Economic Life

In the period before 1914 most Armenians in southern Ontario, lacking money, English, and knowledge of North American ways, started out on farms or in the expanding iron foundries as shake-out men and stokers, later becoming coremakers, pattern makers, and moulders. They laboured in hot, filthy, dangerous conditions, with no job security, under constant threat of lay-off, and at the mercy of the shop foreman. Most worked at General Motors in St Catharines, at the malleable iron foundry at International Harvester in Hamilton, or at Brantford foundries, including Pratt and Letchworth, Massey-Harris, Cockshutt Plow, Buck Stove, Waterous Engine Works, and Verity Plow. If they had a job with a decent wage they stuck with it. Some Armenians moved to trade or entrepreneurial activities, such as barbering, tailoring, shoe repairing, farming, or running boardinghouses or serjarans (coffee-houses). During the inter-war years Armenians also worked at Galt Malleable, Guelph Malleable, Clare Brothers (Preston), and Sandwich Foundries. As they took on mortgages and started families, they became more tied to the factory. They also learned more about labour issues and grew militant in labour disputes, especially during the Great Depression of the 1930s. At General Motors in St Catharines, for instance, four Armenians were among the founding members of Local 199 of the United Auto Workers. Armenian activists also spearheaded the union movement in Galt and Brantford.

Armenians took up farming around St Catharines and in the Niagara peninsula. At Georgetown, Ontario, the ARAC dispatched the young Armenian boys as indentured farm workers. When the United Church of Canada bought the farm/home/school in 1928, it closed the facility as a home for Armenian orphans and supervised their work on Ontario farms. Many were exploited as cheap farm labourers. As soon as they reached maturity, most headed for the cities but a few remained on the land. Young Armenian refugee women sponsored by the ARAC and the United Church as domestics provided a much-needed service in Toronto homes, where they learned about Canadian ways and values. As soon as their contracts expired, usually in two years, they left domestic service and married shortly afterwards. Most Armenian women stayed at home during the 1920s, but circumstances later sent them into the labour force. During the Depression many worked on farms or in homes, cafeterias, and factories. During World War II they worked in canneries, textile mills, tailoring establishments, and in industry, but notably not in offices; Canadian employers excluded them from clerical work, even those with commercial high school training. As soon as men were demobilized, women returned to their homes or launched into enterpreneurial activities.

For newcomers, opening a business was a way of coping with prejudice, lack of skills, faulty English, and – during the Depression – unemployment or dead-end jobs. Self-employment offered upward mobility, and work by family members compensated for lack of capital. Armenians set up grocery stores, confectioneries, coffee shops, restaurants, ice-cream and shoe-shine parlours, barber and shoe-repair shops, and dry-cleaning, hairdressing, and tailoring and dressmaking stores. In St Catharines, Armenians favoured confectionery shops; in Halifax, grocery stores; in Montreal, mainly restaurants and ice-cream parlours; and in Toronto, rug dealerships.

In the carpet industry in Toronto men imported and sold rugs and did the heavy labour of washing them; women usually worked in the office or shared with men the skilled craft of repairing rugs. Diligent young people could work for someone else, acquire experience and proficiency, and then start their own business selling or servicing oriental rugs and later broadloom. From Toronto, Armenians took their skills to Montreal, Hamilton, St Catharines, and London, Ontario. Specialization and mutual assistance enabled Armenians to dominate the trade in Canada by the 1940s.

Armenian Canadians relied on an age-old tradition of mutual help, based on friendship and reciprocity. Earlier settlers passed on jobs, expertise, and Canadian practices to new immigrants, who in turn helped the next flow. Despite some fractiousness and feuding, an intricate network of interdependence and commercial contacts emerged. Mutual assistance was crucial because post-1918 immigrants had had their education and training abruptly checked by events starting in 1915.

Armenian participation in the Canadian labour force evolved with the country. In the 1950s and 1960s Armenians shifted away from factory work. Older settlers were retiring, and, if their children worked in factories, they usually had clerical or managerial positions. Most young people chose commercial activities or professions, notably medicine, nursing, and teaching. Post1950 arrivals left large, cosmopolitan Middle East cities; many were well educated, highly skilled, and affluent and in Canada chose entrepreneurial trade and professional work. Some entered the jewellery business; a 1983 study indicated that Armenians operated almost half of the gemstone-setting ateliers in Montreal. Some chose the automotive industry – including importing, selling, and repairing automobiles, trucks, and buses. Others engaged in printing and photography; food- and catering-related enterprises; shoe repair, tailoring, and dressmaking; and manufacture of precision tools and leather goods. Teaching and medicine remained popular professions, supplemented by pharmacy, law, accounting, and computer technology.

All along, Armenian women have taken paid work. Their contributions in family enterprises – from running boarding-houses to operating jewellery stores – were often unrecognized but crucial to family and community. Armenian women also became teachers or nurses and, later, dentists, pharmacists, doctors, or lawyers.

In the early years, discrimination or injustice against Armenian workers provoked group protest. Today, professional and business associations link members more formally: the Armenian Bar Association, the Armenian Engineers and Scientists of America, the Armenian Medical Associations of Ontario and of Quebec, the Armenian Medical International Committee, the Canadian Armenian Dental Association, and the Canadian Armenian Business Council. They assist students, strengthen the Armenian-Canadian community and its links with Canadian society, and send assistance to Armenia and Karabakh. By cutting across political, regional, and religious lines, these bodies redefine “Armenianness” in innovative ways.