Strangers at Our Gates

Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy, 1540-2006 Revised Edition

Valerie Knowles

• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9781550026986
• eBook ISBN: 9781459712379
• Edition: 3
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Immigrants and immigration have always been central to Canadians' perception of themselves as a country and as a society. In this crisply written history, Valerie Knowles describes the different kinds of immigrants who have settled in Canada, and the immigration policies that have helped to define the character of Canadian immigrants over the centuries. Key policymakers and moulders of public opinion figure prominently in this colourful story, as does the role played by racism. This new and revised edition contains additional material on immigration to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, sections on the evacuee children of the Second World War and Canadian War Brides, and material relating to significant developments in the immigration and refugee field since 1996. Special attention is paid to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act of 2001.

— CHAPTER 1 —

The Beginnings

THE BEGINNINGS

THE PREHISTORIC ANCESTORS OF CANADA’S present-day Indians and Inuit became this country’s first immigrants when they journeyed to America by way of the Bering Strait, at a time when a land bridge, now vanished, still connected Asia and America. Centuries later, according to an unconfirmed hypothesis, Irish monks visited Newfoundland. Then, starting around the year 1000, Vikings made occasional stops, overwintering at points on Baffin Island, Labrador, and the northeastern tip of Newfoundland (L’Anse aux Meadows). Still later, in 1497, the Italian mariner John Cabot, sailing in the service of England, glimpsed the shores of Newfoundland while searching for the country of the Great Khan (Asia). After viewing the Grand Banks, he sailed back to Bristol with amazing tales of an ocean dense with schools of codfish. The European fishery, if not in existence in these waters before Cabot’s sighting, certainly came into being shortly after. And, as it developed, knowledge of the resources and configuration of the northeastern coast of North America spread throughout the fishing ports of western Europe.

Among the beneficiaries of this knowledge was a group of Portuguese who established a colony on Cape Breton Island between 1520 and 1524. Their exploits were eclipsed, however, by those of a remarkable Italian-born explorer who sailed in the service of France: Giovanni da Verrazano. In 1524, Verrazano struck out on a new route to North America, hoping that it would lead him eventually to the “blessed shores of Cathay” and the fabled riches of Asia. Although he failed in his mission, the Italian succeeded for the first time in history in charting the Atlantic seaboard of the North American continent from Florida to Cape Breton. On this spectacular voyage the explorer also conceived the name “Nova Gallia”, envisaging a New France that would encompass all of North America from Spanish Florida to the far north.

But it was Jacques Cartier, a Frenchman carrying on the exploration started by Verrazano, who paved the way for permanent European settlement in Canada. On July 24, 1534, Cartier clambered up the Gaspé shore of the Baie de Chaleur, erected a thirty-foot cross and claimed the newly discovered territory for His Most Christian Majesty, Francis I. On his second voyage, made the following year, the French explorer journeyed up the St. Lawrence River and visited Stadacona (Quebec). Then he went on to Hochelaga (Montreal) before wintering on the Sainte-Croix River near Stadacona. When he returned to France in 1536, having lost a fourth of his crew to scurvy, the hard-bitten St. Malo seaman had discovered the St. Lawrence River, explored the continent’s interior as far as Montreal, and proven that Anticosti and Newfoundland were both islands.

Five years elapsed before Jacques Cartier returned to the New World, and when he did, he was on a major expedition designed to found a settlement “in the aforementioned countries of Canada and Hochelaga”. To give the undertaking adequate stature, it was placed under the direction of Jean-François de La Rocque, Sieur de Roberval, a court favourite. Cartier was appointed chief pilot. That spring the master mariner and five ships sailed for Canada, expecting the expedition’s leader to follow. Roberval, however, delayed his departure until the spring of 1542, by which time a discouraged Cartier was on his way back to France, having abandoned the settlement of Charlesbourg-Royal that he had founded at Cap Rouge above Quebec. Roberval re-established the colony at Cap Rouge, but after a disastrous winter there he and his colonists followed Cartier’s example and returned to France.

The failure of the Charlesbourg-Royal colony and renewed war with Spain diverted French thinking from colonizing ventures to developments in Europe. Then came bitter conflict between Huguenots and Catholics, which was to distract France for almost another forty years. New France, meanwhile, was left to the fishermen and the fur traders, who returned each year to exploit its bounties. In the half-century that followed Cartier’s last venture, French fishermen journeyed westward from Brittany, the Bay of Biscay, and the Channel ports to Newfoundland, seeking to corner the seemingly inexhaustible supply of cod at the expense of their Spanish, Portuguese, and English competitors. Further west, fur traders, following in the wake of Cartier, sailed up the St. Lawrence River to the interior to obtain furs, the most prized being beaver, which was felted and made into fashionable hats. Not until the close of the sixteenth century, when order had been restored to their country by Henry IV, did the French once again turn to colonizing their overseas possessions such as New France. There, they would pursue their goals in Newfoundland; in Acadia, an area that lay within the present day boundaries of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island (known as Île Saint-Jean until it was ceded to Great Britain in 1763, at which time it was called the Island of Saint John); and in Canada, the St. Lawrence River settlement that centred on Quebec and Montreal.

