Arrival and Settlement

Gujarati immigration to Canada, which started in the late 1950s and peaked in the 1970s and early 1980s, is composed of two different immigrant streams. One group came to Canada directly from the Indian subcontinent, primarily from Gujarat itself, while the other group of immigrants are those who came, in a two-stage migration process, from East Africa and Britain. For the first group, immigration to Canada reflects the strong migratory impulse that has characterized the long history of Gujarat. For the second group, however, the decision to emigrate from East Africa in the post-colonial period arose from uncertainty and fear, and even, in the case of Uganda, as the result of outright expulsion.

Direct Gujarati immigration from India started in the late 1950s. Canada’s immigration policy had long discriminated against non-whites and placed severe restrictions on Indian immigration. Now, because of its altered position in the post-war international community, and also under pressure from the newly independent Indian government, Canada began to change its discriminatory immigration laws. It admitted a token annual quota of 150 Indian immigrants, which was later increased to 300. Because the immigration selection criteria favoured immigrants in professional and managerial categories rather than farmers and working-class immigrants, a number of highly educated Indians immigrated to Canada throughout the late 1950s and 1960s. Many came via a brief sojourn in England and the United States, where they had earlier migrated as students seeking higher education. A total of about 2,500 Gujarati professionals, scientists, teachers, and so on immigrated to Canada between 1961 and 1971, and this trend intensified during the following decade.

Between 1962 and 1971, about 4,000 South Asians entered Canada from Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. There were approximately 1,800 immigrants from Kenya alone, of whom 80 percent were Gujaratis. In 1972 Idi Amin expelled all South Asians from Uganda, about 80,000 of whom were Gujaratis. Bewildered and destitute, they came to Canada as political refugees, about 5,000 in 1972 and 2,000 in 1973, and were settled by immigration authorities across the country. Parallel flows of South Asian immigrants from Kenya and Tanzania, who could not claim refugee status, came through normal immigration channels in much larger numbers, 9,654 and 11,618 respectively, during the period 1972–82. About 70 percent of these immigrants were Gujaratis.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the two streams of Gujarati immigration, the one from East Africa and the other from India, came together in Canada and led to the emergence over the next decade of a very interesting Gujarati community. It was wide-ranging in its economic pursuits and diverse in the subnational loyalties attached to caste and kinship networks, but both groups shared an overall Gujarati framework of relationships and values.

In the 1991 Canadian census, 42,175 persons responded that Gujarati was either their only mother tongue (38,075) or one of them (4,100). This made Gujaratis the second-largest group in Canada among speakers of South Asian languages. Based on mother-tongue census data, the majority of Gujarati Canadians live in Ontario (60 percent), with smaller numbers in Alberta (about 15 percent), British Columbia (14 percent), and Quebec (8 percent). Gujarati immigrants are heavily concentrated in only five major cities: Toronto (51.5 percent), Vancouver (12.6 percent), Calgary (8.4 percent), Montreal (6 percent), and Edmonton (5.5 percent). The remaining 15 percent live in smaller cities in Ontario, such as Ottawa, London, Hamilton, Kitchener, Sudbury, and Thunder Bay, and, in smaller numbers, in western cities, such as Winnipeg, Saskatoon, and Regina.