From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Australians/Ann Capling
From the founding of the Australian federation in 1901 until the late 1950s there was very little Australian immigration to Canada. Although the data are quite fragmented and sketchy for Australian migrants, the 1941 census shows that only about 2,800 Australian-born people were living in Canada at that time. This low level of migration reflected an unspoken agreement among the former British colonies that they would not recruit immigrants from each other. Pressure to attract immigrants in both countries meant that this understanding was sometimes breached, and in 1904 the state government of Western Australia accused Canada of poaching immigrants. The understanding did not constrain the recruitment practices of non-central governments either; in 1910 the Canadian government protested when the state of Victoria engaged in a campaign to recruit prospective migrants from Canada.
These breaches were unusual, however, and generally the Australian and Canadian governments tried to avoid recruitment campaigns in each other’s countries. Still, there was some concern in Australia that it was losing out, both in terms of Australians who left for Canada and in the competition for immigrants from Great Britain. The desire to stem the trickle of Australian immigration to Canada and to convince prospective British immigrants of the merits of Australia over Canada led to occasional anti-Canadian propaganda campaigns in Australian newspapers. The gist of these campaigns was that Canada was a decent country ruined by a terrible climate.
In the period prior to the mid-twentieth century much of the Australian movement to Canada was temporary. In some cases, Australians came to Canada to pursue opportunities that were not available to them at home. The story of Emma Constance Stone is not unusual: because the University of Melbourne did not admit women to its degree in medicine, Stone was forced to leave Australia in order to be trained as a physician. She headed first to the Women’s Medical College in Pennsylvania and then to the University of Toronto, where she completed degrees in medicine and chemistry in 1888. Two years later she returned home to Melbourne and with her sisters established the Queen Victoria Hospital, which specialized in women’s health. Other Australian sojourners in Canada include Ambrose McCarthy Patterson, a Melbourne artist who worked as a cartoonist and illustrator in Montreal for a brief period between 1899 and 1901; Walter Scott, professor of classics at McGill University from 1905 to 1908; and Ambrose George Thomas Saunders, who worked in vaudeville in Vancouver on the eve of World War I but returned to Sydney to enlist in the First Battalion of the Australian Imperial Force.
During World War II another group of Australian sojourners came to Canada – the men involved in the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP). Under the terms of the plan Australia agreed to supply 9,600 air crew, to be trained in Canada and then to be made available for service with the Royal Air Force. Most of the Australians who flew with Bomber Command were trained in Canada. Instructors in the BCATP commented that they experienced some difficulties with the Australian trainees; the fact that most of them (unlike their Canadian and American counterparts) had not driven a car before placed them at a disadvantage, since driving skills were useful for flying. The trainees are said to have lived up to the Australian reputation of “larrikinism” or resisting authority. When they were told to wash the barracks at the Number 4 Service Flying Training School in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, they refused to a man – and won. They are also reputed to have been great drinkers, and as a result some station commanding officers declared the wet canteen off limits until their graduation. Others tried to be more accommodating: the manager of the Number One Air Observer School at Malton (Mississauga), Ontario, erected a marquee for their off-duty amusement. During the BCATP 3,750 men from the Royal Australian Air Force, the Royal New Zealand Airforce, and the Royal Air Force met and married Canadian women. Although there are no precise figures, it has been estimated that several hundred Australian men returned home with Canadian brides when the war was over. Some of the couples later returned to Canada, but the majority of them remained in Australia.
From the mid-1950s Australian immigration to Canada began to grow. In 1951 nearly 600 Australians migrated to Canada; by 1957–58 that number had risen to 2,770. This migration was largely employment-driven. Staff shortages in Canadian hospitals led their administrators to recruit nurses from abroad, including Australia. Working conditions were similar in both countries, but nurses in Canada were generally better paid. As in the past, this sort of recruiting caused problems because Australian hospitals were also suffering from a shortage of personnel. Australian protests in 1959 led the Canadian government to force a Brantford hospital to cancel its plans to recruit and hire Australian nurses. Although hospitals and schools were subsequently discouraged from advertising for staff in Australia, many teachers and nurses came to Canada during the 1960s.
