in any way fraternizing with the Indians.

During the French period, the Canadian Indians always sided with the French against the English, because under the influence of the Catholic priests, the French Indian half-breed was regarded as a Frenchman and, as a result, influenced his mother's people in favor of the ruling race.

There were plenty of offspring of white frontiersmen and Indian squaws all along our frontier, but these half breeds were everywhere kicked out and despised as Indians. This attitude toward the lower race has always characterized our American frontier and while very unpopular with the natives, has served to keep the White race unmixed, in sharp contrast to the French and Spanish colonies.

Canada still has more than 100,000 Indians, four times as many in proportion to the whole population, as in the United States.

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Newfoundland, for geographical reasons, even though it has politically no relation to Canada, is the most convenient starting point in reviewing in more detail the subdivisions of the country.

Larger than Ireland, the island claims to be the "senior colony" of the British Commonwealth. John Cabot, a Genoese, sailing from Bristol, discovered it in 1497, according to the traditional account, and took possession of it in the name of Henry VII. Within a few years fishermen, not merely English but French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Basque, were landing there to dry and cure the enormous quantities of cod caught on the Great Banks, which still form the principal wealth of the colony. In fact, some writers believe that the island may have been discovered long before the time of Columbus, by fishermen. At any rate, the effective occupation, though scarcely the continuous settlement of Newfoundland, long antedated the colonization of Virginia and many of the original English residents came from Devonshire.

The aboriginal inhabitants, the Beothics, disappeared half a century ago. They were probably Eskimos, or closely related to them, and are sometimes spoken of as "Red" Indians, in contrast to the "Black" Indians, the Micmacs, who have recently immigrated in small numbers from New Brunswick.

Newfoundland has nearly a quarter of a million inhabitants, but its backward stage of development still makes it little known to the outside world.

On the mainland a long strip of the Atlantic Coast and a large triangle of land behind it are attached to Newfoundland administratively, under the name of Labrador. Because of its scanty population it may well be disregarded in the present discussion.

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Nova Scotia during Colonial days was almost a New England colony. It was known to the French as "Acadie" and was ceded to England in 1713.

Interposed between New England and French Canada, Acadia suffered heavily from the warfare that went on between the two regions. The existence of a large French population was always a source of irritation, and of danger, to the English. Finally in 1758 the French were cleared out, about 6000 of them being distributed throughout the English colonies, and the remainder escaping to Canada. Those who came to the thirteen colonies suffered hardships, but on the whole were more humanely treated than were those who fled to their co-religionists in Quebec Province. The place of the exiled Acadians[15] was largely taken by New England emigrants.

The American population of Nova Scotia was further greatly augmented at the time of the Revolution by an influx of Loyalists. These came in such numbers as to disturb the colony seriously, but formed an invaluable addition of the best sort of British stock. This general trend has continued so that, even in 1921, of the foreign-born population of Nova Scotia, that which originated in the United States was twice as large as all the rest of the foreign-born population put together.

The Scotch immigration which has exercised such an important influence on the eastern counties of Nova Scotia began about 1760 with the arrival of Scots and Ulster Scots. In 1772 a contingent of Highlanders direct from Scotland took up land alongside an American group from Philadelphia. From then on until about 1820, a steady stream of Highlanders came into the region; Gaelic is still spoken in parts of the colony. Nova Scotia with the other Maritime Provinces still represents the most purely British of all the Canadian provinces, and as shown, an important part of its population came to it through the United States.

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New Brunswick was established on August 16, 1784, out of a part of ancient Acadia. It also received an important number of Loyalists at the time of the Revolution--indeed it might be said to owe its existence to the arrival of some 10,000 expatriates from the United States. But the bulk of the population is Scottish with a strong Highland contingent. There are few foreign-born other than a small element from the United States.

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Prince Edward Island is similar as to its population and is the most purely "native" of all, only one in each one hundred in this province being foreign-born. The Roman Catholics there include a considerable number of Scotch Highlanders and number nearly a half of the population.

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Quebec is still the stronghold of the French-Canadians, more than half of whom are unable to speak the English language. The French stock still numbers one-fourth of the entire population of the entire Dominion of Canada. On the northern frontier of Quebec there was some mixture with the Indians, but the half-breeds are probably not numerous enough to form a substantial part of the old population. In addition to their great movement to New England the French-Canadians have spread into Ontario, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island to some extent.

