Migration

The Belgians have not been a major colonizing power, although they were involved soon after independence in the early nineteenth century in schemes to establish colonies in Tunisia, Morocco, Ethiopia, and Guatemala. The Belgian Congo (Zaire) was a personal venture in the interests of King Leopold II. In North America, Flemings from Antwerp participated in trade with the Viking colonies of Greenland and Vinland on the east coast of North America during the Middle Ages. After the collapse of these ventures, they held interests in the fishing vessels coming to Newfoundland waters for the lucrative walrus hunt in the fifteenth century. Cartographers such as Gerardus Mercator of Rupelmonde played a key role in the evolution of modern map making and European knowledge of northeastern North America. None of these early commercial ventures or cartographic contributions attracted permanent settlers, however.

The first Belgian immigrants to the New World came either to escape religious persecution or to build a Utopian colony. Walloon Protestants, driven out of the Liège, Hainaut, and Namur regions, made their way to Staten Island in 1624 with their celebrated pastor Pierre Minuit. A few Catholic missionaries, soldiers, and artisans were among those recruited in the early seventeenth century to work in the colony of New France. Following the institution of government under the French crown in 1663, the state sponsored the settlement of a number of soldiers, artisans, and brides, a few of whom were later discovered to be Walloon Protestants or Flemish Lutherans. The intendant, Jean Talon, who had served in Hainaut before coming to New France, hired some Belgian artisans to stimulate building, manufacturing, and mining in the colony. The trickle of artisans from Belgium continued in the eighteenth century; among them was Joseph de l’Estre de Vallon, who designed the presbytery at Quebec in 1725. A Flemish contractor was hired in 1750 for the rebuilding of Louisbourg, along with some quarrymen, bricklayers, brick makers, and lime burners.

After New France was ceded to Britain in 1763, few Belgians, apart from missionaries, settled in British North America. There was some spillover from communities in Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin into Upper Canada (Ontario). Others migrated to the mines of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and to towns in Lower Canada (Quebec). As a result, the Belgian government opened consulates in Montreal, Quebec, and Halifax. A Canadian select committee appointed in 1859 to examine immigration to Upper and Lower Canada recommended that assisted passages and grants of free land be extended to Belgians. In response to this new policy, a group of ninety-nine families arrived at Quebec in 1862 under the direction of an independent agent named A.H. Verret. He had been mandated to recruit immigrants in Belgium by offering them the same benefits as were already given to British immigrants.

The creation in 1867 of the Dominion of Canada, with overlapping provincial and federal jurisdiction in the field of immigration, resulted in Quebec, Manitoba, and Ottawa each seeking a share of the migration flow from the port of Antwerp to North America. Legislation was soon in place to provide free land grants and homestead patents to industrious settlers in western Canada. The first federal Immigration Act in 1869 classified Belgium among the “preferred countries,” and immigration agents portrayed Quebec and Manitoba, with their Catholic majorities and bilingualism, as particularly suitable places. Edouard Simaeys, originally from Tielt in West Flanders, was appointed the first dominion immigration agent for Europe, with offices in Antwerp. Flemish farmers and Walloon miners and industrial workers were considered “desirable” according to the instructions issued to Joseph Marmette, special immigration agent in 1883: “most in demand are farmers, gardeners, agricultural and other labourers, artisans and others qualified for common pursuits; and ordinary domestic servants, female particularly.” In addition to assisted steamship passages, bonuses were paid by the federal government to booking agents. Louis Hacault’s Les Belges au Manitoba (1894), J.V. Herreboudt’s Le Canada au point de vue de l’émigration (1890), and Gustaaf Vekeman’s Guide des émigrants au Canada (1890) enjoyed a wide distribution. Steamship companies published their own immigration propaganda. All recruiting had to be carried out circumspectly because Belgium had placed severe restrictions on emigration after it received reports of gross misrepresentation and exploitation of emigrants.

Minister of the Interior Clifford Sifton’s aggressive immigration policy resulted in the appointment in 1898 of Désiré Tréau de Coeli, a trilingual Belgian from Hull, as permanent immigration agent in Antwerp. He gave weekly lectures, published a monthly bulletin in French and Flemish for distribution to teachers, clergy, and ticket agents, ensured Canadian participation at the Universal Exhibition in Liège in 1905, set up a permanent display in Antwerp of prairie grains, fauna, and flora, and arranged educational tours of Canada. He was also party to the clandestine operations of the North Atlantic Trading Company, composed of European shipping agents and organized to divert to Canada immigrants destined for the United States.

