Whenever Canadians are asked to describe a salient feature of their country, they are likely to emphasize its multicultural aspect. Such a characterization makes eminent sense, considering the demographic reality of Canada with its wide array of peoples representing many different ethnocultural traditions. But, aside from stating the statistically obvious, many respondents also suggest that the multicultural aspect of Canada reflects a social ideal in which diversity is considered to be a positive phenomenon. While there may be debate about whether or not ethnocultural diversity is a good thing, there is little doubt that to understand Canadian society, both past and present, it is essential to know about the country’s multicultural reality. As Professor Harold Troper so aptly points out in an entry in this volume: “Ethnicity does not replace Canadian identity; it is Canadian identity.”
The desire to understand Canada as it really is – this is the primary motivation behind the Encyclopedia of Canada’s Peoples. In contrast to other immigrant countries like Australia and the United States, Canada had until now no encyclopedia devoted specifically to the many peoples that comprise its population. The lack of such a work seemed all the more evident considering the historical ideology that pervades Canadian society. “All Canadians,” to quote Professor Troper once again, “those born in this country and immigrants alike, share in a common national founding myth – a popular history that increasingly lays emphasis on a common immigration past. It is more and more accepted that, beginning with the aboriginal peoples and continuing down to the most recent arrivals, all Canadians share in a tradition of migration that began well before the dawn of recorded history and endures to our day.”
The implication of the previous statement is that, because of their common immigrant pasts, all peoples deserve to have a voice in the story of Canada. How and why did each people come to Canada? Where did the immigrants and their descendants settle? What kind of lives did they build for themselves and how did they contribute to the country as a whole? These are the basic questions addressed here.
In order to determine the contents of the Encyclopedia of Canada’s Peoples, the compilers inevitably were faced with the task of defining what is a people or ethnic group. Generally, a people/ethnic group is determined by a number of externally observable or objective characteristics, such as place of birth (either one’s own or that of one’s ancestors), language/dialect, and religion. As important, however, are subjective factors, namely, the degree to which members of a given people or ethnic group consider themselves – and are sometimes considered by others – to form a distinct cultural entity. These are the kind of conceptual guidelines that have governed the formation of our work. In other words, if a group considers itself to be distinct, and if in Canada it functions as such with its own formal and informal community structures, then it qualifies for treatment with an entry of its own in this encyclopedia.
By its very nature, the subjective-functional approach does leave room for discretionary choice in the matter of group classification. For instance, in northeastern Italy the Friulians function as a distinct ethnocultural community with their own language; in Canada as well they have many features of a distinct group, including a vibrant community life. Yet, based on the advice of specialists and community representatives, it seemed more appropriate to include Friulians within the entry on Italians. Somewhat similar are the Flemings and Walloons, who seem to thrive on emphasizing the distinctions between themselves in their common country but who function and identify as Belgians in Canada. Hence, there is an entry for Belgians but none for either Flemings or Walloons.
The unique conditions created by the Canadian experience are most evident in entries about groups who have no recognizable homelands or identities elsewhere. Among such peoples “made” in Canada or North America are the Acadians, Amish, French Canadians, Metis, and Mormons. There are as well a few peoples like the Basques and Channel Islanders who no longer function in Canada as definable groups but who nonetheless warrant an entry for the role they previously played in Canada’s historic past.
The native peoples, or First Nations, posed a classification problem on an even larger scale. There could have been entries for each tribe/band, or entries based on larger regional or linguistic groupings, or a single entry for all native peoples. Following extensive consultation, it seemed best to have one entry called Aboriginals. In turn, that entry is subdivided into what effectively are twelve separate entries based for the most part on major linguistic groupings. Within each of these groupings, the various tribes/bands are discussed. Such a conceptual approach provides a sense of both the unity and the individual distinctiveness of the many aboriginal peoples.
Another aspect of classification has to do with the relationship of state identity to individual ethnocultural identity. Since most states worldwide include among their inhabitants several different peoples or ethnic groups, it follows that individuals from such groups have both an ethnocultural and a state identity. Hence, all the citizens of India are legally Indians, regardless of to which ethnic group they belong. Although there could have been a single entry called Indians, or East Indians, the reality of community life in Canada suggested the desirability of separate entries for Goans, Gujaratis, Maharashtrians, and so on. On the other hand, there are several countries inhabited by different peoples who use the state name to identify themselves in Canada, even though they may be members of an ethnic group different from the dominant or state nationality. Among the entries carrying a state name, but that in effect represent more than one people, are those on the Afghans, Belgians, Ethiopians, Filipinos, Indonesians, Iranians, Lao, Nepalis, Nigerians, Pakistanis, and Spaniards.
