Eastern European Canadians

Eastern European Canadians are Canadians of Eastern European ancestry. Eastern European Canadian people can usually trace back full or partial heritage to Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and other nations in, bordering with, or otherwise culturally connected to Eastern Europe.

Eastern European Canadians

Total population
3,431,245[1] 10.0% of the total Canadian population (2016)
Regions with significant populations
Western Canada · Central Canada · Urban less prevalent in the Atlantic and North
Languages
Canadian English · Canadian French Russian · Polish · Ukrainian · Romanian · Hungarian Other Eastern European Languages
Religion
Predominantly: Christianity Minorities: Irreligion • Judaism • Islam
Related ethnic groups
Eastern Europeans · Eastern European Americans · Eastern European Australians · Eastern European Britons

As of 2016, 3,431,245 Canadians had Eastern European geographical origins, constituting 10.0% of the Canadian population. Along with Northwestern European Canadians and Southern European Canadians, they are a subgrouping of European Canadians.

Background

Eastern European Canadians are considered a pan-ethnic group which is based on full or partial ancestry to the region of Eastern Europe.[2][3] The group can be broken down into further subgroups such as Ukrainian Canadians and Moldovan Canadians.[4]

Although Central European in location, countries such as Hungary and the Czech Republic have sometimes been included within ancestry parameters when identifying or describing Eastern European Canadian people.[5] Similarly, due to a cultural or Slavic connection, Yugoslav Canadians have at times been included in the designation.[6]

History

The 1914 War Measures Act, which authorized the Canadian government to designate "aliens of enemy nationality", included many Eastern European Canadians born or resident in Canada, which caused conflicts with perceptions of dual loyalty.[7] In the 1920s, Eastern European Canadians were sometimes scapegoated, alongside African Canadians, during economic recession and post-war unrest.[8]

During World War II, Eastern European Canadians were trained at Camp X, later serving in the Special Operations Executive.[6] After the war, Canadian diplomacy had to balance respect and support for the contributions of its war-time ally the Soviet Union, against the sensitivities of Eastern European Canadians, in regions such as Alberta.[9]

In 1961, census statistics revealed that while they were participating in low-skilled occupations at the national average, Eastern European Canadians were underrepresented in professional occupations, while over-represented in the personal service sector.[10] Professor Marc Shell has outlined how, during the 1960s, it was not unusual for voluntary surname changes, as well as the Canadian government enforcing the anglicisation of names by an Order of Council, in the process of assimilation of Eastern European communities.[11] In 1971, other than Ukrainian Canadians, who tended to live more rurally, most Eastern European Canadians lived in the country's main urban centers.[12]

In Kim Richard Nossal's co-edited 2002 Diplomatic Departures, Dr Roy Norton proposed that by 1980, the pan-ethnic group were more integrated into Canadian society and generally viewed Canada's role in the U.S. Helsinki Commission positively, as well as the country's persistent condemnation of human rights abuses in both Eastern and Central Europe.[13]

Demography

Eastern European population by province or territory (2016)

Province / territory	Population	Percentage
Ontario[14]	1,339,610	10.1%
Alberta[15]	685,270	17.2%
British Columbia[16]	569,260	12.5%
Manitoba[17]	287,695	23.2%
Quebec[18]	249,940	3.1%
Saskatchewan[19]	243,055	22.7%
Nova Scotia[20]	29,685	3.3%
New Brunswick[21]	11,590	1.6%
Yukon[22]	4,495	12.8%
Newfoundland and Labrador[23]	4,230	0.8%
Prince Edward Island[24]	3,030	2.2%
Northwest Territories[25]	2,865	7%
Nunavut[26]	515	1.4%
Canada[1]	3,431,245	10%

Language

The top five eastern European languages spoken in Canada include Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Romanian and Hungarian.[27]

Academic research

Research has been conducted involving both Eastern Europeans immigrating to Canada,[28] as well as the characteristics, norms and statistics of Canadian citizens of Eastern European heritage.

Based on research in North America, a 2019 book from Purdue University Northwest professor of sociology, Cezara O. Crisan, has projected that Eastern European Canadians are often likely, as an immigrant or immigrant-descended group, to be economically, politically and socially involved both with their resident country and ancestral nation or region.[29]

See also

• European Canadians
• Eastern European Americans
• Eastern European Britons
• Eastern European Australians