In order to establish settlements in the New World, Henry IV had recourse to that venerable European institution, the trade monopoly. By means of this widely accepted device, wealthy merchants or nobles, singly or in groups, were granted exclusive rights of trade and control of parts of overseas empires in exchange for a commitment to develop the possessions and found settlements. It was a method whereby France, using the privileges of the Crown, hoped to extend her dominions in the New World without becoming actively involved in overseas colonization. The first French monopolists failed in their attempts to establish sustaining colonies on the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence; on that desolate pile of sand off Nova Scotia known as Sable Island; and at Tadoussac at the mouth of the Saguenay River. But when these risk-takers did at last succeed, credit was due not to the noblemen or merchants in France but to their agent in Canada, Samuel de Champlain, a navigator, visionary, soldier, geographer, and ardent Catholic, to name but a few of the descriptions that apply to this remarkable pioneer.

THE FRENCH BEACHHEAD IN NORTH AMERICA

With one Atlantic voyage to the West Indies and Central America already behind him, Champlain journeyed up the St. Lawrence River in 1603 as a member of a group of fur-trading associates. He embarked on his first colonizing mission the following year when he sailed for North America on an expedition headed by the Protestant, Pierre Du Gua de Monts. Their choice of site was St. Croix Island in the Bay of Fundy, but after scurvy killed thirty-six of the eighty-odd settlers, the colony was moved across the bay to Port Royal, which Champlain had discovered earlier. Here, in present-day Nova Scotia, Champlain and De Monts maintained a base for three years, abandoning the tiny settlement only after their fur-trading privileges had been revoked. Not until 1610 did French colonists return to Acadia and then it was to face repeated intrusions from the English, who also contested the territory.

Having helped to establish a French foothold in North America, Champlain returned to the New World in 1608, again in the employ of De Monts’s company, but this time in command of a ship. After sailing up the St. Lawrence, the explorer ordered the construction of a huge, barn-like habitation on a site thirty miles above Cap-Tourmente, overlooking the mighty river and the way into the heart of the continent. For twenty-six years Quebec would be the only French settlement on the St. Lawrence, a tiny but vital fur-trading post dependent on France for virtually all its supplies.

Although it was important, the fur trade was not the sole reason for the settlement’s existence. In the eyes of Champlain and other devout Frenchmen, it was also an invaluable commercial tool to be used in the pursuit of a higher goal: the conversion of the Indians to Catholicism. In exchange for their furs the Hurons and Algonquins received not only European goods but Récollet brothers (friars of the third order of Franciscans) fired with missionary zeal. Commerce was therefore desirable because it could lead to conversion. But Champlain also realized that colonization was essential to both conversion and commerce. European settlers were required to demonstrate the Christian way of life to the Indian converts and to make the settlement self-sufficient. In 1618, therefore, when he was living in France, Champlain presented a memorial to Louis XIII and another to the Chambre du Commerce of Paris in which he made a strong pitch for emigration to New France. Notwithstanding the force of his arguments, the explorer’s efforts were of little avail. The court was indifferent to his plans for overseas expansion. And, despite the impressive net profits that they were raking in from their fur-trading operations, the merchants balked at providing more than minimal support to the Récollets, who had arrived in Canada in 1615, and the first Jesuit missionaries, who had sailed to Quebec in 1635.

Large-scale colonization was destined to remain a dream as long as settlement was tied to the fur trade, for bands of Indians supplied all the labour necessary for its operations and there was no other economic activity in New France to attract immigrants from overseas. The impetus for colonization had to be provided by a change in thinking, and this occurred with the rise of seventeenth-century mercantilism, the theory that called for a state to increase its monetary wealth by severely restricting imports of manufactured goods and obtaining as many of its raw materials from abroad as possible. Colonies were an indispensable ingredient in the equation; they could supply the necessary raw materials for the mother country’s manufacturing industry and theoretically they could also furnish a market for some of its exports.

In the first quarter of the seventeenth century, when mercantilism began to figure prominently in European economic thinking, France had no colonial economy, only the seasonal fishing industry and fur trade of New France. But there were influential Frenchmen who believed that North America offered tremendous possibilities should France decide to base her power on a colonial economy. One of these was, of course, the determined lobbyist, Champlain. When Cardinal Richelieu first became a member of Louis XIII’s royal council, Champlain seized the opportunity to plead New France’s cause once again. He appealed in vain. Not until Richelieu was appointed for a second time to the council and became “chef du conseil” did the cardinal become fully convinced of France’s need to embark on an aggressive colonization policy.

