1914-1945: Overview / War Years / Interwar Years / World War II / Changing Attitudes

Introduction

Although economic factors continued to affect immigration totals, new programs to encourage migration from the British Isles and restrictions upon continental European immigration had a dramatic impact on the numbers of newcomers. Between 1915 and 1930, only one-half as many immigrants arrived in Canada as had come in the first fifteen years of the century.

The war experience and political concerns in the post-war economic recession prompted Canadians to apply new rules of selectivity in their immigration policy. They placed restrictions on the arrival of German, Russian, Ukrainian, Hungarian, and southern European peoples. The war itself and the political upheavals in Russia following the revolution rallied Canadians to British arms and prompted them to embrace more firmly Anglo-conformism, a theory of assimilation by which newcomers were expected to shed their cultural background and take on British customs and values. Immigration critics rejected "open door" immigration policies for having introduced too many unassimilable newcomers. They also rejected the block ethnic settlements and the religious and education provisions granted previously to numerous immigrant groups. At the same time, immigrants who had previously arrived from enemy European nations now faced harsh and on-going discrimination.

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