Finally, there are a few sending states that are themselves immigrant countries in the sense that some of their inhabitants have retained a distinct identity related to another culture and that they continue to retain that primary identity after immigrating to Canada. This is characteristic of Chinese Canadians who trace their origins to several countries (Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines) as well as to China, or to South Asians who have lived for decades or even generations in Africa, Great Britain, or the Caribbean region before settling in Canada. Some of the latter have their own entries as Indo-Caribbeans and Indo-Fijians. Analogous to a degree are the Germanic peoples. There might, for instance, have been separate entries on Danube Swabians, Germans from Russia, Sudeten Germans, or Transylvanian Saxons. Instead, these peoples are treated together under the entry Germans, even though before immigrating to Canada many may never have lived in any territory bearing the name Germany.
The pervasiveness of some regional identities warranted the inclusion of what might be called “overarching” entries, such as the Arabs, Caribbean Peoples, and South Asians. These are not meant to be like other group entries; rather, they attempt to provide general characteristics about different peoples who are frequently linked together in Canadian society.
The classification issue clearly reveals how there are, in theory, several different ways to cut up the ethnic pie. Put another way, the Encyclopedia of Canada’s Peoples has, in terms of its formal structure, 119 group entries, of which one, Aboriginal Peoples, is in turn divided into twelve subentries. The content of all of these entries reveals, however, that there are many more peoples than that number living in Canada. To alert the reader to the existence of these various other peoples and where to find information about them, we have included a rather extensive number of cross-references interspersed throughout the encyclopedia in their appropriate alphabetical position. It might be useful to emphasize that our choice of cross-references implies, not that one people is being subordinated to another, but simply that the given people is being discussed in an entry with a name other than its own.
There are a few other peoples living in Canada – Barbadians, Colombians, Ghanaians, Luxembourgers, Maghrebis, Moroccans, New Zealanders, Uruguayans, for example – for whom there are no entries in this encyclopedia. This is either because they seemed to lack an identifiably distinct community life or because we were unable to find someone able to write an appropriately researched entry. Similarly, there may have been other thematic entries, such as historiography and sports. These and other lacunae may be filled in future editions.
Work on the Encyclopedia of Canada’s Peoples began in 1991 at the Multicultural History Society of Ontario with the creation of an editorial board headed by the editor-in-chief and of a small staff under the direction of the managing editor. The initial task of the editorial board was to draw up a list of groups and to determine the approximate number of manuscript pages to be allotted to each group entry. Numerical size and historical importance were the two basic criteria used to place groups in one of four manuscript-length categories. The editorial board also drew up a list of advisers that represented various disciplines and that drew from all parts of Canada and in a few instances from abroad. The 182 advisers (see the complete list on pages xxi–xxv) assisted the editorial board in the compilation of the group entry list and in recommendations for authors. Eventually, some advisers were called upon to submit assessments of the first draft of entries. As well, the first draft of every entry was reviewed by anonymous assessors and was returned to authors together with a substantive report by the editor-in-chief.
The 132 authors of group entries were asked to follow an outline that addressed the following topics: origins; migration; arrival and settlement; economic life; community life; family and kinship; culture; education; religion; politics; intergroup relations; group maintenance and ethnic commitment; and bibliography. Depending on the size of the entry and the availability of data, some of these topics were combined, others eliminated. Also, the specific interests of an author or the particular experience of a group might result in relatively more attention being given to one topic, religion or perhaps politics, as opposed to others. The subsequent editorial process attempted to maintain a balance in how each theme was treated, although the appearance of valuable information was in most cases not sacrificed for the sake of strict balance.
Adherence to a common organizational framework does have the advantage of comparability. It is, therefore, possible for a reader interested in the foreign-language, or “ethnic,” press to focus on the sections on culture in most of the group entries. Analogously, researchers concerned with the impact of diaspora peoples on their homelands will benefit enormously by reviewing each of the group-entry sections on politics. Nevertheless, the standard group outline could not be applied in every case; among the exceptions are the entries on aboriginal peoples and French Canadians for which specific outlines appropriate to those respective subjects were adopted.
