Economic Life

The Finnish immigrants who came to Canada between 1880 and 1930 were mainly of the working class. Statistics from Finland on emigrants between 1893 and 1914 list 40 percent as landless agricultural workers, 20 percent as workers, 5 percent as farmers, and 24 percent as farmer’s children. Most male emigrants, whether farmers or landless peasants, were also experienced woodsmen. Most female, rural emigrants had been servants or textile workers. “Others,” at 11 percent, included artisans, especially tailors, and a few members of the middle class. Few immigrants brought capital or possessions with them. Nearly half (47 percent) of the women and 22 percent of the men in 1905 travelled on prepaid tickets. Thus many started in Canada burdened by debts.

Employment for Finns in Canada was dictated by their working-class status and their lack of English. Pre -1939 male immigrants worked in lumber camps, mines, and construction; fished on the British Columbia coast; farmed on the prairies; and carved homesteads out of northern Ontario’s forests. Women gravitated to the service industries in large cities.

The Canadian government sought immigrants to populate the west. Initially only a few Finns in the United States and Finland responded to offers of free land. In the late 1880s New Finland, in what was to become the province of Saskatchewan, was born, near the town of Wapella. It is still thriving, with most families owning several sections of good prairie land. Other, more northerly Finnish settlements were less fortunate. In the Coteau area by the Saskatchewan River a few Finns claimed homesteads on both sides of the river, by Outlook and Elbow. The communities spread west to Dunblane and Dinsmore, on some of the harshest and most barren prairie lands to be settled. Ottawa’s efforts to bring four thousand Finns to Alberta resulted in only a few hundred settlers near Red Deer.

The greatest period of growth was from 1901 to 1911, when four thousand Finnish immigrants could be found on the prairies. Discouraged by the hardships of farming, many gave up by the 1920s. Drought and the Depression further reduced the Finnish population in the region. The prospects described in the recruitment materials did not materialize for many Finns.

Ontario homesteaders’ experience was different. Their farms, located near resource towns, were often designed to provide only subsistence. If they were close to forests, harvesting of wood brought extra income; some farmers sold dairy products in nearby towns, and a few set up large dairy farms. In many cases women and children did the farming chores while men worked in the mines or lumber camps.

Most single Finns chose wage work in Canada. In the 1880s gangs of Finnish workers travelled from one construction site to another, building canals and railways – seasonal work that was often dangerous. Railway construction had lured Finns from the United States as early as 1876. After the formation of the CPR in 1881, recruitment in both the United States and Finland increased. Finns came to work on Canada’s transcontinental main line, built in the early 1880s. They specialized in drilling and dynamite, which was better paid. Work on the railway, however, was temporary and at best allowed men to save enough to settle.

New mines in Vancouver Island, northern Ontario, and later Alberta promised year-round employment. The coal mines of Extension, Ladysmith, and North Wellington on Vancouver Island were among the most dangerous in the world and reported over three thousand accidents between 1891 and 1919, of which 866 were fatal. Many of the injured and dead were Finnish. Finns were among the first to work Ontario’s hardrock mines, which opened in the Sudbury basin in the 1880s, and made up the majority of the first work gang in the Copper Cliff Nickel Company. Early on they laboured in the silver mines of Cobalt and the gold fields of Timmins–South Porcupine and Kirkland Lake. A significant gold discovery made by two Finnish miners in Timmins in 1909 became a rare success. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, Finns also worked in the mines of Alberta, especially in Blairmore and Belleview.

The immigrants established cooperative insurance plans in mutual-aid societies to ward off starvation during long-term illness or serious injury and to guarantee a decent burial. They formed the first one in Canada in 1891 as part of a temperance society on Vancouver Island.

Around mining areas grew permanent settlements. While miners’ wages were relatively high for unskilled work and improved considerably during and after World War II, uncertain work, frequent lay-offs, and unhealthy, life-threatening conditions discouraged other Finns. The Hollinger Mine disaster in Timmins, Ontario, in the winter of 1928 killed thirty-nine miners, eight of them Finns. The 1913–30 records of one funeral home in Sudbury indicate that 45 percent of Finnish men, or eighty-one men, died of unnatural causes; of these, seventy died in accidents.

An alternative to mining was work in the British Columbia and Ontario forests. Lumber workers put up with months of isolation and lived in crowded bunkhouses. Many left empty-handed after a season of hard work, while some saved enough funds to send some home to Finland or to invest in Canada. Finns worked in lumber camps north of Thunder Bay and Sault Ste Marie, especially along the Algoma Central Railway. Unlike the mines, the lumber industry offered opportunities for entrepreneurship. Soon lumber camps owned or operated by Finns sprang up across northern Ontario. Finnish camps had saunas and better sanitary conditions, and lumberjacks could argue out their grievances in their own language. Finnish women could garner good wages as cooks, bakers, and dishwashers. Some boasted of sizeable savings at the end of the season and often returned year after year.

