Northwestern European Canadians

Northwestern European Canadians are Canadians of Northwestern European ancestry. Northwestern European Canadian people can usually trace back full or partial heritage to Great Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Northern Germany, Belgium, Northern France, and other nations related with the region geographically or culturally.

Northwestern European Canadians
Canada
Total population
Northern European Canadian – 12,413,170 (35.3%) (2016)[1]

of which
British Isles – 11,211,850 (31.9%) (2016)
Northern European – 1,201,320 (3.4%) (2016)

Western European Canadian – 9,281,675 (26.4%) (2016)[1]
of which
French – 4,680,820 (13.3%) (2016)
Western European – 4,600,855 (13.1%) (2016)


Regions with significant populations
Atlantic Canada · Central Canada · Western Canada · Urban Canada
Less prevalent in the North
Languages
Canadian English · Canadian French
German · Dutch · Scandinavian languages · Irish · Scottish Gaelic
Other Northwestern European Languages
Religion
Predominantly:
Christianity
Minorities:
Irreligion · Judaism · Islam
Related ethnic groups
Northwestern Europeans · Northwestern European Americans · Northwestern European Australians

As Northwestern Europe is also a cultural categorization, rather than exclusively geographical, the grouping can include Canadians with ancestry from bordering areas, or countries, such as Southern Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Finland. Alongside Eastern European Canadians and Southern European Canadians, Northwestern European Canadians are a subgroup of European Canadians.

The census in Canada lists Northern European Canadians and Western European Canadians separately. As of 2016, 12,413,170 Canadians had Northern European origins and 9,281,675 had Western European origins, constituting 35.3% and 26.4% of the Canadian population respectively.[1]

Terminology

Census

Alongside Eastern European Canadians and Southern European Canadians, the census in Canada lists Northern and Western European Canadians separately.[2] As early as the 1986 census, some Northern and Western European subgroupings were denoted under a standalone "Single origins" header, such as "British origins" and "French origins".[3]

As of the 2016 census, this remains the case, with British and Irish Canadians separated from other Northern European subgroups, and reference to their exclusion under the term: "Northern European origins (except British Isles origins)". This is also the case with French Canadians, who are shown separately from other Western European subgroups, the rest of which are listed under the heading of "Western European origins (except French origins)".[1] Within the census, they are divided as the following:

Use in academia

Notable scholars have used the grouping of Northwest or Northwestern European Canadians in various academic works. Geographer Cole Harris identified the grouping in research of their mixed farming techniques,[4] colonization behaviors and settlement of Canada.[5] Historian Franca Iacovetta and ethnicity scholar John Higham have used the term to explore historic immigration preferences in Canada.[6][7] Dr Martin N. Marger has also described John W. Berry's 1977 Multiculturalism and Ethnic Attitudes in Canada study as demonstrating bias towards Northwestern Europeans in the country.[8]

History

Northwestern European colonization

From 1608 to 1760, the group settled lands extensively in North America, as a part of the European colonization of the Americas.[9] Geographer Cole Harris has explored the mixed farming techniques of Northwestern Europeans of this period, as they resettled valley regions along the Saint Lawrence River, in what would become modern Canada.[4] Harris also wrote how "remarkably homogeneous and egalitarian rural societies of subsistent farmers emerged quickly" in early Canada, formed by Northwestern Europeans and their "strong sense of the nuclear family supported by a desire for the private control of land".[5]

Influenced by the earlier Spanish and Portuguese colonization of the Americas, the group had adapted differently, however, to encountering different indigenous peoples further north; relying on attracting large-scale immigration of more Northwestern European peoples to repopulate and expand their colonies, rather than the Iberian-model of enslaving the natives and co-opting their society. Of the pan-ethnic group, the British colonists more aggressively imported Northwest Europeans than the French colonists in Canada, who maintained a self-replacing number of settlers in Acadia and along the Saint Lawrence River.[10] During this early frontier-period, virtually all colonists were of a Northwestern European ancestry in the geographical area of modern Canada.[11]