References

1. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Canada [Country] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
2. Aloysius Balawyder (2000). In the Clutches of the Kremlin – Canadian–East European Relations 1945–1962. Columbia University Press. p. 66. ISBN 978-0880334440. Eastern European Canadians constitute an important base for Canadian domestic and foreign policies. Their influence varied during the different phases of immigration.
3. "Issues 102-105". Media International Australia. Australian Film, Television and Radio School. 2002. p. 132. In the second chapter, he explores the concept of 'otherness' by denaturalising the privileged white gaze and examining representations of First Nations peoples and Asian and Eastern European Canadians.
4. Rene A Day; Pauline Paul; Beverly Williams (2009). "Perspectives in Transcultural Nursing". Brunner and Suddarth's Textbook of Canadian Medical-Surgical Nursing. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. p. 129. ISBN 978-0781799898. Examples of Canadian subcultures based on ethnicity include Native Canadians, French Canadians, and Eastern European Canadians. Each of these subcultures can be further divided.
5. "Ukrainian Church History", Harvard Ukrainian Studies (Volume 26 ed.), Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2007, p. 20, Of the eight faculty members present only one was born in Canada. The others included four "Eastern European" Canadians (of Ukrainian, Russian, Czech, and Hungarian background)
6. "Saturday Night, Volume 97". Saturday Night. 1982. Similarly out of the mainstream were those central and eastern European Canadians, now condescendingly called "ethnics." Of those who served with SOE , most were Yugoslavs who had immigrated to Canada in the 1920s and 1930s.
7. Martin Louis Kovacs (1978). "Volume 8". Ethnic Canadians: Culture and Education. University of Regina. p. 132. ISBN 978-0889770096. The conflict between clashing loyalties for the Ukrainian and some other Central Eastern European Canadians was exacerbated by the war measures.
8. Sarah-Jane Mathieu (2010). "Fighting the Empire". North of the Color Line: Migration and Black Resistance in Canada, 1870–1955. University of North Carolina Press. p. 114. ISBN 978-0807834299. Throughout the 1920s, eastern European Canadians, like African Canadians, became the country's convenient scapegoats for postwar labor unrest, peacetime economic recession, and urban demise.
9. Alan Hustak (1979). Peter Lougheed: A Biography. McClelland and Stewart. p. 232. ISBN 978-0771042997. Required by protocol to lay a bouquet of flowers at the "mound of glory" - a war monument erected to the victories of the Red Army during the Second World War - he hastily deposited the flowers and quickly moved on, aware of the fact that his visit to the Soviet Union might antagonize the large number of eastern European Canadians living in Alberta.
10. Irwin Taylor Sanders; Ewa T. Morawska (1975). Polish American Community Life: A Survey of Research. Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America. p. 35. ISBN 978-0940962309. Porter has shown that in 1961 Canadian Eastern European ethnics were underrepresented in professions and overrepresented in personal service. In the unskilled occupations Eastern Europeans reached the national mean in 1961.
11. Marc Shell (2005). "One Polio Story". Polio and Its Aftermath: The Paralysis of Culture. Harvard University Press. p. 55. ISBN 978-0674013155. I became de jure Mark Shell in 1967 by means of an official Order of Council. (Such name changes were not untypical among assimilating Eastern Europeans in Canada.)
12. Peggy Tyrchniewicz (1979). Ethnic folk costumes in Canada. Hyperion Press. p. 111. ISBN 978-0920534106. By 1971, the greatest percentage of all eastern European Canadians lived in the largest urban centers. The exception is the Ukrainians who live mainnly on the prairies.
13. Roy Norton (2002). "Ethnic Groups and Conservative Foreign Policy". In Nelson Michaud; Kim Richard Nossal (eds.). Diplomatic Departures: The Conservative Era in Canadian Foreign Policy, 1984-93 (Canada and International Relations). UBC Press. p. 247. ISBN 978-0774808651. Most eastern European-Canadians appeared to be pleased with Canada's leadership at the CSCE and on individual human rights cases; one community leader claimed he "always felt Joe Clark was totally in tune with the position [he] was advocating".
14. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Ontario [Province] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
15. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Alberta [Province] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
16. "Census Profile, 2016 Census British Columbia [Province] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
17. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Manitoba [Province] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
18. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Quebec [Province] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
19. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Saskatchewan [Province] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
20. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Nova Scotia [Province] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
21. "Census Profile, 2016 Census New Brunswick [Province] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
22. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Yukon [Territory] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
23. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Newfoundland and Labrador [Province] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
24. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Prince Edward Island [Province] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
25. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Northwest Territories [Territory] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
26. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Nunavut [Territory] and Canada [Country]". Statistics Canada. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
27. "Census Profile, 2016 Census Canada [Country] and Canada [Country] Knowledge of languages". Statistics Canada. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
28. Wilhelm Kohler (2014). "Restrictive Immigration Policy in Germany: Pains and Gains Foregone?". European Economic Integration, WTO Membership, Immigration and Offshoring. World Scientific. p. 409. ISBN 978-9814440189. (iii) A “high education” scenario which assumes that the composition of the inflow equals the one observed for Eastern Europeans in Canada between 1995 and 2000.
29. Cezara O. Crisan (2019). "Ethnic Groups and Conservative Foreign Policy". The Legitimation Crisis of the Orthodox Church in the United States: From Assimilation to Incorporation. Lexington Books. p. 247. ISBN 978-1-4985-6293-5. The individuals and families that resemble more the transnational features of immigration are mostly permanent residents of the host country, in this case, the United States (although a study of Eastern Europeans in Canada might reach similar findings.) There, while they reside physically in one place, they are involved economically, socially, and politically in both the host and home country..