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.
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.

Terminology

Census

Alongside Eastern European Canadians and Southern European Canadians, the census in Canada lists Northern and Western European Canadians separately. 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".
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 ". 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 ". Within the census, they are divided as the following:
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, colonization behaviors and settlement of Canada. Historian Franca Iacovetta and ethnicity scholar John Higham have used the term to explore historic immigration preferences in Canada. 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.

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. 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. 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".
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 agressively 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. During this early frontier-period, virtually all colonists were of a Northwestern European ancestry in the geographical area of modern Canada.

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. 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.
Whereas, in the United States, Northwestern European immigration had reduced to 41 percent of all arrivals between 1901 to 1920; by 1921 the group still dominated all immigration to Canada, with particularly high representation from the British Isles. 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.

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. Up until the 1960s, immigraton 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. This had taken the form of a "white only policy" until 1962, which particularly prioritized arrivals from Great Britain. In this regard, historian Franca Iacovetta has described "northwestern Europeans who traditionally were Canada's preferred immigrants."
Ethnicity scholar and historian John Higham, wrote how, in Alberta, Canadian-born people "welcomed northwestern Europeans" while they "despised a tiny Chinese minority". Believing ethnic Britons, and other Northwestern European peoples in Canada, to be superior to other Europeans has been described as such a prevelent ideology, that Canadians such as J. S. Woodsworth and prime minister John Diefenbaker had held these views.

Demography

Province / territoryPopulationPercentage
Quebec5,902,010
Ontario5,764,545
British Columbia1,969,720
Alberta1,862,540
Nova Scotia734,365
New Brunswick649,940
Saskatchewan505,310
Newfoundland and Labrador444,650
Manitoba441,980
Prince Edward Island124,200
Yukon17,485
Northwest Territories11,980
Nunavut2,840
Canada18,441,380

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.