Why Toronto surpassed Vancouver/BC in Asian-Canadian population?

[wild goose chase]

Asian immigration was most prominent in the west first. I read somewhere I think that sometime by perhaps the mid 20th century, people of Asian descent (mostly East Asian but I think South Asian too, since the Sikhs started off living on the west coast before the east) became more numerous in Toronto than Vancouver.

I get that this is probably because of Toronto's status as largest Canadian city, but one thing that stuck out to me is how come this was true for Canada and Ontario, but not in the US. Stateside, Asian-Americans are still most prominent in California on the west coast, and have not had their center of population move as eastward like their Canadian counterparts.

Is this due to California/the west's greater economic clout in its country relative to the east than BC's economic influence in Canada, thus attracting/retaining more people? Or is it a reflection of Canada's being more "new" as a destination for Asian immigrants, where geography matters less (it seems that older past waves of immigrant in general for either country, say the Japanese in California or BC, are more geographically concentrated than the newer waves, say Indians/South Asians in New Jersey, Texas, Alberta, Ontario etc).

 

[Admiral Beez]

Asia includes everyone East of Suez and the Ural mountains. It makes sense that the city with the largest immigrant population would have the most Asians.

 

[King of Kensington]

Is this due to California/the west's greater economic clout in its country relative to the east than BC's economic influence in Canada, thus attracting/retaining more people?

I think that's it. Vancouver is the West Coast metropolis in Canada, while the US has Los Angeles and the Bay Area, as well as Seattle and San Diego.

 

[wild goose chase]

I think that's it. Vancouver is the West Coast metropolis in Canada, while the US has Los Angeles and the Bay Area, as well as Seattle and San Diego.

Come to think of it though actually, the West coast presence for Asian-Americans is mostly driven by California -- the Pacific Northwest states probably don't seem to contribute that much to Asian-American population by sheer population, compared to California's sheer demographic weight (after all, it's the one US state larger in population size than all of Canada!).

I also kind of find it interesting that BC and California have so many of Asian descent (15-20%), but the states in between, Washington and Oregon, not so much with only single digit %'s. Portland isn't particularly evocative of Asian-Americans, with Seattle perhaps slightly more so, though both cities are seen as low in population of minorities broadly speaking. I'm guessing BC and California were favored as destinations but not so much in between? Perhaps it also means that the Asian-Canadian west-coasters didn't intermingle much with their stateside counterparts otherwise they'd be a more continuous distribution going north to south.

 

[wild goose chase]

Asia includes everyone East of Suez and the Ural mountains. It makes sense that the city with the largest immigrant population would have the most Asians.

That's true for Canada.

Would it be true for the US (right now, LA, not NYC is considered the city with most Asian-Americans) if you defined Asian-Americans in a pan-continental way rather than the way most Americans do (I know Middle Easterners are excluded from being called "Asians" on the US census but not Canada, where they are West Asians)? Then again, LA does have many Persians, Armenians etc. so maybe not.

 

[King of Kensington]

Yeah, Seattle is quite a bit down the pecking order for West Coast cities, in spite of the 3 million or so population in the area.

 

[King of Kensington]

Toronto has more of most Asian groups than Vancouver in numbers, with the exception of Japanese, of which Vancouver has the most in Canada.

 

[King of Kensington]

Vancouver also has more born in Taiwan, by quite a lot (42,000 there, 15,000 here).

 

[Johnny Au]

What about Thais? I see Thai restaurants everywhere in Toronto.

 

[wild goose chase]

What about Thais? I see Thai restaurants everywhere in Toronto.

It seems like though Thai food is pretty popular, there aren't that many people of Thai descent themselves in Canada.

 

[wild goose chase]

Toronto has more of most Asian groups than Vancouver in numbers, with the exception of Japanese, of which Vancouver has the most in Canada.

The Japanese are also kind of different in being much earlier than the other Asian immigration waves, aren't they? The Japanese-Americans are also more heavily concentrated in California and Hawaii than anywhere else in the US too.

 

[wild goose chase]

I wonder if the Asian-Canadians are more likely or less likely to be native-born Canadians on the west coast than in Toronto. On the one hand, the oldest communities are there (including the oldest Chinese, Japanese, and Sikh communities), but on the other hand, places like Vancouver also got a lot of new immigration, especially from China in recent years, so maybe not.

Canada also has no analogue of Hawaii, in which the majority of people of Asian descent are US-born (often multi-generation on the island, and with native ancestry), and not foreign-born. Come to think of it, is there any town or city in Canada where among Asian visible minorities, native-born outnumber foreign born? I think more generally too, aside from the Black Canadians in Ontario and Nova Scotia, we simply don't have any major locations where visible minorities aren't somewhat new (whether Asian, African, Latin American, Caribbean) relative to the US.

 

[King of Kensington]

Born in Canada

Toronto CMA

Japanese 65.3%
South Asian 28.2%
Chinese 25.3%

Vancouver CMA

Japanese 56.8%
South Asian 37.6%
Chinese 25%

 

[wild goose chase]

Born in Canada

Toronto CMA

Japanese 65.3%
South Asian 28.2%
Chinese 25.3%

Vancouver CMA

Japanese 56.8%
South Asian 37.6%
Chinese 25%

Okay, the pattern was not like I expected at all and in fact the opposite. I had thought the Chinese and Japanese would be more likely to be Canadian-born in Vancouver than Toronto, while the South Asians would be less so.

 

[King of Kensington]

With regard to Japanese Canadians, this is due to government policy. The vast majority of Japanese Canadians lived in coastal BC and were forcibly relocated. At the end of the war, they were given the "choice" of moving east of the Rockies or returning to Japan. Having started new lives elsewhere, many never returned to BC; hence the Japanese Canadian population in BC today is a very different one.