The French-Canadian stock is the most highly inbred of any of the large groups of the New World. It is based on original immigrants who numbered a good many less than 10,000. In the course of three centuries this nucleus has multiplied to 3,000,000, with virtually no additions of fresh arrivals from abroad. They have lived a New World life longer than have most of the Whites of the Western Hemisphere, and must be put in a class by themselves. They are not French, in spite of their language--an archaic speech at which the true Frenchman laughs. In every way they differ from the present-day French, more indeed than New Englanders of Colonial descent now differ from the present-day Englishman. From the cradle to the grave they are surrounded by the influence of the Roman Catholic Church to an extent almost as unknown to the present-day French as it is to the present-day Americans. Of late years not only those who have come to New England, but some of those living in Quebec Province have shown a disposition to break away from the church because of its heavy and inexorable taxation.

The French-Canadians, in Quebec and the neighboring provinces, were, to an extent, disloyal to the British Empire in the Great War. Under the influence of their priests they resisted the draft in several instances and there was bloodshed in Quebec on this account. As has been said elsewhere, these Frenchmen would not fight for the British Empire, which had guaranteed them extraordinary privileges as to their language and religion, nor would they fight for France, which they claimed as motherland, but which they now regarded as atheistic. Neither would they fight for Belgium, which is pretty nearly as clerical as they are. In short, their conduct during the World War was contemptible and in sharp contrast to the militant and effective patriotism of the more westerly provinces of Canada.

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Ontario, called Upper Canada in distinction to French-speaking Lower Canada, received its first important population from the United States when Loyalist refugees, including many Highland Scots, mainly from northern and western New York, settled there and became known as the United Empire Loyalists. Among these immigrants, were the disbanded frontier regiments which had been organized by Sir John Johnson, including abundant Macdonalds from Glengarry and Inverness, together with Camerons, Chisholms, Fergusons, MacIntyres, Russells, and Hamiltons, who opened up the region constituting the present counties of Glengarry, Stormont, and Dundas.

In 1785, almost the entire parish of Knoydart, Glengarry, emigrated direct from Scotland and settled in a body in Upper Canada. In 1793 a contingent from Glenelg settled at Kirkhill. In 1799 came many Camerons from Lochiel, and in 1803 another delegation of Macdonalds arrived, with more people from Glenelg and Kintail. Thus Ontario, which in 1791 was set off from (French) Lower Canada and given its own government under the name of Upper Canada, became almost as much entitled to consider itself a "Nova Scotia," as did the Maritime Province of that name.

At the end of the American Revolution, Upper Canada was supposed not to contain as many as 10,000 inhabitants. By 1811 it had 83,000 and by 1817 it was estimated to have 134,000. While many Irish came at a somewhat later period, most of these eventually went on to the United States.

The interference with British immigration caused by the Napoleonic wars led to Upper Canada's offering special attraction to settlers from the United States. The lack of sympathy of these with the British Government during the War of 1812 was an embarrassment to Canada, just as the loyalty of the United Empire group, which prevented Canada from being conquered by the United States, was in turn a serious annoyance to the American Government.

The later settlement of Ontario was largely from Scotland and the northern English counties, and was pre-dominantly Presbyterian. There were enough Ulster Scots to make it an active center of the American Protective Association of forty years ago and it is definitely, at the present time, a Nordic territory.

During the present century it has received thousands of Austrians, Poles, and Italians, who introduced racial elements not easily assimilated.

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Manitoba began to be settled shortly after the War of 1812, when Lord Selkirk established his Red River Colony. The Scotch Highlanders, Swiss, and others whom he planted there did not prosper, and many of them eventually drifted down into the United States, taking an active part in the formation of Minnesota. Around this nucleus, however, there gradually grew an incongruous and isolated settlement made up of three elements that had almost nothing in common; the Scotch, the French-Canadians, and the half-breeds. In 1849 the Red River Settlement was credited with 5391 people. With the establishment of steam navigation on the Red River, and the official creation of Winnipeg, both of which occurred in 1862, development began on a larger scale.

A provisional government was given to the territory in 1869, and from time to time land was generously allotted to the early white settlers, to the half-breeds, and to the Hudson's Bay Company. Thereafter the province grew slowly, from the natural increase of its founders and from a Nordic migration from Ontario and from the neighboring parts of the United States, until the mixed European immigration of the last half-century changed somewhat the character of the population. These latter now account for one-third of the whole.

The proportion of these non-Nordic Europeans, from southern or central Europe, is three times as great as the European immigration from either northern or western Europe. If this immigration continues in like proportions, Manitoba, like the other prairie provinces, is in danger of being lost to the Nordics.

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Saskatchewan has a larger American-born population than Manitoba, one resident in every eight having first seen the light of day under the American flag. But it has a still larger recent European immigration amounting to nearly 40 per cent of the total population of the province. A bare half of the people of Saskatchewan are of British origin.

