Chapter XVI: Our Neighbors on the North
Before dealing with the countries to the north of us, it may be well to call attention to the fact that there are three major divisions of Canada. First, the Maritime Provinces, which were acquired by Great Britain at a later date than the other Atlantic Colonies, as they were originally claimed by the French. In this division Newfoundland should be considered. These territories lying east of the United States were settled directly from England or at the time of the Revolution by Loyalist refugees from New England. There is a large Scotch element in the population, which was lacking in New England. On the whole, the area is thoroughly Nordic, except on the shores of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the Bay of Chaleurs, where the Alpine French Habitants have infiltrated.
The second division of the Dominion is French-speaking, Roman Catholic Quebec, with a fecund population of low cultural status. The French distrust of the New England Protestants, with whom they had been at war for one hundred and fifty years, was the predominant cause of their failure to join with the revolting American Colonies in 1776. Quebec was known as Lower Canada.
Like the territories of the United States, the Dominion of Canada of today represents a part of the Nordic conquest of North America, the sole exception being the French population of Quebec Province.
The country to the west of the Ottawa River constitutes the third major division and was, after the Revolution, known as Upper Canada. Its original population was composed chiefly of American Loyalists who fled there in numbers after the Revolution. The immigration into Upper Canada from Britain was later very largely Scotch, Scotch Irish, and North of England. This is true more or less of all English-speaking Canada, except possibly British Columbia.
In a measure the Dominion is an offshoot of the United States, and its development proceeded along lines parallel to those of the States to the south of the boundary. The character of the population west of Quebec Province is much the same as that of the United States, lacking, fortunately for Canada, some of our immigrant elements. The country was settled without the terrible Indian wars that afflicted our frontier and without the lawless element so conspicuous in the history of our Far West.
The French settlement of Quebec was contemporaneous with the first English settlement in North America at Jamestown. A majority of the emigrants were from northern France. So far as one can judge at the present time by the descendants of this population, the pure Nordic stock must have been rare among them. They are today in general a stocky, short-necked people, rather of the Alpine build, with eyes often rather dark. The blond hair and tall stature of the Nordic are so rare as to attract attention at once. The type suggests the Pre-Norman population of northwestern France, rather than its Nordic conquerors. Some of the seigneurs, the explorers, and the adventurers of the early period apparently were of Nordic stock, but they were probably always in a great minority and have left few descendants.
Very little satisfactory research has been done as to the origin of the Habitants. A recent study of a typical group has given some indication of the general conditions in Quebec. In this group stature was found to be five feet and five inches, which is about the general average of the French. The cephalic index was over 83.0, which is about the mean for Brittany and is higher than that of Normandy. The hair was rather dark brown and straight, this straightness is slightly suggestive of Indian admixture. The eye color was more often brown than mixed blue and brown. Pure blue eyes were present only in 15 per cent. The tall burly build of the Norman peasant was very rare.
The language spoken in Quebec is an archaic Norman patois of the time of Louis XIV. This fact has given rise to the general belief that the Habitants came from Normandy, but the more probable reason is that the Normans were the earliest immigrants and established their patois, which was accepted by later arrivals. The Normans appeared to have been far short of a majority of the total number of immigrants and Brittany supplied still fewer. The balance was divided among the provinces of the northern half of France.
The physical type of the Habitants of today suggestive as it is of the peasants of the interior of Brittany finds confirmative evidence in their subserviency to the church.
Throughout the French period the population consisted to a marked extent of soldiers, traders, administrators, priests, and others who did not bring their families with them. Efforts of the French Government to encourage family life were not always either well directed or successful. Colbert hoped for a large French population in Canada by intermarriage with the Indians. Administrative regulations penalized bachelors, who, for instance, were refused licenses to enter the fur trade, which was the main source of wealth in the country at that time.
Many of these restrictions were directed by the priests, doubtless not so much for eugenic reasons as with the motive of protecting the morals of the young men by giving them wives. At an early date the colony fell under the domination of the Jesuits, and maintained for a long time a religious tone that in its own way was much more stern and uncompromising than that of the Puritan settlements in New England. Much of the wealth and effort that might have gone to strengthen the colony was sunk in sterile monastic foundations. Even today stone churches are a conspicuous feature of the landscape in the midst of poverty-stricken villages.
