1867-1914: Background / Fitful Growth / Changing Conditions / First Wave / Laurier Boom

Laurier Boom

Clifford Sifton

Economic Takeoff

Demography

Frank Oliver

Overall, Canadian immigration was already forming the basis of a distinctive Canadian experience. Historian John Herd Thompson points out that Canada had a higher percentage of immigrants to native born than the United States. Also, a smaller number of Canadian immigrants ended up in cities and in factories; they lived in rural settings and in ethnic communities and block settlements. Ethnic immigrants to Canada then were exposed less to the assimilative pressures of a "melting pot." Here was beginning of a "mosaic," whereby ethnic affiliations would remain more cohesive and immigrants would lose fewer of their unique cultural, religious, and language traditions.

At the time, however, the changing composition of the Canadian population led to a new debate on what the nation's cultural references should or should not be. In 1909 J.S. Woodsworth, working with impoverished immigrants in Winnipeg, wrote his classic Strangers Within Our Gates.

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