SETTLEMENT SERVICES IMMIGRATION HISTORY

Sara Fei Han

the small number of Britons who arrive on British North American shores during the war yeas were Scottish Highlanders.

The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 indicated the beginning of a vast outpouring of humanity from Great Britain. This great British migration was part of what has been described as the Western world’s greatest folk movement of modern times.

Through out its vast territory newcomers from England ,Scotland, and Ireland filled in the settled area.

The population of the northern provinces grew from less than 500,000 people in 1812 to about 2.4 million in 1850.By 1867,the year of Confederation, two-thirds of British North America’s population was British in origin.

Chapter 3 British Immigration Transforms the Colonies

3

Many factors combined to encourage emigration from the British Islands in the Post-Napoleonic period.

A.The extensive dislocation and suffering caused by far-reaching changes in agricultural land use in England and Scotland, which had begun even before the war years.

B.Overpopulation figured prominently in both England and Scotland. In Scotland the repeated failed of the potato crop added another dimension to the problem.

For example, in 1815 some 6 million Irish struggled to survive on approximately 13 million acres of land ,farmed by the most unproductive methods.

Factors underlying British Emigration

The oversea war revived Britain’s interest in promoting emigration to the North American colonies. The colonies would be in less danger if immigration provided British North America with a much larger population.

Free land were offered to British immigrants , but no land be granted “to subject of the United States”. They feared that if American continued to pour into the colony after the return of peace, Upper Canada would become even more vulnerable.

Government-Assisted Emigration

When the peace returned, the British government began implementing plans to establish an interior line of communication between Montreal and Upper Canada to safeguard its land.

Three military settlements were built at Perth(1816), Richmond(1818) ,and Lanark(1821). These towns are designed to serve as a “second line of defense” in support of the loyalist settlement along the upper St. Lawrence River.

Military Settlements

At the end of the War of 1812, Britain offered land along the Tay River to its officers and soldiers, fulfilling the perceived need to establish a strategic defensive outpost. Perth was founded in 1816 as one of three military settlements along the Rideau Corridor.

Free passage100 acres of landSupplies for the first six months

Military Settlements-Perth

One of the most colorful founders of the celebrated March Colony of “Officers and gentleman” on the Ottawa river was Hon. Hamnett Kirkes Pinhey, formerly insurance broker.

Similar policy :• Free land• Repayable loans

Military Settlements-Richmond

The condition of the poor was bad enough in England and Scotland ,but it was even worse in Ireland.

In the hope of quieting Ireland and providing a new start in life for some of its poor, the British government conceived the idea of offering free passage to Upper Canada and assistance in getting established on the land of selected Irish from troubled districts.

Robinson visited Ireland and selected nearly 600

candidates and sent them to Upper Canada.

Peter Robinson and Irish Settlement

Peter Robinson(only known image of Robinson, left)

Many British immigrants to Canada in the year after 1815 were poor and destitute individuals, who received assistance not from official government sources but from individuals and organizations with a social conscience.

Some were enable to emigrate by English parishes.

Charity-Assisted Emigration

First was very successful. For the selkirk(Thomas Douglas, Earl of Selkirk). settlement not only sat astride the North West Company’s vital trade route to the North West, it also occupied land that yielded the fur company’s essential pemmican supplies.

The second time ,without the Earl’s active interest and promotion immigration dropped off markedly.

Lord Selkirk’s Colonizing Schemes

Land companies also contributed to the settlement of British immigrants in 19th century Canada. In terms of measurable success, top marks must go to 3 companies:

1. Canada Company( Chief promoter-John Galt)

2. British American Land Company

3. New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Land company

Those companies not only made available impressive sum of capital for the building of roads, it also attracted large number of settlers to the province who might otherwise have headed for the United States.

Land Companies

The first Canadian immigration service moves were taken in 1828 after the British government introduced another Passenger Act in a long succession of such acts.

Alexander Carlisle Buchanan, acted on behalf of both Lower and Upper Canada and carried out a wide range of official duties, such as receiving immigrants on landing, distribute landing money, hearing complaints, direct newcomers to places of employment, helping new arrivals to located their friends, and trans-ship newly arrived immigrants to their destination.

Establishment of A Canadian Immigration service

The year 1830 marked both the start of a new decade and a surge in the overall volume of British immigration to British North America.

1829-1830 -------13,307- 30,574An annual increases of comparable magnitude were

experienced between 1833 and 1834, and 1835 and 1836.Two-Thirds of those staggered onto the docks at Quebec in

these years were from Ireland. Two-thirds of the reminder were from England, while about one-tenth were from Scotland.

Immigration in the 1830s

French speaking Canadians saw themselves under constant threat form Lower Canada’s English-speaking minority whose members ran the economy and controlled the legislative Council. French Canadians were “still French, their habits, religion and laws are still those of Frenchman and absolutely opposed to the habit of our people”.( Jonathan Sewell,1810)French-Canadian fears of assimilation were further reinforced by a union bill that was introduced in the House of Commons in 1822. It was eventually defeated by the violent oppostion of French Canada and the speaker of Lower Canada’s Assembly ,Louis-Joseph Papineau.