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Alberta has both a somewhat smaller European element and the largest American-born contingent of any of the provinces, amounting to one in six. Many English of a fine type have settled there.

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In all the Prairie Provinces the French-Canadian represents scarcely more than one in twenty of the population.

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British Columbia has prided itself with justice on its British origin, and is exceeded in this respect only by the Maritime Provinces. Of its European immigrants (one in eleven of the whole), approximately equal numbers are Nordics from northern or western Europe, and Alpines or Mediterraneans from southeastern and central Europe. During the World War its young men showed great attachment to the mother country, and the loss from death was correspondingly great. Because of its great distance from the ports of entry, it was long avoided by immigrants. Not until about 1907 did it begin to get its fair share. Since then, it has held its own, about half of its new arrivals however coming from the United States.

The province also has its Asiatic problem, which has been the source of hard feeling on several occasions. One of the great hindrances to its more rapid development was shortage of labor, and it was natural that the Orient, which could reach British Columbia more easily and cheaply than could either Europe or even the Atlantic provinces of Canada itself, should be called upon to meet the need. Chinese soon began to enter, until stopped by a head tax of $500. Japanese came in considerable numbers, not merely in the fisheries but for day labor in railway construction. Some 6000 Hindus likewise found their way there. Orientals now amount to one in every seven of the total population. There is a real Asiatic question here and the Whites are beginning to look to the United States for protection.

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Canada's immense arctic area, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, may be neglected in this discussion because of the lack of population. Those who see in the mosquito-infested tundra of "The Land of Little Sticks," with its months of winter darkness, a future populous area of agricultural and livestock industry are destined to wait long for the realization of their dream.

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So far as the British element in Canada is concerned, it has been pointed out above in several places that the country is to a certain extent an offspring of the United States. This contribution has continued up to the present time. During the 1880's there was another great period of migration from the Union to the Dominion. At that time nearly twice as many entered Canada from this country as from Great Britain, and six times as many as from the continent of Europe.

Not all of these Americans were of the old native stock. It has been calculated that at least half of this contingent was of British extraction, the other half being made up of various European nationalities who, after becoming acclimated to the New World in the United States, passed on to Canadian soil. Thus the contribution from the United States during that period did not represent a purely Nordic accession.

The 1890's represented a period of British immigration. But, with the turn of the century, Canada began to share in the great influx of miscellaneous peoples who were already deluging the shores of the United States. During the first twelve years of the twentieth century, Canada received 2,000,000 people, of whom 800,000 were British. About 700,000 others came from the United States, but more than a third of these are calculated to have been Continental arrivals who merely passed through the United States for convenience. In 1901 there were in Canada some 650,000 of "foreign stock"--that is, of neither British nor French origin. In 1921 there were more than twice as many. Since the beginning of the century Canada has acquired more than 100,000 Jews.

After the World War the Empire Settlement Act began to make itself felt, reducing markedly the proportion of immigrants from the United States into Canada while from 1900 onward Ireland began to figure heavily in the immigration statistics.

In 1930 there were, on the other hand, over 1,200,000 Canadian-born, both of British and French stock, in the United States and during the preceding eight years 300,000 had returned to Canada.

Not only have the western provinces, then, been thrown violently into a disequilibrium by the population changes of the last generation, but the stability of the whole Dominion has been menaced. Canada, like the United States, has taken on a great liability in the admission of the hundreds of thousands of non-Nordics, who will be hard to assimilate, even if it be assumed that they would become valuable when assimilated, which is by no means always the case. One of Canada's advantages, on the other hand, is the negligible proportion of Negroes, and it might well erect barriers even now against them, as it has already done against the Asiatics.

With its immense territory and more than 10,000,000 inhabitants, Canada is still to be credited to the Nordics, though, if the population trends that began with this century should continue, the balance would change rapidly. While the United States has contributed by far the largest number of foreign-born, Russia has contributed the second largest number of immigrants, Saskatchewan receiving more of these than any other province. Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba have received about equal numbers, in each case one-third less than went to Saskatchewan. Those of Austrian birth, who are third in the list, are concentrated in the two provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan in about equal numbers, each of these provinces having almost twice as many Austrian-born as Alberta or Ontario. The Chinese stand fourth in numbers among the foreign-born of the Dominion, but most of them are concentrated in British Columbia. Ontario has almost as many Italians as all the rest of Canada put together, and it has also the largest number of Poles.

Because of the great body of French-Canadians, the Roman Catholic Church is proportionately twice as strong as in the United States.

The 1921 census showed the population to be made up as follows:

PER CENT British origin 55.40 French 27.91 Other European 14.16 Indian 1.26 Asiatic .75