The Finnish lumber-camp tradition continued among post-1945 immigrants. In the 1950s some owners recruited workers directly from Finland. Working and housing conditions improved, and during the 1950s light-weight, gasoline-powered chainsaws transformed the industry.

In Ontario, mining and lumbering still employ Finnish men and women. In the 1970s and 1980s companies from Finland opened Canadian operations. Firms such as Outokumpu, which manufactures mining equipment, and the Finn Pap paper company hire local Finnish Canadians. Others active here include Neste Oil; Montgomery-Kone, with its elevator magnets; Nokia, best known for cellular phones; and Valmet, which manufactures heavy equipment.

The post-war construction boom in Canada offered Finns opportunities for self-employment. Finnish carpenters started up construction firms, including both small, family operations and sizeable companies. For example, in Toronto, Finns have specialized in aluminum and vinyl-siding contracting.

Finnish-Canadian communities have long offered opportunities in other fields as well. Finns owned rooming-houses, restaurants, public saunas, grocery stores, taverns, and billiard rooms. Such establishments employed Finnish women, who cooked and scrubbed in the rooming-houses and served customers in the restaurants, taverns, and hotels. Finnish gift shops, bookstores, travel agents, bakeries, butcher shops, delicatessens, and restaurants still thrive in larger urban centres. Since most Finns now live in their own homes and have access to private saunas, the traditional public sauna has virtually disappeared.

Many Finnish-Canadian women have been active in the service industry. Figures from the 1930s indicate that two-thirds of those working outside their homes were maids. (A recent survey in a large Finnish cultural association revealed that half of first-generation females still classified themselves as cleaning women.) Before 1930 the most common form of service was that of the live-in domestic. Unlike southern and eastern European women, Finns preferred this alternative to factories. As independent, single immigrants, they had few relatives in Canada and could not expect their families back home to support them or even to supplement their income. Furthermore, the Finnish community did not limit women’s movement, and so they could work in isolated bush camps or with strange families.

Domestic service allowed them to learn English, adjust to a Canadian way of life, and work safely in good neighbourhoods. It left them, however, little free time, meant that they could not start a family, and made them dependent on the whims of the employer. Nevertheless, they found the wages, otherwise poor by Canadian standards, to be sufficient. They worked hard to gain a good, collective reputation as Finnish maids and formed organizations to help them find better families to work for. During the Depression, they were among the few Finns with steady employment. More arrived in 1939 through a special government scheme to bring Scandinavian domestics to upper-class homes in Montreal and Ottawa.

In the post-World War II era, especially after the easing of immigration regulations, Finnish women have been able to come to Canada as live-in child-care workers. Women in the service industry now specialize in day work – independent work for several employers, normally from four to six hours a day. While they gain considerable flexibility and wages of $200 to $300 a week, they receive no benefits or pensions.

Canadian statistics from 1986 show that, among European immigrants above the age of fifteen, Finns’ earnings are below average: $23,989 for men and $12,823 for women. Finns who had worked full time through 1985, however, earned roughly the same as Canadians of eastern or western European origin. Finnish men (at $33,246) earned significantly less than other northern Europeans ($43,390), and women ($21,934) slightly more than other northern Europeans ($20,030). Finns had about the same amount of education as other northern or western Europeans; 46 percent had not completed high school, while 9 percent were university graduates.

Ten percent of Finns had managerial or administrative positions, and 18 percent were professionals. Finnish men were still over-represented in construction, service, manufacturing, and other non-skilled and primary occupations. Some of this work is seasonal and limits earnings. These categories together employed 48 percent of men and 27 percent of women, most of them in services, and some in clerical or sales jobs.

Unlike some other ethnic communities, Finnish Canadians have few wealthy individuals or families. Perhaps the greatest success belongs to Peter Nygård, the clothing manufacturer and designer, who has manufacturing facilities in Winnipeg, a head office in Toronto, and outlets around the world. His design lines, such as Tan Jay, Bianca, and Signature, are popular among Canadian women. Nygård has demonstrated growing interest in his roots and hosted gala events at his spectacular head office in Toronto.

New immigrants from Finland, though highly skilled, are too few to affect the economic structure of the Finnish communities. In 1992, for example, forty-four Finns came to work in Canada, including ten in science or medicine, five in their own businesses, and nine in services and construction. Some newcomers have become well-known figures – for example, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and Saku Koivu, a player in the National Hockey League.