Intergroup Relations

Armenians have become a viable component of Canadian society while still functioning as a distinct community. They have had centuries of experience as a minority in the Ottoman Empire and have also maintained a vast diaspora. Over time, Armenian colonies have interacted with each other, the homeland, and host societies, exchanging and propagating various intellectual, political, religious, and artistic currents. Early on, Armenians realized that Canadian society did not always understand dual loyalty and usually regarded perpetuation of ethnic culture as a rejection of Canadian values rather than an enrichment of the Canadian mosaic. So, like other ethnic minority groups, Armenians faced prejudice. Indeed, when they tried to immigrate to Canada a wall of resistance confronted them. Immigration officials labelled Armenians, a Caucasian people with an Indo-European language, as “Asiatic” – a category at the bottom of the official racial hierarchy. Such discrimination hurt especially during the 1920s, when Armenian survivors were desperate to find refuge in Canada to join their relatives.

Those who managed to enter the dominion found a free, democratic, and civilized society, “a country pure and beautiful as its snow.” From the beginning, Armenians have had a strong attachment to Canada and to its culture. Every Armenian family, school, organization, and church taught the same lesson to children: loyalty to their Armenian heritage and allegiance to their Canadian homeland. To show their commitment, Armenians enlisted in both world wars. The ratio of enlisted men in World War II was high, partly a reflection of birth rates during the 1920s. It was not always easy for Armenian children to cope with a dual heritage, particularly since Canadian society often treated foreigners with disdain and discouraged their participation in Canadian life. Early Armenian families, moreover, were on the lowest economic rung. The implicit message to the young was clear: to be Armenian was to suffer poverty and rejection; to be Canadian brought mobility and success.

For Armenians this dichotomy was intensified by the Genocide and its impact on survivors and their children. Their Armenian world was rooted in tragedy, psychological wounds, and sensitivity to intimidation by authorities – in short, a genocide complex. A legacy of massacre and unredressed crimes left a haunting message to the young: to be Armenian was to be the victim of brutality; to be Canadian was to be a member of the British Empire. The main avenues of mobility for Armenian Canadians during the first six or seven decades of settlement were relations with other Christian denominations, the workplace, and Canadian education. As early as the 1890s, Canadian Protestant missionaries working among Armenians in the Ottoman Empire tried to help people wishing to emigrate to Canada. Churchmen sought to mobilize public opinion in Canada during the 1894–97 massacres and the Genocide of 1915–23. Armenians’ expulsion and massacre galvanized many Canadians. Churchmen and business leaders, in cooperation with the Toronto Globe , raised almost $300,000 as a solatium (compensation) in 1920 to aid Armenian refugees. Religious groups also helped bring Armenian refugee orphans to Canada during the 1920s. Meanwhile, churches urged Ottawa to act in favour of an independent Armenian state. Their efforts induced passage of an order-in-council in 1920 opposing Turkish sovereignty over the Armenian provinces and recommending “the emancipation of Armenia from Turkish rule.” Church ties remain strong. The United Church facilitated immigration of Armenian refugees in the 1980s, and it remains connected to certain Armenian Evangelical churches. The Anglican Church, which has strong theological bonds with the Armenian Apostolic Church, has offered facilities for Armenian services (for example, at Toronto’s Holy Trinity and St Augustine of Canterbury) and has welcomed members of the Apostolic faith to worship with it (as at St Philip’s in Hamilton).

Originally, Armenians were recruited to gruelling work in Canadian iron foundries. Almost fifty years passed before a man with an Armenian name was allowed managerial or white-collar work in such factories; for women, it took even longer. Armenians joined other workers in Brantford, Galt, and St Catharines to take a lead in the trade union movement in the 1930s and 1940s. Some Armenian factory workers thought that the early unions were infiltrated by Communists and stayed away, but changes in the unions and in Canadian society brought more Armenians into the movement in the 1940s and 1950s. Many Armenians got a foothold in small businesses, but the major role of the oriental rug trade testifies to the difficulty of their moving into mainstream retailing. Still, men such as Yervant Pasdermajian, who ran rug enterprises, became active in mainstream Canadian life. Canadian-born children who attended public schools and universities were more upwardly mobile. The opening up of Canadian society since 1945 has coincided with greater professional and economic mobility for Armenian Canadians. Collapsing slowly and gradually until the mid-1970s, ethnic barriers against Armenians have now almost totally disappeared. Today, Armenian Canadians excel in every field: medicine and the sciences, architecture, engineering, law, and education. This intelligentsia serves as a role model for the young and a professional bridge – long overdue – to Canadian society.

Armenian leaders have for decades sought to influence Canadian policy towards their compatriots. In the period before World War I, they appealed to the Canadian government to bring pressure on Russia to free Armenian political prisoners. During and after the war, they sought Ottawa’s intervention at the peace negotiations on behalf of the Armenian Republic and in support of reparations. Indeed, Canada recognized the first Republic of Armenia and signed the ill-fated Treaty of Sèvres (1920). In 1932 it assigned $300,000 to Armenian Canadians as a solatium (compensation) for their losses during the Great War. Exclusion of Armenian immigrants during the 1920s brought efforts to force revision of the Asiatic classification; these exchanges continued until the classification was dropped and the points system introduced.

Following the events in 1915–23, a number of Turkish leaders were tried and convicted; Western newspapers and military, political, and religious observers offered extensive accounts of the procedures and of the horrifying evidence. Even so, later Turkish governments repudiated the events and launched a revisionist campaign. As a result, Armenians around the world began a sustained crusade to publicize the Genocide and to petition for its recognition and condemnation by governments and international tribunals – for example, the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (Paris, 1984).

Each year on 24 April, Armenians in Canada have marked the Genocide, at first within the community itself, and only gradually more publicly. In 1955, on the fortieth anniversary, Armenians in Ontario organized a peaceful mass march in Toronto and invited non-Armenians, including the mayor, to speak about the tragedy. In 1965 Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Jewish, Polish, and Ukrainian leaders took part in the Canadian Armenian Crusade for the fiftieth anniversary. In 1980 the Ontario and Quebec legislatures recognized the Genocide. Each year in Ottawa Armenian Canadians march from the Turkish embassy to Parliament Hill. Armenian-Canadian efforts regarding the Genocide have come up against the Turkish government’s campaign of denial. In the 1980s Armenians in Ottawa proposed a teaching unit to the local board of education, which included a brief study of the Genocide and incorporated a Turkish perspective as well. Turkish political pressure and threat of economic reprisal, however, prompted the Department of External Affairs to intervene, saying it was not “appropriate to describe an event retroactively and to give it a legal connotation which it did not have at the time.” Turkish authorities expressed their concern that “the use of the word `genocide’ creates an association with Nazi and Soviet atrocities.” The teaching unit was quashed.