From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Belgians/Cornelius J. Jaenen
Background information on Belgium is available in a number of studies including Koen Mattijs and Michel Draguet, The Belgians (Tielt, Belgium, 1992); Kenneth D. McRae, Conflict and Compromise in Multilingual Societies: Belgium (Waterloo, Ont., 1986); Els Witte, La Flandre: des origines à nos jours (Brussels, 1983); and Els Witte and Jan Craeybeckx, La Belgique politique de 1930 à nos jours: les tensions d’une démocratie bourgeoise (Brussels, 1987).
Emigration from Belgium is the subject of the work by Ginette Kurgan and E. Spelkens, Two Studies on Emigration Through Antwerp to the New World (Brussels, 1976); Jean Puissant, “Quelques témoignages sur l’émigration hennuyère, 1884–1889,” Académie Royale des Sciences d’Outre-Mer, Bulletin des séances, vol.3 (1973), 443–63; Jean Stengers, Émigration et immigration en Belgique au XIXe et au XXe siècles (Brussels, 1978); and Jean Everaert, “L’Émigration en masse,” and Eddy Stols, “L’Émigration des cerveaux,” in La Belgique: sociétés et cultures depuis 150 ans (Brussels, 1980), 248–52.
At present the only national overview for Belgians in Canada is Cornelius J. Jaenen, The Belgians in Canada, Canada’s Ethnic Group Series, no.20 (Ottawa, 1991). A useful collection of comparative studies is G. Kurganvan Hentenryk, ed., La Question sociale en Belgique et au Canada (Brussels, 1988). Regional studies of Belgian settlement in Canada are Joan Magee, The Belgians in Ontario: A History (Toronto, 1987), and Keith Wilson and James B. Wyndels, The Belgians in Manitoba (Winnipeg, 1976).
The major archival source for Belgians in Canada is the Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, located in Brussels, Belgium. Some of the key documents from this repository have been copied and are now in the National Ethnic Archives, National Archives of Canada, Ottawa. Information can also be found in various Roman Catholic diocesan and Canadian provincial archives, but there are no major collections.