Early 20th-century

Between 1886-1926, around 25 percent of Northwestern Europeans living on the Canadian Prairies were foreign-born, compared with around 50 percent foreign-born Eastern and Southern Europeans.[12] In the first years of the 20th-century, the 1901 census showed Canada's population to be 96.2 percent white Canadian, and, in particular, made up of Anglo-Canadians and French Canadians. The majority of Canadians expressed a preference for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant immigrants from Great Britain and the United States, with general ancestry from Northwestern Europe, such as Scandinavia, the preferred secondary option.[13]

Whereas, in the United States, Northwestern European immigration had reduced to 41 percent of all arrivals between 1901 and 1920; by 1921 the group still dominated all immigration to Canada, with particularly high representation from the British Isles.[14] In 1923, the US Commissioner General of Immigration, Willam Walter Husband, used Canada's history of attracting Northwestern Europeans to the Western provinces, as an example for the United States to emulate. During a US Senate Committee on Immigration debate with Senators Thomas Sterling, William P. Dillingham and others, Husband spoke of "splendid northwest Europeans" populating Western Canada.[15]

Post World War II

In the post-Second World War period, while Canada has been described as a "culturally compatible setting" for Northwestern European people, it is estimated new arrivals from the pan-ethnic group returned home at a rate of 20-30 percent.[16] Up until the 1960s, immigration policy in Canada had been configured under the assumption that Northwestern Europeans were optimal peoples to bring into the country for assimilation and Canadian citizenship.[17] This had taken the form of a "white only policy" until 1962, which particularly prioritized arrivals from Great Britain.[18] In this regard, historian Franca Iacovetta has described "northwestern Europeans who traditionally were Canada's preferred immigrants."[6]

Ethnicity scholar and historian John Higham, wrote how, in Alberta, Canadian-born people "welcomed northwestern Europeans" while they "despised a tiny Chinese minority".[7] Believing ethnic Britons, and other Northwestern European peoples in Canada, to be superior to other Europeans (and non-European indigenous peoples) has been described as such a prevalent ideology, that Canadians such as J. S. Woodsworth and prime minister John Diefenbaker had held these views.[19]

Demography
Northwestern European population by province or territory (2016)
Province / territory Population Percentage
Quebec[20] 5,902,010 74.1%
Ontario[21] 5,764,545 43.5%
British Columbia[22] 1,969,720 43.2%
Alberta[23] 1,862,540 46.8%
Nova Scotia[24] 734,365 80.8%
New Brunswick[25] 649,940 88.9%
Saskatchewan[26] 505,310 47.2%
Newfoundland and Labrador[27] 444,650 86.8%
Manitoba[28] 441,980 35.6%
Prince Edward Island[29] 124,200 88.9%
Yukon[30] 17,485 49.8%
Northwest Territories[31] 11,980 29.1%
Nunavut[32] 2,840 8%
Canada[1] 18,441,380 53.5%

Language

The top five most spoken Northwestern European languages in Canada include English, French, German, Dutch and Finnish.

Academic research

A 1977 study by psychologist John W. Berry found that, in terms of immigrant groups, Northwestern Europeans were viewed the most favorably by Canadians, followed by Central and Southern Europeans, and then, almost uniformly, non-white ethnic groups, other than Japanese people.[8]

