Czech Canadian

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Canadians of Czech ethnicity

Notable Czech Canadian: 'Josef Škvorecký'
Total population
79, 915
Regions with significant populations
Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario
Languages
Czech, English
Religions
Roman Catholicism, Judaism, Protestantism, Atheism

Czech Canadians are citizens of Canada who were born in, or whose ancestry goes back to, the territory of the historic Czech lands, constituting the Kingdom of Bohemia (consisting of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia), or succession states, now known as the Czech Republic. According to the 2001 Canadian census, there are 79,915 Canadians of full or partial Czech descent.

[edit] History

Czech immigration to Canada can be divided into four phases: 1880–1914, 1919–39, 1945–89, and 1990 to 2008. The first two phases, from roughly 1880 to 1939, were dominated by strong economic incentives for immigration, not to meet basic wants, but to seek a better life and accumulate wealth. In contrast, Czech immigrants who arrived in Canada between 1945 and 1989 were mostly political refugees, who left their homeland to avoid both the economic turmoil of post–World War II reconstruction and also the Communist regime which was established in Czechoslovakia in 1948.

Prior to the 1880s, Czech immigrants to the New World settled primarily in the United States, where they established numerous colonies in Nebraska, Texas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, and the city of Chicago. After 1880 Czechs from the midwestern United States as well as from the Czech homeland immigrated to western Canada, which came to be known for the availability of its plentiful and cheap land. Many of the migrants from the Czech lands were recruited by various agencies offering resettlement plans, often for families in large groups, who were invited to establish entire settlements. The Canadian government, in conjunction with the Canadian Pacific Railway, sponsored a number of similar colonization schemes, promising that upon arrival the immigrant could begin ploughing on a selected piece of land. These colonization schemes usually involved partial payment for transport overseas and by rail across the continent, and offered attractive, but not obligatory, land-purchase plans. These did not always work out, and many immigrants had to work on others’ farms or in the railway and mining industries before they received their own land. As a result, many never became farmers but stayed in their first jobs. In many cases, these migrants adapted to their new life and decided to stay in Canada instead of returning home. Many then arranged for their wives and children to join them.

The majority of the first immigrants were farmers who settled in the prairie provinces. These early Czech pioneers tended to go first to settlements such as Esterhazy in southeastern Saskatchewan, where there were already a number of Slovaks and Hungarians. Newer Czech settlements radiated outwards from these established colonies wherever land was available. By the turn of the century, several Czech communities had developed south of Esterhazy. The settlement at Kolin was established in 1884, followed by settlements at Derdard, Glenside, and Dovedale. Most of these communities were settled by Czechs from Europe. Others, however, such as Prague (Viching) in Alberta, which was founded in 1900, were settled initially by Czech Americans from the United States. There were also small Czech urban communities, particularly in Edmonton, which by 1900 boasted several Czech doctors, lawyers, and artisans.

As the availability of land diminished in the west, Czech communities were established progressively farther east. Between 1910 and 1912 several colonies of Czech Baptists settled among the Mennonite communities at Murden in the Swan River valley of southern Manitoba, and in the city of Winnipeg, which became the nucleus of the Czech community in Canada before World War I. There were also small groups of Czechs in Ontario, mostly miners, at Haileybury in the Temiskaming region, Kirkland Lake, and Fort William. Before 1914 southern Ontario, which would subsequently become the major centre of Czech settlement in Canada, had only small communities in Windsor and Kingston. A few Czechs worked as industrial labourers, and others worked at odd jobs in Toronto while waiting to receive farm land. The entire pre–World War I immigration remained small; in 1911 the Canadian census recorded only 1,800 Czechs in Canada.

After World War I, there was a marked change in the profile of Czech immigrants. The relatively stable and industrialized economy of the new Czechoslovakia, especially in Bohemia, the availability of work, and a good standard of living made emigration less attractive. Those who did immigrate were often sojourners who found employment as factory workers and artisans or as farm labourers, and they were primarily interested in opportunities for personal economic improvement. A small number of professionals also considered Canada for its economic opportunities. The field of agriculture remained attractive to Czech immigrants. An arrangement between the Sugar Beet Grower’s Association of Canada and the Czech International Institute provided for the arrival and settlement of many sugar-beet farmers, mainly from Moravia, to help develop the industry in Canada. These new Czech arrivals, while not numerous, established communities in southern Alberta, particularly near Lethbridge, and around Chatham, Ontario. During this second phase, the number of Czechs immigrating to Canada increased dramatically, in part because, during the 1920s, the United States passed several restrictive immigration laws that curtailed the growing influx of immigrants, particularly those from central and eastern Europe.

