Migration

The Guyanese have been present in Canada for more than one hundred years. A few hundred individuals arrived in the latter part of the nineteenth century to work as mine labourers or porters on the railways. They joined other Caribbeans in Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec, who were employed primarily in service occupations. By 1921 there were over two hundred Guyanese in Toronto, while the communities in Montreal and Halifax each numbered around one hundred. After World War I, arrivals from Guyana virtually ceased because Canada’s immigration policy restricted non-white migration. Until 1962 the only opportunity for Guyanese to enter this country was through a program that admitted one hundred women per year to work as servants in the homes of wealthy Canadians. Most of these women were in fact white-collar workers who became domestics in order to immigrate to Canada. Although well educated, they often lived here as strangers, socially distanced by the white society. Because of the unavailability of marriage partners from their own racial group, many remained single.

With the political and racial violence that characterized the homeland from the 1960s came economic instability, a fall in the standard of living, and high unemployment for the Guyanese. Coupled with persecution of the Asian Indian population by the Burnham government, these factors led to a mass exodus in the 1980s. Thousands emigrated to Canada, large numbers of whom claimed refugee status because of fear of ethnic violence. By 1962 this country’s immigration policy had been modified, and the point system, introduced five years later, completely eliminated any reference to the racial background of applicants. Between 1962 and 1990, over sixty thousand Guyanese came to Canada.

Because of the absence of statistics on return and illegal migration, as well as inaccurate census reporting, which in 1991 indicated only 26,435 persons wholly or partially of Guyanese origin, the size of the community in Canada can only be estimated. To add to the normal problems of measurement, over ten thousand Guyanese in the 1980s applied for recognition as political refugees. Many of these claims have been considered genuine by the Immigration and Refugee Appeals Board, but a high percentage of claimants have been viewed as economic refugees and their applications rejected. Hundreds still await a hearing before the appeal board; in the meantime, they have been allowed to remain in Canada.

A fair estimate of the number of individuals of Guyanese background resident in the country would be 100,000. Because the racial background of newcomers is not recorded in immigration statistics, the composition of this group in Canada can only be approximated. However, on the basis of the racial make-up of the home country and the background of refugee applicants, over 60 percent of Guyanese in Canada may be of Asian Indian origin, 35 percent African, and the rest white, Chinese, or mixed race.