Even when the push and pull factors have been strong, Belgians have not emigrated to Canada in large numbers. A governor of the province of Luxembourg once opined that when Walloons left their homeland, it was usually “to become rich, or because of a sense of adventure. Even so, they rarely leave ... without a desire to return.” His counterpart in East Flanders commented that Flemings possessed “an extreme, almost exaggerated parochialism” and “decide to leave their native land only as a last resort.” Within Belgium, various factors led to increased emigration in the nineteenth century. Throughout most of the century, the country experienced an annual increase in population of more than 9 percent. A commission du travail, established by the government in 1886, reported on appalling labour conditions and recommended emigration for the impoverished. Belgians left Flanders for northern France or the industrial centres of Wallonia. However, the small Belgian community in Montreal vehemently opposed the arrival of such “mendicants, vagabonds and fugitives from justice.” In any event, Canada was not a first choice of those who decided to go abroad, and the United States was considered much more attractive.

In the early twentieth century, the agricultural Flemish provinces experienced a population explosion and a shortage of arable land. The industrialized Walloon region still offered employment opportunities, although not under the most favourable conditions. Some Belgians chose to leave for personal reasons, such as to escape family tensions, avoid military service, satisfy a desire for adventure, improve their financial circumstances, or join family or friends abroad. The dominance of clerical influence in Flemish political and social life and bitter struggles between socialists, trade unionists, and the partisans of communal schools versus ultra-Catholics in Wallonia were also influences on emigration in this period.

What may be called the first significant wave of Belgian immigration to Canada began in 1906 with the liberalization of immigration criteria under Sifton’s successor, Frank Oliver. About 13,000 arrived during the next eight years – miners, navvies, artisans, and a wide spectrum of agriculturalists, including dairymen, market gardeners, fruit growers, and beet and tobacco cultivators. Another fourteen thousand followed in the decade after World War I, constituting the second wave. Among the active recruiters of these immigrants were the railway companies, sugar-beet manufacturers in Ontario and Alberta, and tobacco companies.

Economic pressures after World War II forced more Belgians than ever before to look abroad for a better life. The decline of the coal, iron, and steel industries centred in Wallonia, as well as the loss of the Belgian Congo in 1960 and the return of many professionals and technicians to a depressed economy, provided strong incentives for emigration. However, it is noteworthy that it was the Flemish-speaking region, which was now becoming industrialized, that provided the majority of the emigrants.

In terms of numbers, the third wave of Belgian immigration to Canada from 1945 to 1975 was the most significant: 16,278 immigrants arrived in 1951–60, 6,941 in 1961–70, and 3,534 in 1971–80. However, this immigration did not result in new Belgian settlements. Most of those who arrived went either to urban centres or to the settlements already established by their predecessors. In keeping with shifts in Canadian immigration policy in the 1960s from preferred groups to individuals with desirable education, training, and skills, Belgian immigrants came from the industrial, commercial, and professional sectors more often than from agriculture. Quebec attracted about two-thirds of these immigrants, especially teachers and professors in disciplines outside traditional provincial programs, professionals, and skilled workers in such specialties as biotechnology, aeronautics, and computer science.

The Belgians in Canada today constitute a relatively small community. In the 1961 census, 61,382 persons were identified as being of Belgian origin, but twenty years later only 42,275 were so described. The apparent decline may be explained by confusion between origin and identity on the part of both enumerators and respondents, an increase in mixed marriages, and returns indicating multiple ethnocultural origins. In 1991 only 31,475 persons said that they were of Belgian origin, but another 59,435 indicated Belgian as one of their origins, for a total of 90,910. Flemings outnumber Walloons four to one and are found across the country, with particularly important concentrations in southwestern Ontario and Manitoba. Walloons have gravitated to Quebec and to small francophone communities across the western provinces.

The population of Belgian origin is spread unevenly across the country. In comparative terms, Quebec’s share of immigrants declined in the 1980s, while Ontario’s increased, and that province also benefited from interprovincial migration. Some of these immigrants and migrants went to Ontario’s tobacco belt, but the greater number settled in the commercial and industrial “golden horseshoe” at the western end of Lake Ontario. Elsewhere in Canada, communities have followed the general trend to urbanization and occupational mobility. About 34.6 percent of the total population (both single and multiple origin) is concentrated in Ontario, and Quebec and Manitoba each have about 17 percent. The population is more rural than urban, except in Quebec, where it is overwhelmingly centred in the Montreal region, and in British Columbia, where more than half live in urban communities. In Manitoba one-third are found in the greater Winnipeg region, while in Ontario, Belgian Canadians are concentrated in the southwestern counties: until 1921 in Essex and Kent, but more recently also in Norfolk County and in Metropolitan Toronto.