Migration, Arrival, and Settlement

The migration of the Welsh to Canada did not occur on a large scale until the twentieth century. Before then, the Welsh presence in Canada was limited primarily to explorers, government officials, a few short-lived settlements, and a small number of individual immigrants.

From the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, Welsh seamen, through their financial backers in Bristol and the West Country, played an important role in exploiting the natural resources of Newfoundland and the Grand Banks and in searching for a northwest passage through the Arctic Sea. In 1612 Thomas Button of St Lythans, Glamorgan, was commissioned by Henry, Prince of Wales, and a private company to find a passage through the Arctic to the Far East. His first journey in command of the Resolution and the Discovery, in April 1612 and September 1613, led to the mapping of the west coast of Hudson Bay and the Nelson River region, which he named New Wales. In his subsequent voyages, 1615– 16, he named Jones Sound (after Thomas Jones, lord mayor of London). Thomas James of Llanfetherin, Abergavenny, made extensive surveys of Hudson Bay and named one of the principal rivers, the Severn, after a river in his native Wales. He was the first European to explore the south coast of the Bay, and the subsidiary James Bay was named after him. Early maritime descriptions of Newfoundland and detailed accounts of the English fishery along the coast and on the Grand Banks were provided by Lewis Roberts, of Beaumaris, Anglesey, in The Merchants and Mappe of Commerce (1638).

None of these early contacts resulted in permanent settlement. However, in 1610 private interests in London obtained a large colonization grant in Newfoundland from King James I and in 1617 a Welsh settlement was founded by Sir William Vaughan at Cambriol, south of the present-day St John’s on the east side of Avalon peninsula. This colony came close to collapse in 1619 and, despite being replenished by subsequent Welsh settlers, was abandoned in 1636. A second Newfoundland settlement, organized by Edward Wynne on behalf of Lord Baltimore between 1621 and 1626, fared little better. Wynne established a colony of twelve Welshmen at Ferryland in August 1621. A year later, a new group of thirty-two people (including seven women), largely from England, arrived under the command of Captain Daniel Powell. Their favourable reports led to Calvert having his grant confirmed and enlarged by royal charter in 1623. Known as Avalon, this colony survived, though its Welsh character was gradually overwhelmed by the arrival of English settlers.

For most of the eighteenth century, individuals in the colonial service, rather than actual settlements, typified the Welsh connection with Canada. These included Richard Philipps, governor of Nova Scotia (1717–49); Jenkin Williams, solicitor general of Quebec (1782–93) and a judge on that province’s Court of King’s Bench (1794– 1812); and William Dummer Powell, chief justice (1816– 25) of Upper Canada (Ontario) and a member of the colony’s Executive Council (1808–25). Not to be forgotten, too, is Elizabeth Posthuma Gwillim, wife of John Graves Simcoe, the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada (1791–96). Her watercolour sketches, as well as diaries and letters, provide an intimate glimpse into early Upper Canada.

After the American Revolutionary War, the influx of Loyalists and disbanded soldiers into the Maritimes included a group of Welshmen under Colonel John Thomas who landed at Port Roseway (Shelburne) in 1783–84 and settled at Cape Negro, Sambro, Guysborough, and Port Clyde; their descendants still inhabit various parts of Shelburne County in Nova Scotia. In the 1790s there was increased emigration from Wales to North America, prompted by a combination of desperately poor agricultural conditions, over-population, and political repression. Few went to British North America, however; those Welsh who eventually did settle in Canada were “late Loyalists” from the newly independent United States. Among the factors that inhibited Welsh immigration to Canada prior to the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 were the general political and economic disorder caused by the wars themselves, the expense involved in migrating, the inability of most Welsh-speakers to negotiate their passage with English-speaking entrepreneurs and ship captains, the restrictions placed on the migration of skilled craftsmen, and – in contrast to the situation in the United States – the absence of established Welsh communities in British North America.

The first Welsh settlements to be established in ninteenth-century Canada were organized after the Na– poleonic Wars and reflected the new interest in migration sparked by the post-war economic depression. In 1818 twelve settlers from Cardigan and Carmarthen founded New Cambria (near Shelburne) in Nova Scotia, and, in 1819, 183 settlers formed the Cardigan settlement in New Brunswick. The Cardigan settlement, Baptist in religious complexion, maintained its Welsh culture and its faith; however, its church never numbered more than fifty members, and over the next few decades the community’s size was reduced by out-migration to the United States. By contrast, the New Cambria settlement was mainly Anglican in its denominational affiliation. Keen to assimilate into the mainstream society of Shelburne County, it soon dissipated into a collection of individuals, some of whom sought a better life south of the border. In time the settlement became known as Welshtown and its numbers were occasionally swelled by Welsh migrants redirected there from Halifax.

