Toronto's ethnocultural communities before 1945

[wild goose chase]

Note also that in the late 19th century net migration to Canada was actually negative as so many (immigrants and Canadian-born alike) departed to the US.

ETA: Maybe the Irish could be said to be an "older" group in Canada than the US. The Newfoundland Irish immigrated well before the Famine years, between 1750 and 1830.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Newfoundlanders

That's true about the Irish in Newfoundland.

I suppose my question could be either interpreted as "older" in the sense of oldest significant settlement/immigration in recorded history that still has a major community of descendants who identify with the group (but then I guess saying something like Italian-Canadian history starts with Cabot or Italian-American history on US soil starts with Columbus since he technically touched down on Puerto Rico, shouldn't count!), or older if the current population as a whole traces its roots to older "stock"/ancestry. I know the Newfoundland Irish are older by ancestry than most Irish-Americans, but then Newfoundland's population is small compared to say, all the Irish Ontarians, so perhaps the "average" Irish American is still likely to have deeper roots than an "average" Irish Canadian.

I suppose the line between colonial settler and immigrant isn't always clear, but I suppose "French" Canadians have deeper roots than "French" Americans. I think there were very few descendants of French settlers in the US (you rarely hear about what happened to those French settlers that lived in the Midwest or the Louisiana Purchase states, so maybe their numbers were real small), so I suppose that almost all the French-descended "immigrants" to the US were majority Quebecois and Acadians/Cajuns with perhaps some Huguenots, so I suppose in that sense most people with a French ancestry trace their roots deeper into Canada than the US.

Come to think of it, wouldn't Ukrainians also be an example of a diaspora where the Canadian descendants are much "older" than their American counterparts? I think most Ukrainian Canadians have multi-generational roots while many more Ukrainian Americans are first or second generation (from the post-Soviet wave).

Another example, I've heard about but not sure if true, is that Sikh Canadians in BC have perhaps somewhat older roots than Sikh Americans (the oldest gurdwara in North America is in Abbotsbord), but it's probably not by that much I guess considering Asian exclusion laws were in place for so much of the early 20th century anyway.

Lastly, I suppose there could be some small recent, post-1960s immigrant/ethnic group which arrived in Canada and established a small community first before any American equivalent did. Perhaps some refugee group that Canada took in significant numbers first, that the US didn't really receive? Can't think of any though.

 

[wild goose chase]

I know the Newfoundland Irish are older by ancestry than most Irish-Americans, but then Newfoundland's population is small compared to say, all the Irish Ontarians, so perhaps the "average" Irish American is still likely to have deeper roots than an "average" Irish Canadian.

Though maybe not, perhaps considering the really earlier immigrants called "Irish" in the US were often Scots-Irish instead (though I'm not sure if that was the case when people talk about the "Irish" at the time of the American Revolution I've heard it was often so), and besides Newfoundland, the great Famine was really the major wave in either country, so perhaps by that logic, maybe the Irish Canadian roots really are older.

 

[King of Kensington]

Yes the "Irish" at the time of the American Revolution were Scots-Irish Protestants.

 

[the lemur]

That's true about the Irish in Newfoundland.

I suppose my question could be either interpreted as "older" in the sense of oldest significant settlement/immigration in recorded history that still has a major community of descendants who identify with the group (but then I guess saying something like Italian-Canadian history starts with Cabot or Italian-American history on US soil starts with Columbus since he technically touched down on Puerto Rico, shouldn't count!), or older if the current population as a whole traces its roots to older "stock"/ancestry. I know the Newfoundland Irish are older by ancestry than most Irish-Americans, but then Newfoundland's population is small compared to say, all the Irish Ontarians, so perhaps the "average" Irish American is still likely to have deeper roots than an "average" Irish Canadian.

I suppose the line between colonial settler and immigrant isn't always clear, but I suppose "French" Canadians have deeper roots than "French" Americans. I think there were very few descendants of French settlers in the US (you rarely hear about what happened to those French settlers that lived in the Midwest or the Louisiana Purchase states, so maybe their numbers were real small), so I suppose that almost all the French-descended "immigrants" to the US were majority Quebecois and Acadians/Cajuns with perhaps some Huguenots, so I suppose in that sense most people with a French ancestry trace their roots deeper into Canada than the US.

Come to think of it, wouldn't Ukrainians also be an example of a diaspora where the Canadian descendants are much "older" than their American counterparts? I think most Ukrainian Canadians have multi-generational roots while many more Ukrainian Americans are first or second generation (from the post-Soviet wave).

