Further Reading

Several older works deal with British immigration in general. Helen I. Cowan, British Immigration to British North America (Toronto, 1961); Stanley C. Johnson, A History of Emigration from the United Kingdom to North America, 1763–1912 (1913; repr. London, 1966); and W.S. Shepperson, British Emigration to North America (Minneapolis, Minn., 1957) share a focus on government emigration policy rather than on what actually happened, as well as on assisted groups who left paper trails in official records but whose experience was far from typical. For the early twentieth century, Arthur and Harold Copping’s popular account, The Golden Land: The True Story of British Settlers in Canada (Toronto, n.d.), is still useful.

There is still no general account of English immigration, or of the English in Canada, but there are a couple of good regional immigration studies, and a quite extensive though topically specific periodical literature. Gordon Handcock, Soe Longe as There Comes Noe Women (St John’s, 1989), provides the one definitive study of English emigration to a Canadian province, specifically Newfoundland. Statistical data are provided in Handcock’s article “Spacial Pattern in a Trans-Atlantic Migration Field: The British Isles and Newfoundland during the 18th and 19th Centuries,” in Brian S. Osborne, ed., The Settlement of Canada: Origins and Transfer (Kingston, Ont., 1975), 13–40. Bruce S. Elliott, “English Immigration to Prince Edward Island,” The Island Magazine, no.40 (1996), 3–11, and no.41 (1997), 3–9, examines how trade patterns and socio-economic conditions shaped emigration from the various regions of England to Prince Edward Island in the nineteenth century. English settlement patterns in Ontario are the focus of Alan G. Brunger, “The Distribution of English in Upper Canada, 1851–1871,” Canadian Geographer, vol.30, no.4 (1986), 337–43.

Many publications deal with emigration from specific regions of England. A good analysis of official statistics of West Country movement, supplemented by some newspaper research, is provided by Margaret James-Korany, “‘Blue Books’ as Sources for Cornish Emigration History,” in Philip Payton, ed., Cornish Studies One (Exeter, U.K., 1993), 31–45. The Bideford merchants are the subject of Basil Greenhill and Ann Gifford’s delightful Westcountrymen in Prince Edward’s Isle (Toronto, 1967). Samuel Pedlar’s first-person account of his emigration to Canada West from one of the smaller ports in Cornwall is printed in Samuel Pedlar and Charles W. Wethey, “From Cornwall to Canada in 1841”, Families, vol.22, no.4 (1983), 244–53. Michael Bouquet, “Passengers from Torquay: Emigration to North America,” in H.E.S. Fisher, ed., Ports and Shipping in the South-West (Exeter, 1971), 131–48 is based upon the records of a firm of timber merchants who carried passengers between Torquay and Quebec in 1849–54. On the English minority during the French regime, see Peter Moogk, “Reluctant Exiles: Emigrants From France in Canada Before 1760,” in G. Tulchinsky, ed., Immigration in Canada: Historical Perspectives (Mississauga, Ont., 1994), 8–47, and Marcel Fournier, Les européens au Canada des origines à 1765 (Montreal, 1989). The standard work on English emigration to all of America on the eve of the Revolution, and the best account of the Yorkshire settlers of the 1770s, is Bernard Bailyn, Voyagers to the West (New York, 1986). John Thompson provides a detailed study of chain migration from Cumberland to the south short of the Ottawa River just west of Montreal in Cavagnal, 1820–1867 (Hudson, Quebec, 1980), and J.E. McAndless, “Telfer Cemetery (English Settlement) London Township, Families, vol.14, no.3 (1975), 71–78 gives a brief account of a settlement from the western border country.