Among the earliest Welsh settlers attracted to Upper Canada was John Mathews of Llansamlet (Swansea), who in 1821 obtained a grant of two hundred acres in Southwold Township, northwest of the present city of London, and promptly began recruiting colonists from Wales. By 1851 the community had about 350 settlers – all Methodists – but it never expanded beyond this figure. Being without a minister of their own faith, the settlers joined the First Lobo Baptist Church and in 1834 formed themselves into the first London Baptist Church. After the departure of their first minister, William Rowland, in 1872 a third of the first-generation migrants left Upper Canada, mainly for the American mid-west, and a slightly higher proportion of the next generation migrated to the Canadian prairies, the Pacific coast of the United States, and various cities.

In 1827 Welsh miners, under the auspices of the General Mining Association, came to Nova Scotia to develop coal deposits at Eureka, Londonderry, and Nictaux, and the opening of the Acadia Iron Works in 1849 initiated a fresh wave of skilled Welsh operators of blast furnaces and iron smelters. Yet these new arrivals were the exception rather than the rule. For the Welsh, as for the English, interest in emigration diminished in the wake of Britain’s economic recovery during the 1820s. It did not revive until the 1840s, a decade of increasing social and political unrest. By then, however, the tiny Canadian colonies had failed or been forgotten and so most of the emigrants went to the United States, where more substantial Welsh settlements had been established as early as the 1790s.

Later, in the 1870s, conditions were more propitious for emigration to Canada. The worldwide depression of that decade led to deteriorating economic conditions in Welsh towns on the iron belt and northern coal outcrop, such as Merthyr Tydfil, and, following a series of lockouts and strikes in 1875, widespread famine and destitution prevailed. At the same time, rural areas were hard hit by an agricultural depression that had begun in 1874, the result of poor crops, low prices, and American competition. In these circumstances, many Welsh were tempted by employment opportunities in Manitoba and the “Great North West,” which had been opened up by the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1881–85.

The Canadian and provincial governments, and also the Allan shipping line, vigorously promoted the attractions of a better life for all in Canada. Their efforts included newspaper advertisements in both Welsh and English documenting assisted passages, land grants, better wage rates, and employment opportunities, as well as full-coloured maps and books about Canada that were distributed to local schools, town libraries, and religious institutions. From 1865, the major emigration services operated in England by shipping firms had offered a weekly service to Canada; in the busy season, two vessels were despatched per week to Canada. In the 1870s the South Wales Atlantic Stream Ship Company began serving the emigrants from South Wales by operating a service from Cardiff.

In order to direct migrants to particular areas, the Canadian government subsidized ship fares. In 1873 it contributed about £3 per head to encourage Welsh miners, agricultural labourers, navvies, mechanics, female domestics, and others to work in Nova Scotia or New Brunswick. From 1874 it regularized such arrangements with one shipping company, the Allan line, which operated as a semi-official emigration agency, so as to attract mechanics and labourers to Ontario. Domestic servants were required everywhere and “respectable emigrants” were given loans by the Women’s Emigration Society at 5 percent interest. Another incentive to prospective Welsh emigrants was Dominion legislation in 1872 that offered sixty-five hectares of western land free to adults, a policy that by the 1880s had proved successful in attracting Welsh farmers to Manitoba and prairies. Thereafter the Canadian Pacific Railway assisted western colonization by providing farms for sale along its routes at low prices. Starting in 1869, provincial governments also offered generous land grants.

Despite all such efforts, Welsh emigration to Canada was inconsiderable in the 1870s and in the next decade there was little reason to emigrate to any destination, since Wales itself provided employment in its rapidly expanding coalfields. Only two enduring Welsh settlements were established in the late 1890s and early 1900s, an era of massive emigration from other parts of the British Isles. One consisted of Welsh migrants from the United States and the other was composed of Welsh who had first settled in Argentina; both drew only minimally on emigration from Wales.

