From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Jamaicans/George E. Eaton
In July 1796 three shiploads of Jamaican Maroons – 600 people altogether – were landed by a British fleet in Halifax, exiled by the colonial government of Jamaica. The Maroons found the severe winters uncongenial and began agitating for migration to Sierra Leone, which they achieved in October 1800, following in the footsteps of former American slaves who also had initially settled in Nova Scotia, as well as a group of freed slaves, who had gone from England in 1789 to settle in Sierra Leone.
Among other early Jamaican immigrants to Canada were the black businessmen J. Cathcart, Peter Lester, and Willis Bond, who in the 1860s generated controversy in Victoria when they cast their ballots, on the grounds of British nationality, to a candidate other than the one supported by American-born blacks. Another black Jamaican, John Robert Giscome, was an adventurer, explorer, and gold miner who had trekked to the goldfields of California via Panama. Lured to British Columbia four years after gold had been found along the Fraser River, he settled near Quesnelmouth, where he became neighbour and partner of Bahamian-born Henry McDame. In 1862 the two prospected in northerly British Columbia and reconnoitred by canoe much of the water system between the Fraser and the Peace River. In a year-long exploration, Giscome noted the strange geological formations in the Rocky Mountains and collected sulphur specimens. His account of the expedition appeared in the British Columbian. His portage route to Lake Summit became Giscome Portage in his honour. In the 1870s he began prospecting along the Peace. In 1874 he and others, including McDame, formed the Discovery Company, and he mined successfully for several years. Giscome Rapid, Giscome Canyon, McDame Creek, Mount McDame, and McDame Lake recognize the two men’s exploits.
From the 1870s on, carpenter James Barnswell, who had been attracted to Victoria during the gold rush, built some of Victoria’s most elegant homes. In Ontario, Jamaican-born Robert Sutherland graduated from Queen’s University in 1852 with honours in classics and mathematics and graduated from Osgoode Hall in Toronto in 1855, to become Canada’s first black lawyer. Sutherland ran a prosperous practice in Walkerton until his death in 1878. A bachelor, he left his entire fortune of $12,000 to Queen’s – the largest bequest ever received by the university to that date. Kingston placed a plaque in Sutherland’s memory at Queen’s in 1973.
In 1914 Harry Gairey arrived in Toronto via Cuba. Gairey began working with the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1936 as a sleeping-car porter, and he helped organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which obtained changes within the CPR that would allow for black persons to be treated and promoted fairly. A follower of Marcus Garvey, Gairey became a leading crusader against discrimination, helped in the 1950s to organize the Negro Citizenship Association, and worked for changes in Canada’s immigration laws.
Garvey himself visited Toronto in 1924 to establish a branch of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which purchased its first building in 1926. Jamaicans Mabel Kirkwood and Violet Williams served on the executive, and Agatha King and Esmond Ricketts were prominent supporters. Debarred from entering the United States, Garvey attempted to disembark in Montreal and in Hamilton in October 1928 to visit UNIA branches but was blocked by immigration authorities. In 1937, however, he held a regional UNIA conference in Toronto, conducted a summer school in African philosophy, and visited Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. In 1938, Garvey attended the UNIA’s eighth international convention in Toronto, while Jamaica was trying to cope with the rebellion of the black populace, influenced by his doctrines and the UNIA.
During both world wars, Jamaicans came to Canada to join the armed forces. As well, during the late 1920s and 1930s, Jamaicans in modest numbers attended leading Canadian universities as alternatives to British and American institutions, and the trend became more pronounced during the 1950s and 1960s.
Between 1900 and 1925 in Canada, domestics, blacksmiths, and foundry workers were brought in from Jamaica by business persons who paid a $15 landing tax. In Toronto during the early 1920s Alfred Barclay ran his own trucking business, and the Reverend Cecil Stewart established the Afro-Community Church, the largest black church in Toronto. Jamaican immigrants began arriving in Canada in significant numbers about 1950, in response to shifts in Canadian immigration policy that emphasized labour-force and labour-market considerations. In 1955 Canada set up the first regularized scheme for admission of Jamaican immigrants, under which an annual quota of unmarried female household help could enter the country on temporary employment visas and obtain permanent residence after a year’s service; over 1,000 women were admitted over a nine-year period. In the 1950s also, as a result of representations made by Caribbean governments and community activists in Canada, Jamaican nurses began to be admitted as “cases of exceptional merit.” During the 1980s the nurses formed the Health Care Team in Toronto and the Association of Black Nurses in Montreal. Jamaican-born nurses have also had their own island association.