Considering the diversity of the encyclopedia’s authors in terms of academic training and intellectual temperament, it is not surprising that the editorial process required at times substantive rearranging and rewriting. Three areas were given particular attention with the goal of achieving consistent coverage. These were the origins section, the census data, and the bibliographical essays, for each of which a special editor was responsible. In the end, some entries were changed so substantially that they are described as having been written in consultation with an individual scholar, or simply “in collaboration.”
From the outset, the editorial board was convinced of the need for a select number of thematic entries. A special subcommittee headed by Professor Wsevolod Isajiw was established to determine the themes, to prepare specific outlines for each, and to oversee the review process.
While organizational compatibility is desirable in an encyclopedia, terminological consistency is essential. The often-used term “first generation” refers to persons born abroad who left their homeland country and arrived in Canada. The second, third, and subsequent generations refer to offspring of the first-generation immigrants born in Canada. In the case of compound nouns like Japanese Canadians, no hyphen is used. Hyphens do appear, however, in adjectival forms such as Japanese-Canadian literature and Jewish-Canadian religious life. The use of the hyphen in the latter cases is a convention of English grammar and should not be considered – by those sensitive to (and opposed to) being labelled “hyphenated Canadians” – as any kind of ideological stance on the part of the encyclopedia board. Analogously, our choice of geographical names (applying mostly to the homelands) reflects no ideological or political preference but rather is motivated by the need for an accessible standard that covers all regions of the world. That standard is the Webster’s New Geographical Dictionary (Springfield, Mass., 1980), but with a few exceptions: all names of localities in countries formerly part of the Soviet Union are, aside from a few commonly used English forms (Kiev, Moscow, St Petersburg), rendered in the official languages of the newly independent post-Soviet states; and the new rules for spelling Chinese names are followed (Beijing, not Peking).
The very names of individual peoples may also be a source of debate and ideological controversy. In most cases, we have adopted the form of a people’s name suggested by the author of the given entry, whom we have engaged for his or her expertise on the subject. In some instances, however, more than one name is possible and stylistically necessary. For instance, the peoples from the modern-day country of India are generally referred to as South Asians or Indians. But, in those entries dealing with groups from the Caribbean or South America in which there is discussion of countries that in some cases have substantial numbers of people with origins in India, the references are to Asian Indians to distinguish them from Indians indigenous to the country.
One group has at least four names that appear in the published literature and are used by group members themselves: aboriginals, First Nations, Indians, and natives. To these might be added Amerindians, Canadian Indians, status Indians, or even Siberian Canadians, in keeping with the proposition that the ancestors of everyone in Canada had at some point in time come from somewhere else. We eventually chose aboriginals, which has the advantage of placing the group as the very first entry in the encyclopedia, a position that coincides with their chronological presence on the lands that were to become Canada.
Aside from terminology is the problem of statistical compatibility. All references to contemporary Canadian statistical data refer to the 1991 census. Since this is an encyclopedia about peoples, not states, the preference has been to use data from the volume on ethnic origins. These data record what individual Canadians believe themselves to be (ancestry, ethnic origin), regardless of the state from which they or their ancestors may have emigrated. In most cases, entries include figures for both single response (German) and multiple responses (German and some other origin). When referring to group size as a whole, or when describing the number living in a particular province or city, the multiple-response figure is used.
Finally, there is a problem of numbers. In a sense, all statistical data are estimates whose relative value is dependent on the manner in which they were gathered and recorded. Wherever possible, we have asked authors to provide three figures for each group: the number recorded in the 1991 Census Report on Ethnic Origins, the number or number range claimed by the group itself (usually in publications), and the best-informed estimate by the author of the entry. A chart with statistical data on all groups listed in the encyclopedia as well as in the 1991 census is appended at the end of the volume.
We have no illusions about the reliability of the statistical data on group size or about the limitations of the encyclopedia as a whole. For some groups, there is an extensive and solid scholarly literature, allowing for entries that are of a synthetic and even interpretive nature. For many others, the existing published literature is limited and/or poor in quality, while for still others there is no literature at all.
An encyclopedia by its very nature needs to cast its net widely, and we felt obliged to include as many peoples as reasonably possible, despite the limitations of knowledge at the present time. Such an effort might in scholarly terms be considered bold, even brash, but it does have the virtue of giving voice to several peoples in Canada who have never been heard from or about before. In the end, the Encyclopedia of Canada’s Peoples may be considered as a marker of the state of knowledge at the close of the twentieth century as well as a stepping-stone and guide to help determine future research needs at the dawn of the new millennium.
