From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Afghans/Grant Farr
Although most Afghans in Canada fled the country in the wake of the Marxist revolution and the subsequent Soviet occupation, there was a small Afghan community of about 1,000 people before 1978. In most cases, Pakistan was the first country of refuge for the Afghans who eventually immigrated to Canada after that date. Those who came to this country were from the small educated middle class and had been exposed to Western ideas. They were forced to flee Afghanistan and subsequently Pakistan because of persecution first by the Marxist government in Kabul and then by Islamic fundamentalists in the Afghan refugee community in Pakistan.
Data on ethnic origin from Canada’s 1991 census indicate that 6,330 people were wholly (5,875) or partially (455) of Afghan origin. Three-quarters of them (single and multiple responses combined) were residing in the province of Ontario (4,755), with the only other significant concentrations being in Quebec (670) and British Columbia (400). The population is no doubt somewhat larger than the census indicates, since Afghans are sometimes misclassified as Iranian or Pakistani. Also, some identify more with their ethnic background than with the Afghan nationality, and so may list themselves as Pashtun, an ethnic group that lives in both Afghanistan and Pakistan but that is not listed separately in Canadian census reports. Although there is no way to determine the true number of Afghans in Canada, 10,000 would probably be a reasonable estimate. Nearly 57 percent are men.
Immigration statistics show that the number of Afghans entering Canada since 1978 has been approximately 1,000 per year, with 1,388 arriving in 1991. Immigration slowed in the late 1990s since those who were able to leave Afghanistan and the refugee camps in Pakistan had already done so. Most Afghan immigrants arrived and still live in Toronto. They have not tended to form enclaves, in part because they are divided into rival ethnic and sectarian subgroups and also because they eschew city centres despite their urban background in Afghanistan. They are therefore relatively dispersed and will continue to scatter, largely to other metropolitan areas such as Vancouver or Montreal. They prefer to buy real estate rather than rent, and extended families often pool money to purchase housing in the suburbs.