At one time there was for some years a directed migration of young women from France, sent out to become the wives of the colonists and early in the history of the country a policy of bonuses for marriage, and for large families, which has been repeated at intervals ever since, was introduced. None the less, the colony grew but slowly and to the failure to establish it on a sound biological foundation is due the collapse of French rule.
In 1665 the first census showed a population of 3215. In the next hundred years this had increased to somewhat more than 70,000, with an additional 20,000 in what are now the Maritime Provinces. That the French could maintain the contest for so long against British neighbors who outnumbered them twenty to one is to their credit, but their lack of recognition that their settlement could not be permanent unless based on a real migration of families ultimately cost them the country.
One of the chief causes of the failure of French Canada to expand beyond the narrow limits of the banks of the Saint Lawrence River, during its first century of existence, was an obscure skirmish which occurred on the west side of Lake Champlain in 1609. Champlain was advancing toward the South in company with Canadian Algonquins, when he encountered a war party of the Mohawks. In the fighting that followed, some Mohawks were killed and captured. At that time and in that place began the bitter enmity of the Iroquois Five Nations and the Canadian French. It was a feud that was never allowed to rest and yearly war parties of Mohawks went north along Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River and devastated the lower portion of Quebec Province. At the same time war parties of the Senecas descended the Saint Lawrence and attacked the French from the West. As long as the power of the Iroquois lasted, which was all through the seventeenth century, they devastated a large part of New France.
In the meantime, the Dutch and English were growing up in security to the South and East. Thus Champlain's skirmish with the Iroquois was the factor that delayed the expansion of France into the region of the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi Valley until relatively late in the eighteenth century.
The French population still centers in Quebec Province, long known as Lower Canada, but it has spread to other parts of the continent both south and west of the Quebec boundary. Their expansion in Canada has been into the neighboring provinces. Emigration to New England began in the eighteenth century but was not considerable until the nineteenth century.
While this French-Canadian population has remained so fecund as to furnish a stock example for every writer, it, too, has felt the trend of the times. For a long time the government of Quebec offered a grant of one hundred acres of land to every man who was the father of twelve living children by one wife. In less than a single year over 3000 heads of families availed themselves of this privilege and in 1907 there was published a list of 7000 families having at least twelve living children.
In spite of this fecundity, the birthrate has been declining for almost the whole of the historical period. Two hundred and fifty years ago the average for all women of child-bearing age in Quebec Province was one child every two and one-half years. By 1850 this ratio had decreased to one in five years. At present it is one in seven and one-half years. Under this method of measurement, the rate of natural increase per head is only one-third of what it was in colonial times. Even the Roman Catholic "Habitant," therefore, has felt the effect of the general decline of birthrate throughout the western world in the period since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
From the beginning of the nineteenth century there was a small but steady immigration from the British Isles into Upper Canada, though interrupted by the Napoleonic Wars. After the close of that conflict a larger movement of population took place, which brought in an extensive English population. Theretofore most of the arrivals had been Scotch or Americans, so that a visitor in 1810 commented on the fact that he met "scarcely any English and few Irish."
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
This computation distributes the immigrants from the United States according to their racial stock; thus the main part would be classified with those of British origin, a smaller part as "other European," and so on.
From the foregoing it is evident that Canada is now less than 60 per cent Nordic--probably less Nordic than the United States.
Canada has been the great obstacle to extending the American immigration quotas to the countries of the Western Hemisphere. The majority of its inhabitants are our own kinsmen, many of whom have already contributed elements of great value to our population. Others would be most welcome if they chose to come.
Our nation has been unwilling to put the slightest restriction on Canadian immigration, by applying a quota; and it was thought it would be invidious and discriminatory to apply a quota to the countries south of us, and not to the one to the north. That difficulty will have to be met firmly in the near future. One proposed solution has been to admit from Canada only those whose mother tongue is English.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 15: Acadie in the Micmac language means "place." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's pathetic poem, "Evangeline," embodies the anti-English sentiments of the early nineteenth century in New England and is founded largely on an error of spelling, which made "Arcadia" out of the Indian word. The expulsion of the French in 1758 was by Bostonians under Colonel John Winslow, and was justified by the refusal of the French to accept loyally the rule of the English.]
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The Conquest of a Continent; or, The Expansion of Races in AmericaChapter XVI: Our Neighbors on the North
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