Studies of assisted emigration continue to account for a disproportionate share of the literature. Rainer Baehre, “Pauper Emigration to Upper Canada in the 1830s,” Histoire sociale/Social History, vol.14, no.28 (1981), 339–67, details the action taken by the Upper Canadian government and charitable organizations to deal with the influx of poor immigrants encountered in the 1830s. Baehre paints a different picture from the land of rosy opportunity depicted by the government’s chief agent at Quebec in the latter’s official reports, published in the parliamentary Sessional Papers. “The Chelsea Pensioners in Upper Canada,” are the subject of an article by J.K. Johnson in Ontario History, vol.53, no.4 (1961), 273–89, and Barbara B. Aitken, “Searching Chelsea Pensioners in Upper Canada and Great Britain,” Families, vol.23, no.3 (1984), 114–27, and no.4 (1984), 178–97, provides lists of those emigrating under the ill-advised commuted pensioners scheme. Lists that include military pensioners who emigrated on their own are contained in Norman K. Crowder, British Army Pensioners Abroad, 1772–1899 (Baltimore, 1995). Wendy Cameron, “The Petworth Emigration Committee: Lord Egremont’s Assisted Emigrations from Sussex to Upper Canada, 1832–1837,” Ontario History, vol.65, no.4 (1973), 231–46, provides a good introduction to the Petworth emigrations and a detailed account of the first party, though it is now dated and will be superseded by Wendy Cameron and Mary Maude, Egremont’s Emigrants (forthcoming 1998). An analysis of the published letters from Petworth emigrants that were circulated to help promote the scheme appears in Wendy Cameron, ‘“Till they get tidings from those who are gone ...”: Thomas Sockett and Letters from Petworth Emigrants, 1832–1837,’ Ontario History, vol.85, no.1 (1993), 1–16. J.I. Little, Nationalism, Capitalism, and Colonization: The Upper St Francis District (Kingston, 1989), includes the best account of the British American Land Company which, by recruiting in England, attempted to divert substantial numbers of East Anglian paupers away from Upper Canadian destinations and into the Eastern Townships. William Cattermole, Emigration. The Advantages of Emigration to Canada. Being the Substance of Two Lectures, Delivered at the Town-Hall, Colchester, and the Mechanics’ Institution, Ipswich (1831; repr. Toronto, 1970), is an important piece of promotional literature by the most important promoter of East Anglian emigration.

Child migrants or “home children” have attracted much attention. The beginnings of the story are traced in Geoff Blackburn, The Children’s Friend Society: Juvenile Emigrants to Western Australia, South Africa and Canada, 1834–1842 (Northbridge, Western Australia, 1993), which draws heavily upon the Society’s annual reports in the British Library. Charloffe Neff, in “Pauper Apprenticeship in Early Nineteenth-Century Ontario,” Journal of Family History, vol.21, no.2 (1996), 144–71, examines how Upper Canadians provided for orphaned and abandoned children, including the apprenticeship of immigrant paupers.

Later generations are studied in Kenneth Bagnell, The Little Immigrants: The Orphans Who Came to Canada (Toronto, 1980); Gillian Wagner, Children of the Empire (London, 1982); Philip Bean and Joy Melville, Lost Children of the Empire: The Untold Story of British Child Migrants (London, 1989); and Joy Parr, Labouring Children (London, 1980). Phyllis Harrison, ed., The Home Children (Winnipeg, 1979), and Gail H. Corbett, Barbardo Children (Woodview, Ont. 1981), present the results of interviews with elderly “home children.” British harvest workers are treated in W.J.C. Cherwinski, “‘Misfits,’ ‘Malingerers,’ and ‘Malcontents’: The British Harvester Movement of 1928,” in J.E. Foster, ed., The Developing West (Edmonton, 1983), 273–302. There is a large literature on the Barr colony, the most recent work on the subject being Lynne Bowen, Muddling Through (Saskatoon, 1988). On wartime immigrants see Geoffrey Bilson, Guest Children (Saskatoon, 1988), and Ben Wicks, Promise You’ll Take Care of My Daughter: The Remarkable War Brides of World War II (London, 1992).

Gentry-class immigrants during the nineteenth century have also been a focus of attention in J.K. Johnson, Becoming Prominent: Regional Leadership in Upper Canada, 1791–1841 (Montreal, 1989), and Kenneth Kelly, “The Transfer of British Ideas on Improved Farming to Ontario During the First Half of the Nineteenth Century,” Ontario History, vol.63 (1971), 103–11, and his “Notes on a Type of Mixed Farming Practised in Ontario during the Early Nineteenth Century,” Canadian Geographer, vol.17 (1973), 205–19. See also Elizabeth Hopkins, “A Prison-House for Prosperity,” in Jean Burnet, ed., Looking into My Sister’s Eyes (Toronto, 1986), 7–19. For later gentry emigrants, see Patrick Dunae, Gentlemen Emigrants: From the British Public Schools to the Canadian Frontier (Vancouver, 1981); Susan Jackel, A Flannel Shirt and Liberty: British Emigrant Gentlewomen in the Canadian West, 1880–1914 (Vancouver, 1982); and A. James Hammerton, Emigrant Gentlewomen: Genteel Poverty and Female Emigration, 1830–1914 (London, 1979). Another study of remittance men is Mark Zuehlke, Scoundrels, Dreamers, and Second Sons: British Remittance Men in the Canadian West (Vancouver, 1994).