No work of the scope of the Encyclopedia of Canada’s Peoples could be undertaken and completed without the intellectual, moral, and financial support of a large number of individuals and institutions. When I first arrived in Canada as an immigrant in 1980, I had just completed working half a decade on the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups . Among my first conversations with new colleagues at the University of Toronto was one with Professor Robert F. Harney, founding director of the Multicultural History Society of Ontario (MHSO), to whom I proposed the idea of creating for Canada an encyclopedia similar to the Harvard one.
It was to be another decade before the idea was revived in conjunction with my appointment in 1990 as director of the MHSO. I accepted the appointment with the understanding that I would be able to undertake an encyclopedia as one of the institution’s primary scholarly projects. Seven more years were to pass before the job was completed, and it is interesting to note that, since the original idea was proposed back in 1980, four other similar encyclopedias have appeared: for Australia (1988), for Sweden (1988), and two more for the United States (Gale Publishers, 2 vols., 1995, and Macmillan, 1997). Throughout the period it took to complete the Encyclopedia of Canada’s Peoples, the MHSO provided a comfortable home for the project in addition to substantial funding over many years. We all are in debt to the Board of Directors of the MHSO who allowed the director of the institution and editor-in-chief to bring this project to a successful conclusion.
At the same time, the project would not have been realizable without the dedication of a small group of highly motivated and talented individuals. The encyclopedia was most fortunate to have a working editorial board made up of specialists whose members freely and generously offered numerous hours of their time to the project. Among their number at the initial stage was a special editorial consultant from the Harvard encyclopedia, Ann Orlov. Because of their skill and commitment, the administrative assistants who worked on the project at different times (Susan Sorokin, Sandhya Davé, Deborah Marshall, Carolyn Braunlich) were able to maintain both a consistent level of accuracy and organizational continuity.
The editorial board and editorial staff profited from numerous advisers, who not only served as a remarkable intellectual resource but also frequently provided moral encouragement at times when the project seemed unable to find the necessary financial support to keep going. Considering the wide range of authors, the final, readable form of the entries is due in large measure to the abilities of our experienced manuscript editors – Joan Bulger, Elizabeth Hulse, and John Parry. The transformation of the manuscript into a handsome book was in large part made possible by the professional attention of Anne Forte at the University of Toronto Press. Finally, all of these varied forces were held together by the tact, talent, and – when necessary – firmness of the managing editor, who himself edited a large number of entries. In Curtis Fahey, the project was blessed to have someone who is both a Ph.D. in Canadian history and a professional editor.
The Encyclopedia of Canada’s Peoples is particularly grateful to the Honourable Gerry Wiener, under whose stewardship the Department of Multiculturalism and Citizenship provided a grant to help defray some of the costs of the project. The enthusiasm that we brought to a project so central to the very fabric of Canadian society and identity was not reciprocated, however, by any of the wide range of private corporations and foundations that were contacted for possible support. Moreover, the grant from the Ministry of Multiculturalism eliminated the possibility of funding from any other branch of the federal government, and, with the exception of the province of Ontario, which made funds available through its grants to the Multicultural History Society, the project was unable to attract the interest of a single provincial government. One practical result of the financial problem was the need to eliminate maps of homelands and an index that would certainly have enhanced the usefulness of the encyclopedia.
There was a period when the project was forced to cease operations, and even those of us who were determined to complete the goal seemed to have run out of options. That last hurdle was finally overcome with the intervention of our publisher, University of Toronto Press. They were convinced that a project such as ours was what Canada needed and what their publishing enterprise should make possible. The University of Toronto Press was the first to respond to our announcement sent out to over seventy-five Canadian publishers in 1991; it was to be there again towards the end when the project needed that final financial assistance.
Those of us who have worked closely on this project have no pretensions that the Encyclopedia of Canada’s Peoples is a definitive work. At best, it reflects what we know about Canada at the end of the twentieth century, and we are hopeful that it will help others set the agenda for what we need to know in the twenty-first century. Yet, in the end, this work, which attempts to give a voice to all Canadians, is not simply for the people of this country.
Canada has long been seen as a model state in which immigrant peoples from various parts of the world have been allowed and at times encouraged to retain their own cultures and identities while at the same time adopting and contributing to society as a whole. The Encyclopedia of Canada’s Peoples describes the concrete ways in which cultural diversity and civic integration have functioned and have reinforced each other. The very fact that this is possible somewhere in the world will, we hope, give encouragement to those who are striving for the same goals in other multicultural countries.
PAUL ROBERT MAGOCSI, FRSC
February 1998