Another example, I've heard about but not sure if true, is that Sikh Canadians in BC have perhaps somewhat older roots than Sikh Americans (the oldest gurdwara in North America is in Abbotsbord), but it's probably not by that much I guess considering Asian exclusion laws were in place for so much of the early 20th century anyway.

Lastly, I suppose there could be some small recent, post-1960s immigrant/ethnic group which arrived in Canada and established a small community first before any American equivalent did. Perhaps some refugee group that Canada took in significant numbers first, that the US didn't really receive? Can't think of any though.

The question of whether Puerto Rico constitutes US soil is unsurprisingly a sensitive one, but it's interesting to note that many Puerto Ricans coincidentally have some Italian ancestry (from a period much later than Columbus though, obviously).

There were apparently a few thousand Vietnamese living in Canada (mostly in Quebec) before the end of the Vietnam War and a much smaller number in the US.

It seems that Sikhs first settled in the US (mostly in California and Oregon) slightly earlier than in Canada, but only by a decade or so.

I wonder if there are (proportionally) more refugees from Central America (1980s and later) in Canada, or from places like Chile in the 1970s. Canadian appears to have more people of Chilean descent than the US state with the largest number of Chileans, which is California.

It also seems to me that people from English-speaking countries in the Caribbean and Central & South America (Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad, Belize) usually have an easier time getting into Canada than into the US (at least initially).

Unofficially, Canada may have a larger Somali population than the US; officially, though, it has a little more than half as much as the US.

 

[King of Kensington]

Irish immigration in the 19th century occurred a bit earlier, on average, in Canada than in the US. In Newfoundland, as noted above, it occurred early. In Halifax too, Irish immigration was pre-Famine, though Saint John was mostly in the Famine years. Rural eastern Ontario received a lot of Irish Protestant immigration in the 1830s.

The US also received more Irish immigration in the later 19th century: Canada's Irish-born population peaked in 1861, the US in 1890.

In Massachusetts, when the Irish came in the famine years, there was a long-established Yankee population that had been in the US for 200 years. In contrast, Upper Canada was not very old and still pretty thinly populated "when the Irish came", so it was harder to say they were a "foreign" element.

I suppose the same could be said in Chicago: it was barely a city when the Famine occurred, so the Irish were pretty much there at the beginning. From what I've read, the Irish outside the Northeastern cities and especially Boston moved up the socioeconomic ladder faster, probably because Boston probably had the poorest immigrants to begin with and those with more resources moved west, but the reception may have been less hostile where they weren't a "new" group.

 

[King of Kensington]

Toronto was 24% Catholic in 1871, the same as Hamilton but below Kingston (32%) and especially Ottawa (59%). In all of these cities except Ottawa the vast majority of Catholics were Irish, while in Ottawa it was split between French and Irish Catholics.

 

[wild goose chase]

Unofficially, Canada may have a larger Somali population than the US; officially, though, it has a little more than half as much as the US.

I hear about unofficial estimates a lot for many contemporary groups/demographics -- how are they obtained and why do they differ from official data?

Is this due to there being non-responses to the census, while the unofficial surveys involve locals walking around asking the community in person or something along those lines, that are able to account for more people -- I find it surprising that a demographic/community could be underestimated by having only half the members appear on the official census.

 

[wild goose chase]

The Wikipedia article on Somali Canadians mentions "The early 1990s saw an increase in the total number of Somali immigrants entering the country, with some secondary migration from the United States." but there is no citation. I find it interesting, if true, that Somali-Americans would move to Canada preferentially, since the assumption many people have is that secondary migration runs most often the other way for most.

Another group more deeply rooted up north than stateside might be Sri Lankan Canadians or Tamil Canadians that moved due to war starting in the 80s, peaking in the 90s and up to the 2000s, since I think the US didn't take many refugees from there. Considering that most refugees naturalize and gain citizenship more quickly than economic migrants as they are far less likely to move back, and probably far more Tamil Americans came as skilled workers, often in IT, originally from India in places like California, I think it might be the case. In university in Canada, nearly all the Tamil-speakers or those who identified as Tamil that I met were Canadian citizens from Toronto if not the GTA, while in the US, Tamil-speakers were often not US citizens but international students.

Then on the flip side there are some demographics that arrived to the US but not Canada such as the Cold War period Cuban exiles (Ted Cruz aside, lol) or the Hmong refugees.