In 1962 Canadian immigration policy began to emphasize education skills and job prospects, and by 1967 visiting Canadian immigration teams had been replaced by a permanent immigration office in Jamaica. Between 1965 and 1969, some 13,439 Jamaicans gained admission, as opposed to 2,662 between 1960 and 1964. Initially, males were the first to migrate, as reflected in the higher ratio of males to females and the preponderance of males in the 20–49 age cohorts. By 1969, however, the balance had swung in favour of females. During the 1960s, dependants accounted for about one-third of immigrants admitted, with young children and teenagers accounting for about 26 percent of the dependants as late as 1969.
During the 1970s, rising immigration rates showed more women than men and a high proportion of children (between 50 and 58 percent each year). Of the 62,591 immigrants admitted that decade, females accounted for about 56 percent; Canada needed female workers especially in service and clerical occupations, and a large proportion of women entered as spouses. As well, entrepreneurs and professionals found life difficult under the democratic-socialist People’s National Party and immigrated as families or to be united in Canada.
In the 1980s numbers fell by nearly half to 34,124, but the bulge of under-nineteens persisted, averaging 43 percent from 1980 to 1989. That figure began tapering off in 1990, with a sharp decline to 25 percent in 1991. There were corresponding increases in the 20–29 and 30–39 age groups. Combined, they increased from 30 percent in 1980 to 52 percent in 1991. Indeed, in 1991, workers accounted for 61 percent of immigrants, reflecting Canada’s use of immigration for filling labour-force needs. During the 1980s immigration continued to be dominated by females – at 56 percent – a pattern carried forward into the 1990s.
Many immigrants left behind dependants, including spouses, children, and grandparents, to follow as circumstances dictated. The escalating proportion of the young, particularly of the 10–19 age group, increased the number of Jamaican-born predominantly black children in Canadian schools.
According to the Canadian census of 1991, there were then over 35,000 individuals of Jamaican ethnic origin in Canada (20,910 single response, and 15,595 multiple response). That census also reported that 104,550 people had been born in Jamaica. Statistics from both the Jamaican and Canadian governments, however, indicate that between 1960 and 1991, 123,418 Jamaicans entered Canada as immigrants. During the 1970s perhaps 10,000–15,000 Jamaican immigrants and their offspring, holding British passports by virtue of birth, migrated from the United Kingdom to Canada, thereby augmenting the Jamaican ethnocultural communities.
When asked their reasons for immigrating to Canada in a 1981 study, the majority of those sampled, including Jamaicans and West Indians, responded that it was to “seek for adventure.” Political disquiet has also prompted migration to Canada. During the 1970s many professional and business people left Jamaica because of the PNP government. Almost four times as many Jamaicans immigrated to Canada during the 1970s as in the 1960s.
While most Jamaican professionals settled in Toronto, scores of well-to-do families, white and light-skinned, as well as members of the corporate and legal elites, chose Vancouver. Many of this group and their children have launched business and professional careers. By the mid-1980s Victor Seton had emerged as the largest real-estate developer in Burnaby and Seattle and become a leader in the Jewish community, both in Canada and internationally.
Education has spurred migration to Canada. In the post-1945 era of self-government and then independence, education was universally viewed as both the handmaiden of modernization and the vehicle for opportunity and social mobility. This was epitomized by introduction of tuition-free secondary and university education and a national youth service in 1973. Expanding education and training can, however, be self-defeating, if there are not jobs for graduates. Canada’s introduction of more liberal immigration policies and of a point system that favoured education and vocational training attracted many such people.
Recent studies have confirmed that Jamaican and Caribbean migrants have furthered their education on arrival in Canada and hoped for better schooling for their children. Jamaican-born parents are disappointed if a child is not doing well in school or is not emulating their educational or professional attainments.
Jamaicans have shown strong preference for Canadian urban settings, which provide the greatest scope for their linguistic and occupational skills. In 1991 English-speaking Canada claimed 94 percent of the country’s Jamaican immigrants, with Ontario the first choice of 83 percent. The Census Metropolitan Area of Toronto was home to 83 percent, with the CMAs of Ottawa-Hull, Hamilton, Kitchener, Oshawa, London, and Windsor accounting for almost all of the remainder. Females outnumbered males by 54 to 46 percent in Ontario, and figures were similar for Toronto. In Alberta, 97 percent lived in Calgary and Edmonton. In Manitoba, 97 percent resided in Winnipeg, while in British Columbia, Vancouver and Victoria accounted for 83 percent. In the Maritimes, the Jamaican-born population of 175, mostly males, all resided in Halifax, and the same pattern obtained for New Brunswick (Saint John) and Newfoundland (St John’s). In Quebec, where women outnumbered men by 59 to 41 percent, as high as 97 percent of the 6,370 Jamaican-born lived in Montreal.