French Canada and Immigration

Portrait of Louis-Joseph Papineau by Théophile Hamel.

Immigration to British North America decreased in 1838 because of the rebellions in the Canada.

In 1842, the Colonial Office promoted emigration and over 44,000 people sailed to Canada, many expecting to find employment there. Many, hopelessness of finding jobs in Canada, made their way to New York, hoping to find employment there.

1842-1843, about 8500 Britons returned to their homeland from New York. This would be the only “backwater movement” of the decade.

The following year, the immigration number was still down.

The 1840’s: A Decade of Contrast

In this decade of heavy immigration one year stands out above all the others as being one of the most dramatic chapters in the entire history of British immigration to North America.

In 1847,forty sailing vessels arrived on Canada’s shores with sick and dying passengers. Over 5.000 people died that summer on the island. People continued to fall ill, carrying typhus further upriver to Montreal and then on to Kingston and Toronto.

More than 30,000 people died to disease, the overwhelming majority of them Irish.

Black’47

Because of the 1845-46 famine, approximately 105,000 emigrants left British and Irish ports for British North America.

During the peak immigration years, 1846-1854, over 400,000 people set sail from Britain for British North America, most of them Irish.

British immigration to British North America dropped dramatically in 1855 because of the revival of trade in the United Kingdom and demand for men to serve in the Crimean War.

The Irish

The decrease in British immigration ,the continuing loss of large numbers of immigrants to the United States, and the exodus of increasing numbers of French Canadians to that country led the province of Canada to embark on an immigration promotion program in the 1850s.

In 1859, A.B.Hawke opend an office in Livepool and began promotion work in the United Kingdom.

Immigration Promotion

Chapter 4

Immigration in the Macdonald Era

During the First World war, immigration salesmen would target farmers with capital, agricultural labourers, and female domestics, preferably from Great Britain, the United States, and north Europe.

“ Men of good muscle who are willing to hustle”—skilled worker ?

Not so welcome were individuals with professions ,clerks ,or other prospective immigrants of sedentary occupation.

Sir John himself did not hesitate to let it be known whom he would target in any immigrant recruitment program.

Establishing the Immigration Framework

In 1869,Parliament passed Canada’s first act dealing with immigration matters. It says nothing about which classes of immigrants should be admitted and which categories should be proscribed.( Laisser-faire policy)

In 1879, an order-in-council was passed excluding paupers and destitute immigrants.

The First Immigration Act

The laissez-farie policy reflected in Canada’s first immigration act remained virtually intact during the MacDonald era with one notable exception.This was an act passed in 1885 “to restrict and regulate Chinese immigration”.It was introduced in response to pressure from BC, which was concerned about the large number of single Chinese males who came to the province to work on the CPR.For Sir John a Chinese was “ a sojourner in a strange land ,and has no common interest with us”, gives us his labour and it paid for it .

Chinese Immigration

$50 $100 $500

Chinese Immigration

Among the small number of immigrants form outside Canada who did enter the West in the 1870s and 1880s was a group of Mennonites.The Canadian government offered them freedom from military service and from swearing the oath of allegiance. About 7500 Mennonites left the Ukraine for Manitoba in the 1870s.

The Mennonites

The period also saw some 2,000 Icelander leave for Canada after volcanic eruption in 1873. One group established themselves at Rosseau, in the Muskoka region of Ontario. Another party settled at Kinmount ,in Victoria County, On.Despite a concerted effort by Canadian officials to persuade Scandinavians to settle in Canada during these years, few responded to it.Thousands were pouring into United States.

The Icelander

Individual Jews and Jewish families form Britain and Europe started to trickle into the West as far back as the 1850s as farmers, fur traders, and gold miners.Alexander Galt raised the issue of Jewish immigration with Sir John. He informed the prime minister that Jewish were a superior people who had the necessary funds to get established in Canada and he wanted see his country play a part in the refugee movement.The prime minister approved of the idea of bringing some Jews to Canada and instructed government officials to make land available.

Jewish Settlers

The first Hungarian colony in the West was established in Manitoba through the efforts of a colourful adventurer, Count Paul d’Esterhazy.In 1885,this immigration agent brought a group of Magyer and Slovak families from the United States to a location near the town of Minnedosa, Manitoba.

Hungarian Settlement

After being returned to office in 1878, MacDonald and the conservatives assigned top priority to three interrelated national policies:

1.protective National policy

2. Transcontinental railways

3. Western settlement.It was Western settlement, however, that became Macdonald’s main concern.

Western Settlement

Settlement of most the native people on reservesThe CPR should be recalled, with Chinese immigrant labour in the rockies –opened up the West for settlement by providing a transportation lifeline to Easter Canada.The government policy of allowing land companies to purchase land remote form the CPR for colonization purpose also helped further the cause of settlement.

Western Settlement

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