From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Armenians/Isabel Kaprielian-Churchill
Armenians who settled in southern Ontario before 1914 clustered near their places of work, creating Armenian quarters. In St Catharines, they concentrated near the McKinnon Dash and Metal Works (later General Motors); in Hamilton, not far from Deering (later International Harvester, and now Case); and in Brantford, in the heart of the city, near factory workplaces. The sojourners converted single family dwellings into collectively organized boarding-houses, which were set up by village of origin, political affiliation, and/or place of work. In a society dominated by sojourning men, the boardinghouses facilitated mutual protection and assistance.
Changes in employment patterns after World War I led to population shifts. Before 1914 Brantford, Ontario, had the largest Armenian settlement in Canada, but a downturn in the city’s economy and job opportunities elsewhere led to an exodus after the war, often to Detroit, Michigan, or to other Ontario cities. In the 1920s St Catharines emerged as the biggest Armenian settlement in Canada, with almost five hundred residents. Jobs attracted more Armenians to Galt, Guelph, Preston, and Windsor, where little neighbourhoods sprang up, close to factory workplaces.
While mobility and transiency characterized the pre1914 settlements, stability and permanence marked the same communities after the Genocide, when Armenians in Canada thought in terms of family reunification, marriage, and home purchase. Vernon’s City Directory for St Catharines in 1930 reveals that, of the fifty-eight men mentioned in the Armenian quarter, forty-two owned homes, four owned farms, and only twelve, mainly newcomers, rented accommodation.
Although post-1918 refugee newcomers did not alter either the location of Armenian neighbourhoods or the predominance of Keghi regional culture, their youth and heterogeneous background revitalized the old settlements. In Toronto, by contrast, refugees, including women domestics and the Fegan’s and Georgetown men who left farms, soon outnumbered the earlier settlers, who were reduced to three or four merchant families and a few transient factory workers. As well, their economic, educational, social, and cultural differences meant that no single group dominated the Toronto community. Most Armenians in Toronto settled in three areas. The business elite – a small group of well-off, well-educated, and cosmopolitan families, including the Babayans, Courians, and Utujians, and, after the war, the Papazians – originally from Constantinople and its environs, resided in elegant homes in Toronto’s north end. Another group, mainly farm workers from Anatolia, worked in west-end factories and occupied humble homes in the Junction area of west Toronto. The third group – mainly refugees, who formed a budding entrepreneurial class – resided in downtown central and eastern Toronto. As in Toronto, so in Montreal, Armenian settlement started slowly before 1914. About twenty sojourners from Anatolia worked in such factories as Montreal Locomotive and the Steel Company of Canada. After 1918 an equally small group of refugees joined them. Gradually, Park Avenue evolved as the city’s main artery of Armenian settlement and enterprise.
Post-1918 refugees who migrated to Toronto or Montreal found no Armenian neighbourhoods, organizations, or institutions to welcome them, but the roots they set down attracted Armenian immigrants arriving after 1950. In the 1981 Canadian census, the largest single group among those giving Armenian as their ethnic origin was born in Canada (19.7 percent); of the remainder, 19.3 percent were born in Turkey (including past and recent immigration), 16.8 percent in Lebanon, and 15.3 percent in Egypt. Clearly, Armenians in Canada constituted an immigrant community, despite the growing proportion of Canadian-born.
Quebec has gradually replaced Ontario as the province of principal settlement. According to a 1962 survey, almost 75 percent of Armenians resided in Ontario and slightly more than 25 percent in Quebec. In the 1986 census, Ontario still dominated in numbers, but by 1991 Quebec had replaced it. British Columbia and Alberta ran a distant third and fourth. Immigration since World War II has been mainly directed to Montreal and Toronto. In 1960 the number of Armenians in Brantford, Galt, Guelph, Hamilton, and St Catharines exceeded that in Montreal or Toronto. The largest single Armenian settlement, however, was Metropolitan Montreal, a ranking it still holds. According to the 1991 census, 98 percent of Quebec Armenians resided in Montreal and 73 percent of Ontario Armenians in Toronto. In both cities the Armenian population was youthful, with more than 55 percent below the age of 40 in Toronto in 1986 and almost 66 percent under 45 in Montreal, according to the 1981 and 1991 censuses.
Post–World War II immigrants settled in Calgary, Cambridge, Edmonton, Hamilton, Montreal, Ottawa, St Catharines, Toronto, Windsor, and Vancouver, where they rejuvenated community life. In Brantford, in contrast, limited job opportunities discouraged immigration and induced young people to leave, crippling organized Armenian life.
In Toronto, newcomers fell into the established residential pattern – dispersal throughout Metropolitan Toronto and neighbouring Markham, Mississauga, and Thornhill. In Montreal, settlement started pushing northward in the 1960s, into Ville Saint-Laurent and Nouveau Bordeaux. In 1988 it was estimated that roughly two-thirds of Armenians in greater Montreal lived in Cartierville, Laval, Nouveau Bordeaux, Ville Saint-Laurent, and along the Park Extension.
In both Toronto and Montreal, community centres attracted settlement to new districts. In 1979, for example, the Tashnag group in Toronto erected a centre near Highway 401 and the Don Valley Parkway, far from the previous location at Avenue Road and Dupont Street. The new edifice drew settlers who later built a school (1982) and a church (1990) on the same premises. The Armenian General Benevolent Union constructed its complex nearby. The resulting settlement has created a sprawl in North York and Scarborough, north and south of Highway 401, west of the Don Valley Parkway, east of Morningside, and northward to Thornhill and Markham.