Twentieth-century English immigration is dealt with in Ross McCormack, “Cloth Caps and Jobs: The Ethnicity of English Immigrants in Canada 1900–1914,” in Jorgen Dahlie and Tissa Fernando, eds., Ethnicity, Power and Politics in Canada (Toronto, 1981), 38–55; Richard Harris, “A Working-Class Suburb for Immigrants, Toronto 1909–1913,” Geographical Review, vol.81, no.3 (1991), 318–32; D. Owen Carrigan, “The Immigrant Experience in Halifax, 1881-1931,” Canadian Ethnic Studies, vol.20, no.3 (1988), 28–41; and David Smith, “Instilling British Values in the Prairie Provinces,” Prairie Forum, vol.6, no 2 (1981), 134–39. Any reading on female immigration must begin with Joy Parr, The Gender of Breadwinners (Toronto, 1990), and Marilyn Barber, Immigrant Domestic Servants in Canada (Ottawa, 1991).

The diverse literature addressing economic adjustment includes F.H. Armstrong, “Ethnicity in the Formation of the Family Compact,” in Dahlie and Fernando, Ethnicity, Power and Politics, Gordon Darroch and Michael Ornstein, “Ethnicity and Occupational Structure in Canada in 1871,” Canadian Historical Review, vol.61, no.3 (1980); T.W. Acheson, “The Social Origins of the Canadian Industrial Elite, 1880-1885,” in D.S. Macmillan, ed., Canadian Business History: Selected Studies 1497–1971 (Toronto, 1972), 144–74; Claude Gardiner, Letters from an English Rancher (Calgary, 1988), and Lloyd G. Reynolds, The British Immigrant: His Social and Economic Adjustment in Canada (Toronto, 1935).

The more exotic “English” religious denominations are treated in R.P. Hopper, Old-Time Primitive Methodism in Canada (Toronto, 1904); Albert Burnside, “The Bible Christians in Canada, 1832-1884” (Th.D. thesis, Toronto Graduate School of Theological Studies, 1969), and W.H. Brooks, “The Bible Christian Church in the West,” Prairie Forum, vol.1, no.1 (1976), 59–67.

More work needs to be done on English ethnic organizations, but the following are useful: Anne Storey, The St George’s Society of Toronto (Toronto, 1987); anon., Saint George’s Society of Halifax (Halifax, [1977]); and D.A. MacKinnon and A.B. Warburton, Past and Present of Prince Edward Island (Charlottetown, 1906), 209–16. Issues of The English Race, published by the Royal Society of St George in England, beginning in 1908 report on many of the other organizations as well. The national records of the Sons of England (1876–1971) are at the Archives of Ontario.

Selected publications on cultural adjustment include Jean Burnet, Ethnic Groups in Upper Canada (Toronto, 1972); Annmarie Adams, “Eden Smith and the Canadian Domestic Revival,” Urban History Review, vol.21, no.2 (1993), 104–15; Pauline Greenhill, Ethnicity in the Mainstream (Kingston, 1994); Terry Goldie, “Ian Robb and the Canadian Folk Revival,” Canadian Folk Bulletin, vol.1, no.6 (1978), 16–19. On English labour radicalism, see Allen G. Talbot, “In Memory of the Tolpuddle Martyrs,” Ontario History, vol.62, no.1 (1970), 65–69, and A. Ross McCormack, “British Working-Class Immigrants and Canadian Radicalism: The Case of Arthur Puttee,” Canadian Ethnic Studies, vol.10, no.2 (1978), 22–37. The question of “Britishness” and “Englishness” is addressed in Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, Conn., 1992).