From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Croats/Anthony W. Rasporich
Croats were characteristically primary producers in the first and second waves of settlement, up to 1939. Often expertise acquired in Croatia led to occupational choices in Canada. Thus the fishing villages of the lower Fraser River were populated by fishermen from Istria and Dalmatia, the mining towns of Nanaimo and Ladysmith, British Columbia, and Schumacher, Ontario, by Žumberčani from mountainous northern Croatia. Saskatchewan towns such as Kenaston and Hanley were farmed by peasants from Lika, and timber and pulpmill towns such as Port Arthur and Sault Ste Marie by loggers from the Dalmatian coast, Gorski Kotar, and Herzegovina. Croats were also involved quite randomly in the industrial labour required for railway construction from 1900 to 1914, and some, such as natives of Zagorje, were involved in the iron and steel industry of southern Ontario.
In the inter-war era some Croats became entrepreneurs in the service sector, as innkeepers, grocers, and restaurateurs; natives of coastal Dalmatia had an advantage here. Many Croatian women established boardinghouses in such towns as Sault Ste Marie, Port Arthur, and Windsor, where bachelor countrymen needed a home away from home. The gospodja, or landlady, provided room, board, and even laundry service and thereby supplemented her family’s income.
Economic self-help and community protection were evident in the earliest mining settlements. The miners of Nanaimo and Ladysmith were among the first to join the Western Federation of Miners and later the U.S.-based United Mineworkers of America. In 1903 Croatian miners in Ladysmith founded the first National Croatian Society lodge, St Nicholas, to insure their families against death and injury. Indeed, the first president of St Nicholas, Bill Keseric, was killed in a mining accident in 1915. Other lodges followed in the British Columbia mining towns of Trail and Grand Forks in 1907 and the industrial town of Thorold in Ontario in 1909. Following World War I, the renamed Croatian Fraternal Union (1923) spread further afield in Ontario, first in Welland and then in Hamilton in 1924. By 1930 the union had 27 lodges in Canada, representing nearly 2,000 members.
Croats also supported organized labour. They joined such organizations as the Fraser River Fishermen’s Union and the Grand Lodge of B.C. Fishermen, through organizers such as Marko Vidulich, as early as 1900. Mike Canic, Peter Pavelich, and Homer Stevens led the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union through depression and prosperity. Croats joined the Pulp and Sulphite Union, the International Woodworkers Union, and the radical Lumber Workers’ Industrial Union in northern Ontario.
The post-1945 immigrants were distinctly different from their predecessors: only 2 percent were employed in farming and 5 percent in fishing, forestry, and mining. By far the greatest number of foreign-born Croats, who outnumbered the Canadian born 4 to 1 in 1971, worked in secondary manufacturing in the cities: industrial processing and product fabrication accounted for 25 percent; construction, 13 percent; and machining, 9 percent. Most foreign-born women found jobs in the service and clerical sectors, followed by electronic and textile manufacture. About 80 percent of these women lived in cities, and 1 percent on farms.
Among the Canadian born in 1971, 9 percent were in manufacturing, 18 percent in the professions, administration, and management (compared to 7 percent for the foreign-born), and 33 percent in the clerical and service sectors (compared to 23 percent for the foreign-born).
Some regional differences occur. Agricultural employment occupies 7 percent of immigrants on the prairies, versus 2 percent for the country as a whole. While the construction and industrial sectors account for 40 percent of immigrant work in Quebec and Ontario, the prairie figure is 35 percent. Also, a higher average of employment occurs in the western service sector, at 23 percent, and a somewhat greater level of educated and skilled workers in the west, at 12 percent. Among British Columbia’s 10,000 Croats, about 65 percent are concentrated in the lower mainland and Vancouver. This community more closely resembles that of Toronto, where over 47 percent of Croats are engaged in industrial processing, manufacture, and construction. The only significant deviance occurs in the primary resource sector, which in British Columbia as a whole stood at 6 percent, as compared to a 3 percent national average in farming, fishing, forestry, and mining.
Perhaps the most notable feature of the post-war generation has been its success in business enterprise and entrepreneurship. Mississauga is reputed to have about forty wealthy businessmen and women, many active in raising funds and, reputedly, even purchasing arms for the new nation of Croatia since 1991. Anton Kikas, for example, provided vital support in resisting Serbian occupation of Croatian territory. The ascent of the educated second and third generations into the professions and business and commerce is the emerging trend in the 1980s and 1990s. For example, in 1992 Dr Mary Sopta won the John Polanyi Prize in Chemistry for her work in medical genetics.
