Immigration

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Immigration to Canada, 1920 to 1929. More than a million people immigrated to Canada during the 1920s, most of them from Britain, other European countries, and the U.S. Why do you think Canada has so often encouraged immigration?

Immigrants to Canada per year in the 1920's
Year: 1920  Number of Immigrants: 128 824

 Year: 1921  Number of Immigrants: 91 728

 Year: 1922  Number of Immigrants: 64 224

 Year: 1923  Number of Immigrants: 113 729

 Year: 1924  Number of Immigrants: 124 164

 Year: 1925  Number of Immigrants: 84 907

 Year: 1926  Number of Immigrants: 135 982

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;"> Year: 1927 <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;"> Number of Immigrants: 158 886

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;"> Year: 1928 <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;"> Number of Immigrants: 166 783

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;"> Year: 1929 <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;"> Number of Immigrants: 164 993

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 21px; line-height: 32px;">**Immigration to Canada** <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;"> As Magne Stortroen looked out the window of the train chugging through the northern Ontario landscape, he must have felt a great sense of adventure. It was 1923, and the 20-year-old had left his home in Norway with his friend Karl to find work in Canada.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;"> Back home, the countries of Europe were still struggling to recover from the war. Magne and Karl were among many young people in Europe who were eager to start a new life somewhere else. At that time, Canada must have been a very inviting choice. It had not been directly affected by the war, its economy was booming, and there were lots of jobs, especially in the mining and lumbering industries along Canada's northern frontier.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;"> After landing at Quebec City, Magne and Karl made their way by train to a logging camp in Timmins. Even for two eager young men who were used to working hard, cutting lumber was backbreaking work. For two days, Magne and Karl used hand saws to cut and trim two-metre-long logs. They were paid four cents per log. By the time they had prepared 378 logs, they were already tired of the lumbering life. But at least they would receive about $7.50 each for two days work, a decent wage in 1923. Or so they thought. Magne explains what happened:

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;"> The next morning we packed our bags right after breakfast and when the men had gone into the bush, we went to see the clerk. He told us that the scalers had counted our logs and there were nine less than we had said, but he had to go with the scalers' report. Well, we were not about to show him he was wrong, not for a five-mile [8-km] walk and thirty-six cents, so Karl told him to keep the logs. After he had deducted our meals, shirt and pants, and rent for the tools, he handed us each a cheque. Karl's was for fifteen cents, and mine was for ten cents. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;"> Bill McNeil, Voice of the Pioneer, Vol. II (Toronto: Macmillan, 1984), pp. 31-32

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;"> scaler: someone who measures logs to estimate the volume of lumber

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;"> Canada's Immigration Policy
<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;"> Magne may have had no trouble getting into the country, but others did. Government ads encouraged White migrants from Britain, some parts of Europe, and the United States to come to Canada. At the same time, racist policies made it almost impossible for people of colour to immigrate in the early 20th century.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;"> For example, the same year Magne came to Canada (1923), the government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. It banned virtually all new Chinese immigration to Canada, including wives or family members of Chinese Canadians. A 1928 law limited Japanese immigration to just 150 people a year.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Did You Know?

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;"> Of the 8 787 949 people living in Canada in 1921, less than 1 percent claimed Asia or the Caribbean as their birthplace. By comparison, 17 percent of Canadian residents at that time were born in Europe (including Britain).

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;"> Factors affecting immigration. Conditions that push people to move - such as war, poverty, and lack of jobs - are called push factors. Pull factors explain why immigrants choose a particular country. Government policy also affects immigration, either by welcoming migrants or by discouraging them from coming. How do each of these factors apply in the case of Magne Stortroen?

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Questions
<span style="background-color: #d5ebeb; font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">1. Write a letter that Magne might have sent to his friends back home in Norway about his first experiences in his new country. Make it 3 short paragraphs, make it convincing and use your imagination to describe the conditions, his hopes, and his frustrations.

<span style="background-color: #d5ebeb; font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">2. Using the immigrants per year list above, find the AVERAGE number of immigrants per year in the 1920's in Canada (hint...use a calculator!). Does this number accurately represent what happened with the numbers of immigrants to Canada in the second half of the 1920's?

<span style="background-color: #d5ebeb; font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">3. Today, Canadian society is much more multicultural than it was in the 1920s. List three arguments you could use to convince immigration officials in the 1920s that a multicultural society has benefited Canada.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">An Urban Way of Life
<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;"> Magne Stortroen came to this country at a time when another kind of migration was beginning to make a noticeable difference in Canada. As steam- and gasoline-powered farm machinery slowly replaced much of the human labour required on farms, less work was available in rural areas. Young people had to move to towns and cities to find jobs. Between 1871 and 1931, Canada's population gradually shifted from being mostly rural to being mostly urban. This process of urbanization changed people's lives profoundly, especially in the fields of education, employment, leisure, and consumerism.