THE COMPANY OF NEW FRANCE

To launch France on this daring new course, Richelieu, in 1627, spearheaded the establishment of a powerful commercial company designed to establish agricultural settlements, encourage missionary activity in New France and exploit its resources. Officially known as Compagnie de la Nouvelle France, it was composed of more than a hundred associates (hence the frequent reference to the Company of One Hundred Associates), who provided working capital of 300,000 livres. In return for title to all the lands claimed by France in North America and a monopoly on all commerce except fishing, the company undertook to settle 4,000 French Catholics in its domains between 1627 and December 1643. Like its predecessors, it had the intimidating task of securing French claims in Acadia, France’s hotly contested seaboard possessions in North America, and “Canada”, the tiny, feeble fur-trading post on the St. Lawrence River. Unlike previous enterprises of this kind, however, the Company of One Hundred Associates was the most ambitious colonizing vehicle ever launched by France — and it had the Crown’s full backing.

Unfortunately for the cause of colonization and its shareholders’ pocketbooks, the Company of New France was plagued by tribulations that were of the same magnitude as its pretensions. Its greatest misfortune was to be launched at a time when England and France were at war and safety at sea was a forlorn hope. In 1628, the luckless company’s first expedition was wiped out by the buccaneering Kirke brothers, three brothers who had been born and raised in France, but who now sailed under the English flag. In 1629, the efficient brothers followed up their conquest by helping the Scot, Sir William Alexander, Jr., establish a settlement near the earlier French settlement of Port Royal in Acadia. Lewis and Thomas Kirke then sailed up the St. Lawrence and captured Quebec, thereby temporarily smashing French power in North America.

In 1629, the Company of New France dispatched another expedition to the New World, and once again the commercial organization suffered a total loss. This, and the closing of the St. Lawrence to the French for three years, depleted the monopolists’ funds still further. Not until 1634, two years after England had agreed to evacuate all the places that she occupied in Acadia and Canada, did the company succeed in supplying the St. Lawrence colony with any sizeable group of settlers. With the arrival of this first influx since 1617, the advance of population was pushed upriver from Quebec and Canada began the transition from a mere fur-trading post to a true colony. In the next decade, settlement would concentrate not only around Quebec but also around two new regional centres of population: Trois-Rivières and Montreal.

THE FIRST WAVE OF IMMIGRANTS

Among these early waves of immigrants were merchants, professional men, and some landless nobles, for whom the alluring prospect of a seigneury in Canada more than compensated for the anticipated rigors of a long, rough voyage across the Atlantic. There were also skilled workers such as blacksmiths, coopers, joiners, and carpenters, some of whom may have succumbed to the powerful propaganda of the Jesuits, who attempted to recruit settlers for the colony by advertising its attractions in their Relations (a series of annual reports compiled by Jesuit missionaries in New France and sent, between 1632 and 1672, to their Paris office). In his role as a propagandist, the noted Jesuit, Father Paul Le Jeune, observed in 1635: “There are a great number of craftsmen in France who, for lack of work, or for lack of owning a little land, spend their life in pitiful poverty and want . . . Now, as New France is of such great size, such a large number of settlers can be sent there that those who remain in Old France will be able to employ their skill honourably.”¹

Because Canada’s manpower needs were so pressing, the system of indenturing was often invoked, a period of three years being the usual length of time selected. One Frenchman recruited for the colony by this method was Jacques Ragot, who signed a contract on April 9, 1643 with the chief clerk of the Company of New France agreeing to enter the service of Sieur Guillaume Couillard.² The immigrants’ ranks also included the inevitable soldiers and members of religious orders. On August 1, 1639, for instance, two groups of nuns disembarked at Quebec, one comprising Hospitalières from Dieppe, the other Ursulines led by Mother Marie de l’Incarnation. When six Jesuits also got off the ship, Father Le Jeune was able to hail the arrival of a vessel bearing “a college of Jesuits, a house of Hospitalières, and a Convent of U...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. The Beginnings
• 2. Canada’s First Large Influx of Refugees
• 3. British Immigration Transforms the Colonies
• 4. Immigration in the Macdonald Era
• 5. The Sifton Years
• 6. Forging a New Immigration Policy
• 7. Immigration Doldrums
• 8. Immigration’s Post-War Boom (1947–1957)
• 9. Major New Initiatives
• 10. A New Era in Immigration
• 11. The Turbulent 1980s and Beyond
• 12. Developments in the Last Decade
• Appendix: Tables and Figures
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index