The completion of the CPR in 1885 permitted the establishment of the Wood River community near Ponoka, Alberta. Its earliest inhabitants in the period 1901–7 were Welsh-American farmers such as Caradoc Morris from Nebraska, John Jenkins from Kansas, R.C. Jones from Minnesota, and H.F. Davies from Washington. By 1905 the settlers who had come directly from Wales found that it was difficult and expensive to put down roots in the farming community because most of the land had already been allotted. In 1902 a Sunday school was started, and by 1910 the residents, then numbering 125, had established a Methodist church at the neighbouring district of Magic, formed a soccer team, and initiated an annual cultural festival known as an eisteddfod (plural: eisteddfodau) to nurture the arts, poetry, music, and handicraft skills. A second church, at Wood River, was built in 1914, and the church at Magic was replaced by a new structure – called Seion Church – in 1916. Two years later the Wood River Community Hall was erected. Today the town’s Welsh character is maintained through an annual singing festival known as Gymanfa (plural: Gymanfaoedd) Ganu and the Ponoka Welsh Society, whose events typify Welsh societies throughout Canada. Its members celebrate Wales’s patron saint by hosting the St David’s Day banquet on 1 March; they also hold a festival around Easter, combine worship and a Gymanfa Ganu on the second Sunday of August, and host a communal Christmas party.

The second Welsh settlement was at Saltcoats, in what soon was to become the province of Saskatchewan. Canadian agents in Wales advertising the attractions of the “Last Best West” arranged a visit to the prairies in 1899 by three prominent Welshmen – David Lloyd George, MP and future British prime minister, W.J. Rees, a justice of the peace and leading political figure in Swansea, and W. Llewellyn Williams of Cardiff. Their favourable report was widely circulated, but rather than luring migrants from Wales it played an important role in attracting settlers from the Patagonia region of South America, where an earlier Welsh colony had been established by the visionary nationalist the Reverend Michael. D. Jones in 1865. Between 1899 and 1901 the Cardiff immigration agent and officials in Ottawa and Winnipeg sought to promote re-migration from Patagonia to Canada. In 1901 a delegation was sent to Argentina’s Chubut valley to collect accurate information for the Canadian government and to assess how many might be prepared to move to western Canada. Sir J.D. Llewellyn, chairman of the Welsh Patagonia Committee, established a colonization fund and the Canadian government promised a subsidy of £1 per head as well as negotiating a reduced CPR fare for the trip from Quebec to Saltcoats.

By now some of the Welsh colonists in Argentina were eager to leave. Most, unable to obtain land of their own, were leading a miserable existence as renters and farm labourers, and two severe floods had exacerbated their economic hardships. Thus, on 14 May 1902, 234 settlers left Argentina aboard the Orissa for Liverpool, England. Of these, 208 then proceeded to Canada, arriving by rail in Saltcoats, Saskatchewan, in late June; the remainder stayed briefly in Wales before sailing to Quebec aboard the Numidian. The party as a whole comprised 44 families; 112 were children under the age of 16, and there were several unmarried adults. Only two of the families had been in Argentina since 1865; most had emigrated from Britain in 1886. The colonists soon satisfied the requirements of the Dominion Lands Act of 1872 for the grant of title to a homestead, namely a ten-dollar registration fee, the construction of a habitable dwelling, three years’ residence, and evidence of cultivation or stock raising.

The Welsh settlement and first school district in the future Saskatchewan was known as Llewellyn in honour of Sir Dillwyn Llewellyn, who had headed the re-settlement committee. In January and October 1904 Glendwyr/Glyndwr and St David’s school districts were formed. The next years saw the creation of an active social network based on churches. Anglicans, constituting a minority of the settlers, worshipped at St Asaph Church (1905) in Llewellyn and at St David’s (1911) at Bangor. Methodists, the majority, had erected Bethel Chapel at Llewellyn by 1910 and Seion at Bangor by 1911. In 1912 the Welsh Presbyterian Church of America, which had supported the Saltcoats settlement as a mission field, sent it a Welsh-speaking minister and services were conducted in Welsh until the early 1930s.

Cultural activities included singing festivals and eisteddfodau, a tradition that lasted until 1938. The first generation was fluent in both Welsh and Spanish, but during the inter-war years the shift to English proceeded rapidly and group cohesion declined. Outside the home the only domain where an element of Welshness could be maintained was the church, but ultimately this institution was unable to sustain the community’s Welsh culture. The nonconformist Bethel and Seion chapels had originally entered into association with the Welsh Presbyterian Union of the United States, but they joined the United Church of Canada in 1933 and after 1936 Welsh services ceased.

