Migration and Settlement

The Assyrians were among the first settlers of the northern Canadian prairies, at a time when the Canadian government was actively encouraging the development of the area as a major wheat- and cereal-producing region. The earliest immigrant colony was established in 1903 in what later came to be known as North Battleford, Saskatchewan. It consisted of thirty-six men and a few women, all of whom were from the town of Urmia and the surrounding villages in northwest Persia (Iran). They were brought to Canada by Dr Isaac Adams, an Assyrian Presbyterian missionary. Along with colonists from the British Isles, the Assyrians turned the virgin prairie soil into farmland. After homesteading for a few years in North Battleford, the men sent for their families back home and in 1907 were joined by forty more settlers. The colony did not prosper economically, however, partly because of a lack of money. The settlers were also handicapped by the language barrier and by discrimination. Eventually Dr Adams and his close relatives left to establish a colony in California. The families of those who stayed behind were still living in North Battleford in the 1990s. For example, the Backus, Essau, and Odishaw families there are of Assyrian origin. The name of Johnny Esaw, a sports commentator on television during the 1960s and 1970s, is well known to Canadians. Subsequent migrations shifted the locus of settlement to Toronto, with smaller enclaves to be found in Montreal, Hamilton, Windsor, London, Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, and Vancouver. Since the Assyrians are not listed as a separate group in the Canadian census, accurate figures are not available on the size of the various settlements. But rough estimates place the total at about 15,000.

Well over half the Assyrians in Canada now live in the province of Ontario. This community dates back to the mid-1960s, when Canada established a quota system that included allowances for immigrants from the Middle East. In 1966 there were no more than four Assyrian families in Toronto. Since then there has been a steady flow of immigrants through chain migration. Peak periods were the early 1970s, when the Iraqi war against the Kurds resulted in Assyrians of northern Iraq being driven out of their villages; the mid-1980s, in the aftermath of the protracted Iran-Iraq war, a conflict that had seen young Assyrian men conscripted into the armies of both countries; and the early 1990s, following the Persian Gulf War. By 1993 there were 6,000 Assyrians in Toronto, 120 families in Hamilton, about 40 families in Windsor, and 200 families in London. Most of the Assyrians in Ontario come from the towns and villages of northern Iraq or the capital city of Baghdad. The rest are from Iran and Turkey.

The London community is unique in that almost all its members are of the Tyari tribe (one of the eight major clans of Assyrian highlanders) from the village of Tall Tamir in Syria. The Assyrian highlanders were sedentary pastoralists who had lived in the Hakkâri mountains of southeastern Anatolia in pre–World War I Ottoman Turtkey. Because the Assyrians joined the Allied war effort, the government of postwar Turkey refused to repatriate them when the conflict was over. Eventually, in 1941, a number of them were settled in villages along the Khabur River in northeastern Syria. When the head of the Tyari tribe, Yaccu bar Malik Ismail, a distinguished officer in the British army, immigrated to London, Ontario, a large number of the clan followed in the 1960s. They prefer this city to Toronto because it is smaller, the cost of living is lower, and at the same time it is a university town where their sons and daughters can obtain higher education.

The Assyrian immigrant settlement in Montreal is also unique in that it is composed predominantly of Jacobite Assyrians. The estimated population is two hundred families. Although its members have established their own denominational churches and readily recognize themselves as Assyrians, they have had no civic organization since the 1960s, when their association, the Assyrian Society of Canada, closed down. The Assyrians of Montreal came to Canada in the post– World War I era from Syria (Damascus, Aleppo, Darb siyah), Turkey (Mardin, stanbul, Midye), and Iraq (Mosul, Baghdad). Those from Midye, who are recent immigrants, speak the Toroyo dialect of Aramaic, but the rest have lost fluency in their mother tongue and speak Arabic or Turkish. Most of their social activities are with other Christian Arabs in Montreal. They constitute a rather well-to-do class of business people, specializing in the retail sale of jewellery or clothing. Jacobite Assyrians are also found in Toronto and Hamilton, but in the latter city they are mostly refugees and immigrants from the post-1960 era. The Assyrian settlements in Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver number about 100 families each.