See also

References
  1. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Canada [Country] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
  2. AKM Ahsan Ullah; Ahmed Shafiqul Huque (2014). "Poverty, Migrants and HIV/AIDS in Canada". Asian Immigrants in North America with HIV/AIDS: Stigma, Vulnerabilities and Human Rights. Springer Publishing. p. 68. ISBN 978-9812871183. Table 3.1 Ethnic composition in Canada: Ethnic origin, Total; Western European origins, Eastern European origins, Southern European origins, Northern European origins ... Statistics Canada (2006) Census of Population.
  3. U.S. Census Bureau (1993). "Measuring Ethnicity in Canadian Censuses". Challenges of measuring an ethnic world science, politics, and reality : proceedings of the Joint Canada-United States Conference on the Measurement of Ethnicity, April 1-3, 1992. Statistics Canada. p. 267. Appendix C: Table 1. Population by Ethnic Origin, Canada, 1986 Census ... Single origins: British origins, French origins ... European origins: Western European origins, Northern European origins, Eastern European origins, Southern European origins.
  4. Hubert Charbonneau; Cole Harris (1998). "Resettling the St Lawrence Valley, 1608-1760". In William G. Dean; Conrad Heidenreich; Thomas McIlwraith (eds.). Concise Historical Atlas of Canada. University of Toronto Press. p. 68. ISBN 978-0802042033. Agricultural Capability: (for the mixed agriculture practised by northwestern Europeans)
  5. Cole Harris (1977). "The Simplification of Europe Overseas". Annals of the American Association of Geographers (Volume 67 ed.). Taylor & Francis. pp. 469–483. The structure of northwestern European societies overseas had more to do with the nature of access to land in colonial settings than with the particular backgrounds of emigrating Europeans. The crucial European inheritance -a strong sense of the nuclear family supported by a desire for the private control of land-was common to most northwestern Europeans. When these assumptions were introduced to areas where land was cheap and markets were poor, as in early Canada, South Africa, and New England, remarkably homogeneous and egalitarian rural societies of subsistent farmers emerged quickly.)
  6. Franca Iacovetta (1993). "Getting There". Such Hardworking People: Italian Immigrants in Postwar Toronto. McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 22. ISBN 978-0773508743. As southern Europeans, Italians had long been considered far less desirable than the British, white Americans, and northwestern Europeans who traditionally were Canada's preferred immigrants.
  7. John Higham (1983). "Palmer, "Patterns of Prejudice: A History of Nativism in Alberta" (Book Review)". Canadian Ethnic Studies (Volume 15 ed.). University of Calgary. p. 147.
  8. Martin Marger (2014). "15". Race and Ethnic Relations: American and Global Perspectives. Wadsworth Publishing. p. 445. ISBN 978-1285749693. In their national attitudinal study, Berry, Kalin, and Taylor (1977) found that respondents in general reacted very favorably to English and French Canadians ... Specifically, northwestern Europeans were judged most favorably, central and southern European groups next, and nonwhite groups least favorably, except for Japanese.
  9. Paul Butel (2014). "The Atlantic and the growth of the naval powers: The seventeenth century". The Atlantic. Routledge. p. 68. ISBN 978-0415756389. Rather, in the New World as in Africa, the north-western Europeans would demonstrate new ambitions to dominate trade and to set up their own areas of colonization ... Another Atlantic took form in the seventeenth century with the colonization and peopling of North America, from French Canada to the English colonies on the mainland.
  10. John Douglas Belshaw (2016). "The Transatlantic Age". Canadian History: Post Confederation. BCcampus Open Education. The model of imperialism that the Iberians introduced took advantage of existing populations and grafted onto it ... This model influenced the northwestern Europeans but it was one that they could not follow utterly. As we shall see in subsequent chapters, the English relied on emigration to (re)populate the territories they claimed. France was reluctant to do the same and it lacked the resources and the will to build much more than a replacement society along the St. Lawrence and a few outposts in Acadia and Louisiana.
  11. Stephen K. Sanderson (2015). Modern Societies: A Comparative Perspective. Routledge. ISBN 978-1612056685. Canada and Australia were, like the United States, settler colonies that hived off from Britain. Frontier areas were occupied almost entirely by northwest Europeans, and other European ethnies immigrated later.
  12. A. S. Whiteley (1932). "The Peopling of the Prairie Provinces of Canada". American Journal of Sociology (Volume 38 ed.). University of Chicago Press . pp. 240–252. The Prairie born constituted the largest single element in the population in 1926 and with those from other provinces comprised 62.75 per cent of the total. With respect to "origin," about one-half of those from Central, South, and East Europe and less than one-fourth of those from Northwest European stocks were foreign born.
