From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Lebanese/
Because in their homeland Lebanese do not constitute an ethnic or minority group, and because in Canada they were so few in number until recently and so interested in success, Lebanese in Canada have been accommodating towards other ethnic groups and the larger society. As the Lebanese proverb states, “We need to live.”
Before the establishment of Maronite, Melkite, and Orthodox parishes, Christian Lebanese joined Roman Catholic and Anglican congregations and thereby forged links with other groups, particularly Irish, English, and French. Muslims often suspended religious practice in the early period. Most Lebanese have learned English or French and, though keen to maintain Lebanese standards, have also learned Canadian ways and thereby become more and more involved in local affairs.
Though the Lebanese talk little in public about the subject, they are concerned about prejudice against them. Early in this century, prejudice against immigrants from all parts of Asia, including the eastern Mediterranean littoral, led to restrictions on Asian immigration. Even today, schoolchildren sometimes encounter name calling. Adults are concerned about undue attention from police and journalists, like that during the Gulf War of 1990–91, and discrimination may operate to create underemployment and depress incomes. Many community organizations have promoted Lebanese interests in the larger society, and the Association des Amitiés Québec Proche-Orient was founded to encourage mutual goodwill between the Lebanese and the Québécois.
The specifically Lebanese-Canadian pattern of ethnic maintenance results from the fact that their immigration has been in two main waves: a smaller one, from about 1880 to 1914, and a much larger influx after 1945, which became heaviest after the mid-1970s. Post-1945 immigrants encountered members and descendants of the earlier wave, who carried faded memories of a vastly different, pre-1914 Lebanon. Each group often thought of itself as more authentically Lebanese.
The first wave and its descendants followed the classical pattern of trans-generational assimilation and acculturation, fostering community institutions such as secular clubs and cultural products such as magazines. Typically, their children spoke Arabic poorly if at all, cooked food differently, and were often unenthusiastic about Arabic music and poetry, even as they participated in folkloric dance troupes. They knew little about Lebanon save their parents’ accounts. As they grew up, they maintained smaller kin networks, and their households had fewer productive functions. Many went to Canadian churches and married outside the group. Their grandchildren differed little from their peers of other ethnic origins.
Several reasons account for this pattern: most first-wave Lebanese wished to adapt and to succeed, most lacked education, and they had no experience in acting as an ethnic minority. Their small numbers allowed them to establish only clubs, churches, and ethnic-oriented businesses in a few locations, not institutionally complete communities. Also, travel between Lebanon and Canada was prohibitively expensive, so that letters served as the main means of communication. Thus, the early immigrants could not perpetuate Lebanese cultural life or maintain ethnic exclusivity.
The second wave is much larger, has a substantial intellectual and cultural elite and an affluent upper stratum, and is concentrated in Montreal, Ottawa-Hull, and Toronto, where it has a high degree of institutional completeness. Particularly in Montreal, Lebanese grocers, travel agents, lawyers, doctors and dentists, and all sorts of services are plentiful. Young people can meet many other young Lebanese in numerous contexts. Travel between Canada and Lebanon is easy and relatively inexpensive, people telephone frequently, and cassettes and printed materials from Lebanon are readily available. Even during the war years 1975–89, hand-carried letters and alternative travel routes kept people in touch.
If the Lebanese are to survive as a distinct group they need schools to transmit the Arabic language and Lebanese culture. Without these, assimilation and acculturation, though slower than they were for the first immigration wave, will be just as thorough in the end. Thus far, community factionalism has weakened the effectiveness of Lebanese-Canadian schools.
Old World nuances have affected the self-identification of Lebanese in Canada. In the early days, they usually considered themselves Syrians, or interchangeably as Syrians or Lebanese. “Arab” was an infrequent designation. Their descendants have often been surprised to encounter recent Lebanese immigrants who have rejected the interchangeable use of “Lebanese” and “Syrian.” Also, in the early period religious differences tended to mean less than common culture; thus, Muslim and Christian families might be close friends, and Christians of different backgrounds might join to found a parish. (See also ARABS;SYRIANS.)
Identification as exclusively or mainly Lebanese is much more common among modern immigrants, particularly Christians. Common culture is a factor, and so is the independence of Lebanon since the 1940s. Thus, in cities such as Montreal, Armenian immigrants from Lebanon are closely associated with the Arab Lebanese, even though their linguistic and cultural origins are different. And Muslim Arabs from other eastern Mediterranean countries, such as Jordan, find they have more in common with Lebanese Christians than they do (apart from religion) with Muslims from other parts of the Arab world, let alone with non-Arab Muslims.
Whatever happens to Lebanese culture over the long term, Lebanese identification will probably prevail in Canada over other designations, mainly because of the labels used by government agencies. Ordinary Canadians, too, tend to think in these terms. As history has shown for other ethnic groups, identities both larger and smaller than those of “country” have been displaced by it; in this case, the designation likely to persist will be Lebanese.