Like most Welsh diaspora settlements (except for Y Wladfa in Argentina, which still survives), the Saskatchewan venture failed as a cultural entity within one generation. Intermarriage, the failure to construct enduring institutions, and the lack of subsequent migrants all served to weaken the Welsh hold on the land, so that today only vestigial elements in the landscape and community remain as testimony to an earlier vitality and vision. However, in economic terms the Saltcoats venture – and the Wood River one too – were successful and confirmed the wisdom of the settlers’ decision to seek a new life in a new country.

It is impossible to say exactly how many Welsh immigrated to Canada in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries because in censuses the Welsh were included in the category “English.” Another reason why the Welsh are difficult to find in statistical data is that many migrants departed from English ports and had often been working in English cities with large Welsh communities, such as London, Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool. Consequently, they entered Canada as “English.” Several prominent Welsh Canadians were nurtured in these industrial communities. Also, as a result of mixed-marriages, many family

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Source: Calculated by the author from Department of Citizenship and Immigration data, Statistics, Ottawa

1. The British category for 1966–74 is not disaggregated by country of birth. These represent only partial figures and thus the total should be read as a low estimate of Welsh immigration.

groups were recorded as English, as were the overwhelming majority of the 80,000 British children who came as labourers and domestic servants between 1869 and 1924. Finally, at a time when Welsh national consciousness was weaker than it is today, many preferred to be recorded as English for a variety of social, political, and occupational reasons.

The 1871 census, which was the first to distinguish between English and Welsh ancestry, revealed that the Welsh comprised only 7,800 persons, or 1.3 percent of the country’s total population. Most lived in eastern Ontario and were descended from Loyalists and other immigrants of Welsh background from the United States. Family connections were important for the few distinctive Welsh settlements, such as the one in London Township, but the overwhelming majority of Welsh had come as individual settlers.

The peak migration period for Welsh emigration to Canada was 1901–5, when 16,624 came. A second surge occurred between 1923–30 and was a direct result of World War I, which disrupted traditional working patterns in both rural and industrial areas of Wales, and of a post-war agricultural depression that continued until the late 1930s. Rural depopulation left an ageing population in the countryside, and in every year of the late 1920s and the 1930s deaths exceeded births in the heartland counties of Anglesey, Caernarvonshire, Merionethshire, and Cardiganshire. To make matters worse, the collapse of heavy industry in the south Wales coalfields resulted in a male unemployment rate of 43 percent by August 1932. Out-migration was the only logical answer to mass starvation and so, between 1925 and 1939, 390,000 people left Wales, mainly for England and the colonies. A tenth of these settled in Canada in the decade before 1930.

A third surge in Welsh migration to Canada followed the end of World War II, with 3,011 Welsh emigrants settling in Canada in 1946–48, and another high point was 1956–57, when 3,531 relocated to Canada. The low point occurred during World War I: there were only 40 arrivals in 1917 and 56 in 1918. Other lean years were 1934–44, when an average of 60 Welsh per annum immigrated to Canada. Not all Welsh migrants entered Canada directly from the United Kingdom. During the period 1946–65, for example, when Canada registered 18,713 Welsh-born migrants, 2,362 had formally been living in the United States.

As noted in the table on page 1328, the official statistics on Welsh immigrants err on the low side. To arrive at a more accurate estimate of the size of the Welsh population in Canada, additional data on ethnic origin need to be considered. Since 1961, Welsh immigration has been maintained as a small proportion of total British immigration. However, the number of those claiming Welsh descent fell from 143,942 in 1961 to only 74,415 in 1971 because in the latter year many of Welsh descent were recorded as British. In 1981 a mere 46,620 (0.2 percent of the country’s population) were recorded as Welsh, the criterion being descent from the male line.

This criterion changed in 1991 to a self-declaration of ethnic origin, and the result was that 197,855 individuals were recorded as being of Welsh origin (28,190 were of wholly Welsh ancestry, 169,665 of partial Welsh ancestry). Those who gave Welsh as their only ethnic origin – 0.073 percent of the population – were concentrated in Ontario (11,255), British Columbia (7,005), and Alberta (4,725), and the cities with the largest concentrations of Welsh were, in order, Toronto (3,695 single origin, 20,565 multiple origin); Vancouver (3,080 and 18,840); Edmonton (1,495 and 9,520);, Calgary (1,545 and 8,640); Ottawa/Hull (875 and 6,700); Winnipeg (790 and 5,420), and Hamilton (985 and 4,490). All these figures are probably also too low, since to this day many of Welsh descent in Canada describe themselves as English or British in answer to questions about their national origin.