  13. Raymond B. Blake; Jeffrey A. Keshen; Norman J. Knowles; Barbara J. Messamore (2017). "Development and Dissonance, 1896-1914". Conflict and Compromise: Post-Confederation Canada. University of Toronto Press. p. 77. ISBN 978-1442635579. Although changed by immigration, Canada's population remained overwhelmingly white, Anglo, French and Western European. The 1901 census indicated that Canada was 96.2 per cent Caucasian. Most Canadians expressed a clear preference for white, Protestant British and American newcomers, viewing them as easiest to assimilate, followed by northwest Europeans and Scandinavians.
  14. Audley George Reid (2002). "Immigration and Urban Demographics: Internal and External Migrants in Chicago and Toronto". Distinct paths: Race and Public Housing in postwar Toronto and Chicago. University of Florida. Northwestern Europeans were the majority group as well among immigrants to Canada. However, the demographic shift away from northwestern Europe as an immigrant source occurred earlier in the United States in comparison to Canada and the degree of this shift was noticeably greater. The period from 1901 to 1920 saw northwestern Europe decline to 41% ... By contrast, as late as 1921 the Canadian immigrant population continued to be dominated by northwestern Europeans in general, British immigrants particularly.
  15. Amendment to Immigration Law: Hearing, 67th Congress, 4th Session. US Congress. January 24, 1923. p. 20. For a good many years Canada has systematically induced the immigration of farmers to the western Provinces, and large numbers of splendid northwest Europeans have settled there, as well as a good many from the United States, as Senator Sterling has said;
  16. Dennis Conway (2016). "Back to Hong Kong: Return Migration or Transnational Sojourn?". Return Migration of the Next Generations: 21st Century Transnational Mobility. Routledge. ISBN 978-1138273696. In the more recent, post-1945 period, return migration has continued even among northwest Europeans in such culturally compatible settings as Australia and Canada. Estimates suggest that as many as 20-30 per cent of Britons returned to the United Kingdom from these seemingly harmonious destinations (Hammerton 2004).
  17. R. Kenneth Carty; W. Peter Ward (1986). "The Making of a Canadian Political Citizenship". In R. Kenneth Carty (ed.). National Politics and Community in Canada. UBC Press. p. 68. ISBN 978-0774802482. Until the 1960s most policies encouraging migration reflected the assumption that northwestern Europeans and Americans of like descent made the best prospective citizens.
  18. "Lecture 23: Anthropology of Ethnicity and Race - ANT3451 - Canada: Ethnic Model of the Future?" (PDF). Florida International University. Canada's other ethnic group's: More than 200; one of the most heterogeneous societies in world. A. Before 1962 white-only policy: discriminatory policy favors northwestern Europeans, especially Britain.
  19. James Muir (2016). "Keeping Canada British: The Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Saskatchewan by James M. Pitsula (review)". University of Toronto Quarterly (Volume 85 ed.). University of Toronto Press. pp. 541–542. Similarly, a broad spectrum of people, from J.S. Woodsworth to John Diefenbaker, accepted as truth the imagined superiority of British people and northwestern Europeans over central and southern Europeans, let alone Africans, Asians, and North American indigenous people.
  20. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Quebec [Province] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
  21. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Ontario [Province] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
  22. "Census Profile, 2016 Census British Columbia [Province] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
  23. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Alberta [Province] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
  24. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Nova Scotia [Province] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
  25. "Census Profile, 2016 Census New Brunswick [Province] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
  26. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Saskatchewan [Province] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
  27. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Newfoundland and Labrador [Province] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
  28. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Manitoba [Province] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
  29. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Prince Edward Island [Province] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
  30. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Yukon [Territory] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
  31. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Northwest Territories [Territory] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
  32. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Nunavut [Territory] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
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