Like their predecessors at the turn of the century, a number of these were sojourners – Australians who wanted to work and travel in Canada for several months and then continue their travels elsewhere before returning home. Because Canada did not have a working holiday program, Australians who wanted to work their way across the country had to apply for immigrant status, for which they easily qualified. This practice caused problems among Canadian employers, especially in schools and hospitals, because many of the sojourners would work for a few months and then leave. Yet the Canadian government did not want to discourage the entry of Australians to Canada, even when it was understood that they would stay for only a few years. Australian sojourners and immigrants in this period were predominantly women, partly because the skills shortages in Canada were concentrated in such occupations as nursing, teaching, and secretarial work, and partly because Canada was widely perceived as a safe destination for young women travelling alone or in small groups with other female companions.
By the late 1960s Australian migration to Canada was booming; it peaked in 1967 at almost 5,000, a figure that has not been surpassed. It is likely that this high number reflects the fact that many young Australians were attracted to Canada during its centennial year and, wishing to travel and work temporarily, had to apply for landed immigrant status in order to obtain a work permit. They were attracted to Canada for other reasons, too, including their feelings of isolation and a desire to travel. It is still common for Australian school graduates to have a chance to see the world before settling down in a permanent job, and Canada has been a popular stop along the way.
From the mid-1960s to the late 1970s hundreds of Australian teachers and university professors came to Canada in search of better-paid positions. This brain drain from Australia was also manifested in the numbers of students who enrolled in Canadian graduate schools during the same period. Although many Australian graduate students would have preferred to study in the United States, it was easier for them to pursue their education in Canada. Canadian universities charged far lower tuition fees for Australian students than was the case at American universities, where they were treated as foreign students and charged accordingly. In addition, Australian students believed that Canadian universities were more aware and appreciative of the nature of Australian universities and their undergraduate degrees and therefore more inclined to admit and award them scholarships. A further consideration was that Canadian immigration regulations during that period allowed the spouses of Australian students to have work permits. While most Australians who were granted doctorates in Canada eventually returned to Australia, many of them secured academic positions in Canada and stayed on.
The majority of Australian migrants settled in western Canada. The economic opportunities there, not just in teaching and nursing but also in resource industries such as mining and logging, and its relative proximity to Australia made this area appealing. Primary industry has been a mainstay of both the Australian and Canadian economies and has played a role in the movement of Australians to Canada. For instance, in 1869 the director of the Geological Survey of Victoria, Alfred Selwyn, became the director of the Geological Survey of Canada, and Thomas Griffith Taylor, the first professor of geography at the University of Sydney, founded the first Canadian department of geography at the University of Toronto in 1935. These links have been extended across other extractive resource industries: there are strong connections among the mining and oil and gas companies of western Canada and Western Australia, which also helps to explain why the Australian population in Canada is predominantly located in Alberta and British Columbia.
By the late 1970s the number of Australian migrants to Canada began to drop off. This decrease was likely due to the introduction of the “Canadians first” provision of the 1976 Immigration Act, which stipulated that employment authorizations could be issued to foreigners only if it could be established that no Canadian citizen or permanent resident could fill the position. The provision, along with a greater emphasis on skills and training than on education in the selection of immigrants, came into effect in 1978 and made it much more difficult for Australians to migrate to Canada independently unless they were married to a Canadian citizen or permanent resident. As Canada’s unemployment levels inched upwards, the regulations were further tightened in 1982, and the number of Australians moving to Canada continued to fall steadily. In 1986 approximately 350 Australians migrated to Canada – the lowest number in thirty-five years.
The 1991 census reported that almost 14,000 Australian-born people were living in Canada; of these, 3,195 described themselves as being of exclusively Australian or New Zealander ethnic origin, while 10,495 said that Australian/New Zealander was one of their ethnic origins. Women outnumbered men (7,635 or nearly 55 percent of the group), which reflected the number of Australian nurses and schoolteachers who had come to Canada during the 1960s and 1970s. The age of the immigrant population is also a reflection of the number of young adults who migrated from Australia to Canada during this period: 80 percent of them are over the age of 25, and of these more than 42 percent are over the age of 45. As mentioned above, the majority of Australian- or New Zealand–born immigrants (single and multiple origins) settled in western Canada, predominantly in British Columbia (5,195) and Alberta (2,400). Outside western Canada, the Australian- or New Zealand–born population is located almost exclusively in Ontario (4,795) and is centred in the Toronto and Ottawa regions. There are very few Australians living in Quebec (595) or in the Atlantic and prairie provinces.
