Migration

Statistical information on American migration to Canada is singularly unsatisfactory, for a variety of reasons. In the first place, the early migrations occurred in periods before any sort of official record-keeping was in operation, and we can at best provide informed estimates. But even the presence of modern record-keepers does not much help in the particular case of the Americans. Until recent years, the border between Canada and the United States has been a very open one. The American government has never kept track of those emigrating from the United States, and for most of the period between 1870 and 1915 border counts by either the American or the Canadian authorities merely recorded the numbers crossing the border without distinction between immigrants and travellers (or cross-border shoppers).

The situation is complicated by other factors. Some of those emigrating from the United States to Canada have not been Americans but recent immigrants to the United States moving on for one reason or another. Most of this traffic has traditionally involved Europeans, although a few people from Asia (Chinese and Japanese) came to Canada via the United States in the mid-nineteenth century and non-Europeans have come across the border in greater numbers in recent years. Moreover, a number of those departing the United States for Canada have always been returning Canadians. At the same time, because of the ease of traffic across the border, large numbers of those immigrating to Canada from the United States have been able to return to the United States. This return has been particularly common for many within the refugee or exile groups who came to Canada for particular political reasons which were eventually resolved. Finally, in the more recent period, the semi-clandestine (and, from the American standpoint, criminal) nature of much of the war-resister movement made it difficult to obtain accurate figures on the numbers involved.

The unwillingness of the Canadian census to recognize Americans as an ethnic group has further limited the data. Since the turn of the century Canada has attempted to maintain accurate figures on gross immigration from the United States. Net figures, however, are considerably less reliable, particularly since the only census data that can be employed is for the American-born in Canada, a category not necessarily identical with those of American nationality or ethnicity. Even from the Canadian standpoint, the era of the Vietnam War made accurate record-keeping difficult. Many American war resisters came to Canada as visitors rather than as immigrants, particularly in the early period before the attitude of the Canadian government towards this population was well known, and returned to the United States when amnesties were declared without ever passing through official records.

On a decade-by-decade basis from 1749 to 1989, gross or total American immigration to what is now Canada is as follows:

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*Figures before 1900 are the author’s estimates, based on secondary literature; those after 1900 are drawn from the official census.

The total figure for the period from 1749 to 1990 amounts to 2,378,800 American immigrants, making the United States and its colonial predecessors one of the major sources of immigration to Canada. All but the latest figures cannot be broken down by gender.

Generalizations about the identity of American immigrants to Canada are virtually impossible. On the whole, Americans have been better educated and in possession of more capital than most other immigrant groups, but, beyond these points, the characteristics of American immigrants and American immigration depend very much upon which subgroup is examined. Some groups (exiles, refugees, and doctors, for example) have had a very high rate of ultimate return to the United States, while others (members of separatist religious communities and farmers) have had an equally high rate of remaining in Canada. For some groups, particularly exiles and refugees, the “push” factor was very strong. For most American immigrants, however, the “pull” factor – chiefly the attraction of economic opportunities and access to land unavailable in the United States – was most important. Exile and refugee groups tended to have younger than average immigrants, often almost exclusively male, although many of the religious communities migrated as families. Wom-en’s roles were subordinate in most groups, although there were women of distinction among the Nova Scotia planters, the Loyalists, the blacks, and the western farmers.

The predominant region of destination varied over time, depending chiefly on which region was being opened for agricultural settlement. By and large, Canadians of American origin are very widely dispersed across the nation, although there are some interesting subpatterns. Most blacks who travelled along the Underground Railway settled in southwestern Upper Canada, with small contingents later on Vancouver Island and what was to become Alberta. A disproportionate number of American immigrants in the 1970s and 1980s went to the Maritime region, apparently attracted by its relatively rural and small-town nature. Most war resisters went to the larger cities, especially Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, where organizations to assist the newcomers were active.