Migration

Armenians began immigrating to Canada from the Ottoman Empire in the 1880s. At first there was a trickle of students and entrepreneurs, and later, at the turn of the century, a larger number of men migrated, primarily to southern Ontario. About two thousand Armenians settled in Canada before 1914. Some thirteen hundred survivors of the Genocide arrived as refugees during the 1920s. Beginning in the 1950s, thousands of Armenians immigrated from the Middle East, and since the late 1980s Armenians have arrived from the former Soviet Union.

The work of American and Canadian Protestant missionaries in Ottoman Turkey played a role in the early movement of Armenians to Canada. Garabed Nergararian, the first known Armenian in Canada, arrived in the 1880s from the Ottoman Empire, probably sent here to study by Protestant missionaries. In the 1890s Paul Courian, a Protestant rug merchant from Constantinople (Istanbul), settled in Toronto with his family and opened an oriental carpet store. During the same decade, Harry Cockshutt, a Protestant, recruited ten workers in Constantinople for the Cockshutt Plow Works in Brantford, Ontario.

The pre-1914 exodus of Armenians from the Ottoman Empire was directly related to their status as a racial, religious, and linguistic minority. Persecution of Armenian Christians by Muslims, Ottoman Turkey’s political and economic decay, anarchy and corruption in the interior, and periodic state-sanctioned massacres drove Armenians out of the Ottoman Empire in increasing numbers. Some eventually made their way to North America.

The first wave to reach Canada had left farms and villages in Anatolia, a region destabilized by confiscation, exorbitant taxation, famine, and brigandage. Men also migrated to Canada from intermediate places, such as Constantinople, the Balkans, and the United States, usually as recruits for southern Ontario’s new and expanding factories in Brantford, Galt, Guelph, Hamilton, Preston, and St Catharines. Word about jobs spread quickly through letters and the complex and extensive Armenian migrant networks. These “caravans” of men, money, and information consolidated the pattern of chain migration.

Leaving the Ottoman Empire before 1908 was expensive, complicated, and dangerous. After the coup d’état in 1908, however, reforms relaxed travel barriers, shipping increased, and fares declined. Immigrants wrote home about opportunities in the New World, and some returned home with capital, culture, and stories of freedom. Like the North American Protestant missionaries, the repatriates and the “America letters” opened up new frontiers for young men, at a time when the Ottoman Empire’s wars with Italy (1911) and in the Balkans (1912) compelled the government to step up conscription and to raise the military-exemption tax to the exorbitant sum of $260 (U.S.). Beginning in 1908 Canadian immigration regulations also restricted the entry of Asians and blacks, considered “undesirables.” Classification of the Armenians, who were Caucasians, as Asiatics – except in September and October 1930, when they were briefly ranked as Europeans – effectively curbed their immigration to Canada for half a century. Immigration authorities admitted 563 Armenians in 1907–08, but only 20 in 1910.

The majority of Armenian settlers in southern Ontario – mainly small farmers, artisans, and traders from rural villages – hailed from Keghi (province of Erzerum) and other impoverished districts in eastern Anatolia. Those who arrived by 1908 were generally older men, usually heads of households; after 1909 younger men fled conscription and joined their compatriots in the New World. Most intended to return home when they had enough money or when conditions improved in the Ottoman Empire. But life in Canada convinced some sojourners to stay and bring out their relatives.

Small groups of Armenians migrated to other parts of Canada. Catholics from the Mardin region arrived in Asbestos and Thetford Mines in Quebec; most worked in and around the asbestos mines but gradually took on other jobs or moved to Sherbrooke and Montreal. Another contingent migrated from Russia and temporarily settled in the prairies before moving on to California.

The Genocide transformed the Armenian communities in Canada. As tens of thousands of destitute and traumatized refugees were wandering in foreign places, Armenians in Canada set about to search for surviving family and for suitable wives in orphanages and refugee camps. Armenians viewed immigration to Canada in terms not only of saving the homeless but also of saving a nation from extinction.

Refugee status and racial classification, however, blocked many Armenians. During the 1920s Canada admitted refugees only if they complied with all existing regulations, some of which presented obvious obstacles for the displaced. A 1923 regulation excluded Asians, except bona fide farmers, farm labourers, and domestics. Armenian refugees were obliged to have $250 and, later, a bond posted by sponsors. They also had to possess a valid passport and to be in excellent health, and they had to travel to Canada by continuous journey from their country of citizenship.

From 1919 until after World War II Canada admitted only about thirteen hundred Armenians – refugees who entered as sponsored family members or as farm workers or domestics. Most were young women and children and came from urban as well as rural areas and from a variety of backgrounds. Each had a traumatic and tragic history. Among them were members of group movements sponsored by charitable organizations. About fifteen teenagers were brought in as farm labourers under the auspices of Fegan’s Homes. During the 1920s the Armenian Relief Association of Canada (ARAC) – an offshoot of the Armenian Relief Fund of Canada – sponsored a more sizeable contingent. The ARAC was an interethnic (largely non-Armenian), interdenominational (mainly Protestant), public organization established in 1922–23, and it aimed to help young Armenian refugees reach Canada, educate them, train them in farm work, and assist their adjustment. It assumed responsibility for about 110 orphan boys, aged eight to twelve, and placed them on a farm/home/school near Georgetown, Ontario, purchased through public subscription. The ARAC and later the United Church of Canada, which took over its refugee work, sponsored about forty young women, recruited as domestics for Toronto homes.

All immigration declined during the Depression and World War II. Armenians began to arrive again in the 1950s. To promote immigration, in 1948 a group of business leaders set up the voluntary, non-partisan, and non-profit Canadian Armenian Congress (CAC), headquartered in Montreal. Under the presidency of Yervant Pasdermajian, the CAC immediately asked the government to rescind the Asiatic designation for Armenian immigrants. Finally, in 1952, Ottawa exempted Armenians from this designation. Family reunification became easier, but not admission of unsponsored individuals from the Middle East, where many Armenians had found refuge after the Genocide. However, immigration authorities allowed the CAC to sponsor individuals and families who had no relatives in Canada; they could do so “without numerical limit” from 1964 to 1968, at which time such sponsorship was disallowed. Until its demise in 1969, the CAC was the principal agent of Armenian migration to Canada. In the 1960s Canada began to assess potential immigrants based on points, rather than on race. From this period on, events in areas with many Armenian settlers – anti-Armenian riots in Turkey, economic constraints in Egypt, the Greek-Turkish conflict in Cyprus, military rule in Syria, the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1974, civil war in Lebanon, revolution in Iran, the Iran-Iraq War, and the Gulf War – destabilized Armenian communities in those countries and compelled members to seek safety elsewhere. Many immigrated to Canada.

Most new arrivals headed for Quebec, and some for Ontario. The former had been exposed to French language and culture in the Middle East (“l’amour pour la francophonie”) and to efforts by Armenian-Canadian sponsors, including Kerop Bedoukian, who, in conjunction with the Canadian Council of Churches, sponsored Armenians, mainly from Greece and Istanbul. In contrast to their rural predecessors, most newcomers entered under the manufacturing, mechanical, professional, or clerical classification and settled principally in Montreal and Toronto. Unlike the oldtimers who had come from the homeland, the new settlers were exiles from exile. After 1958, crises in the Soviet Union and the Caucasus spurred immigration, primarily to the United States but also to Montreal and Toronto.

The 1991 census indicates just over 33,000 Armenians in Canada (26,005 give a single response and 7,280 a multiple one). Armenian leaders place the figure at about 70,000, but 50,000 seems more reasonable.