From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Welsh/
It is conventionally argued that the Welsh contribution to Canada was primarily religious, cultural, and literary in nature, but this view merely reflects British stereotypes about the Welsh within the United Kingdom. In fact, the Welsh in Canada were well represented in politics, business, mining, engineering, the military, public administration, and education (especially universities).
Until the late nineteenth century most Welsh migrants settled as individual farmers, construction workers, tradespeople, and miners. Many of those who came to work the mineral deposits of British Columbia were single men or men who had left their families at home, and it was among the Cariboo miners that Canada’s first Welsh society, the Cymmrodorion Society of Victoria, was formed in the 1860s. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century Welsh miners, slate quarrymen, and engineering workers helped develop primary industries and extend the railway system; for example, hundreds of Welsh quarry and tin-plate workers in the early 1880s worked on the building of the CPR line through British Columbia’s Crow’s Nest Pass. This trend continued in the first decades of the twentieth century, when skilled industrial workers from Wales – particularly those involved in iron, steel, and tin-plate production – settled in Ontario and British Columbia. Many had gained experience in other countries, such as the United States, South Africa, Australia, Russia, or South America.
During these years of rapid industrialization, the ranks of the unskilled were primarily filled by French Canadians and immigrants from Ireland and east-central Europe; many of the newly arrived Welsh held supervisory positions. This was especially true in the gold-mining operations around Nelson and Rover Creek, British Columbia, and later in Dawson City, Yukon; in the coal mines centred around Fernie, British Columbia; and in the nickel, copper, and iron industries of the Canadian Shield. Finally, a number of Welsh, both immigrants and Canadian-born, were trade unionists. The most celebrated was Arthur Evans. Born in Toronto of a Welsh father, Evans led unemployed workers in British Columbia’s relief camps on the famous On-to-Ottawa Trek in 1935. Later, Evans continued his union activities and, under his leadership, the mines at Trail, British Columbia, were unionized in 1936.
Economically, the Welsh have been prominent disproportionately to their numbers, taking advantage of the opportunities of a less class-ridden society than the one they had left. Most Welsh-Canadians who rose to national prominence started from very humble beginnings. The best-known Welsh entrepreneur was James Miller Williams, described as “the father of the oil industry in North America, perhaps even the world.” Born of Welsh-American parents in Camden, New Jersey, he migrated to the Welsh settlement at London, Ontario, at the age of twenty-two and became involved in railway-coach construction. Having discovered oil in Lambton County, he built a refinery at Oil Springs in 1857 and, through a production centre at Petrolia and the Canadian Oil Company that he founded in Hamilton in 1860, he developed and controlled Ontario’s oil, kerosene, and chemical-refinery industry.
Another key figure in the development of industry was Jonathan Rogers of Wales, who arrived in Vancouver in 1887, also aged twenty-two, on the inaugural transcontinental train. His entrepreneurial talents led to his appointment as president of the city’s Board of Trade and chairman of the Park Board as well as to his election as alderman. He also nurtured the city’s artistic life as a founder of the Vancouver Art Gallery, to which he loaned several pictures. Many of the city parks owe their existence to him and one is named after him. Within the Welsh community, he helped establish Cambrian Hall, the only Welsh hall in North America. In his will Rogers left over $250,000 to the University of British Columbia and to other public organizations of his adopted city.
In the newspaper and media industry John W. James, who was born in Wales and immigrated to Canada in the 1850s, published several Ontario newspapers, including the British Ensign at Port Hope, the Newcastle Gazette, and the Watchman; afterwards, he managed the Niagara Frontier at Tonawanda, New York, and in nearby Ontario the People’s Press and the Telegraph at Welland and the Hamilton Times. He was also active in the Typographical Union. A generation later William Rupert Davies, also born in Wales, published newspapers in Thamesville and Renfrew, Ontario, from 1908 to 1925 before buying the British Whig in Kingston, which he merged with the Daily Standard in 1926. The following decade Davies bought the Peterborough Examiner and the radio and television stations in Kingston and Peterborough. President of Canadian Press and director of the Canadian Daily Newspaper Publishers Association, he was appointed in 1942 to the Senate and died in 1967.
Another example of Welsh professional success was Leonard Walter Brockington, a graduate of the University of Wales who immigrated to Canada in 1912 and became a prominent Calgary lawyer. From 1936 to 1939 he was the first chairman of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and during the World War II was a speech writer for Prime Minister Mackenzie King as well as an adviser to the British government. From 1949 to 1956 he was the rector of Queen’s University, and before his death in 1966 he held a number of other posts, including that of Canadian representative to the United Nations Economic, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
After World War II Welsh migrants to Canada sought employment as teachers, nurses and doctors, scientists, and business people; many, especially accountants and investment specialists, came as representatives of British multinational corporations. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s there was a significant increase in the number of Welsh academics who immigrated to Canada, attracted by the expansion of the country’s universities.
Strong British-Canadian economic links ensure that there is a constant exchange of personnel, ideas, and capital between Wales and Canada. Welsh Development International is responsible for attracting Canadian investment to Wales to build upon the well-established commercial presence in that country of such companies as Alcan, Polysource Industries, Mitel, and Newbridge Networks. Today, because of the emphasis of immigration policies, most Welsh migrants to Canada are well educated and highly skilled, recruited in many cases by companies with Canadian-British links. Both Wales and Ontario are partners in the European Union’s “Four Motors” regional development program, which encourages constant interaction between Canadian and British/ European engineering and scientific projects.