The inter-war immigrants significantly altered the demographic distribution of Czechs in Canada. More Czech immigrants settled in urban communities, especially in Ontario and Quebec, so that Montreal and Toronto now became the primary Czech centres, outdistancing Winnipeg. As the principal port of entry, Montreal increased its Czech and Slovak population from virtually nothing to 3,700 during the 1920s, and similarly Toronto’s Czech and Slovak communities grew to about 2,500 during the same decade. Czechs also formed communities in the thriving Ontario cities of Hamilton, Kitchener, Oshawa, and Ottawa, and in Calgary, Alberta. After 1929 immigration from Czechoslovakia declined from several hundred to fewer than eighty a year, although it increased slightly just prior to World War II. According to the 1931 census, there were approximately 30,000 residents from Czechoslovakia in Canada, perhaps half of whom were Czechs.

In 1939, under the auspices of Moravia-born shoe magnate Thomas J. Bata, roughly one hundred Czechs, mostly personnel from the Bata shoe factories in Zlín, Moravia, established the town of Batawa near Frankford, Ontario. Responding to the threat of Nazi German annexation, the Bata corporation relocated some of its existing material and staff to Canada. It established a new shoe factory there, which became its corporate headquarters during the war.

The Munich Pact, followed by the rapid partition and subsequent annexation of Czech lands by Nazi Germany, caught many Czechs by surprise. Because the borders were closed once Nazi rule was imposed, direct Czech emigration from the homeland was virtually non-existent between March 1939 and May 1945. When the war ended in 1945, Czech refugees began to come to Canada, some leaving their homeland because of the difficult post-war economic circumstances and others in fear of the encroaching Communist influence in the reconstituted republic. In 1948 the Communist coup became a reality, and thousands of Czechs fled their homeland, some leaving spouses, families, and businesses behind.

Unlike previous immigrants who had sought financial gain, the post–World War II arrivals were mostly political refugees fleeing potential or actual persecution because they did not sympathize with communism. Known as Displaced Persons (DPs), they went first to hastily built refugee camps in Germany and Austria. In 1948 Canada accepted over 1,400 of the estimated 4,000 predominantly Czech refugees, primarily from the camps near Nürnberg (Schwabach), Bad Orb (Wegscheid), and Regensburg (Dieburg). Overall, over 10,000 Czechoslovaks immigrated to Canada between 1948 and 1952, with the number of immigrants reaching an annual high of over 3,000 in 1951, after which the number of annual immigrants dropped to very low levels. The 1951 Canadian census recorded 63,959 Czechs and Slovaks in Canada.

The Czech refugees who arrived between 1948 and 1951 were predominantly white-collar and clerical workers, professionals in various fields, and students, all relatively well educated. They included doctors, legal secretaries, lawyers, artisans, and legislators. All displayed willingness to accept underemployment. Individuals with multiple university degrees became primary-school teachers or office clerks. Skilled workers and professionals found employment as farmers, and domestic servants, working at whatever was available in order to enter and stay in Canada.

Underemployment had a particularly negative impact on Czech women. Many of them were equal in educational levels and skills to the immigrant men, but at best they found employment as domestic servants or semi-skilled food-service workers. Their rapid flight from Czechoslovakia often left these immigrants without educational and professional certification or work documents, and even those who did have such documentation often had trouble gaining equivalent standing or certification in Canada. Most had limited or no knowledge of English. However, the high standards of education of many of these immigrants often allowed them to return to or exceed their former employment levels once they acquired language skills and work experience.

In order to help their countrymen, many Czech-owned businesses, particularly in Ontario, offered the new arrivals employment, sometimes with the assistance of the federal government through the Ministry of Labour and the now-defunct Ministry of Mines and Resources. Notable among the Czech firms involved were Bata Shoes, Hamilton Carhart, the Czechoslovak National Alliance, Opal Manufacturing, Staruba Industrial Corporation, and Hesky Flax Products.

The situation of Czech immigrants who came to Canada after the Prague Spring in 1968 was similar to that faced by the post-1948 group. An estimated 21,000 Czechs and Slovaks entered Canada as refugees between 1968 and 1969. Although they experienced employment and language problems, government-funded language classes and other programs for immigrants had become available, as well as a larger Czech community, to help smooth the process of transition. Many of the post-1968 refugees were younger than the post-1945 immigrants, had been exposed to Western culture, and had some knowledge of English and sometimes French, which allowed them to function in the larger urban centres where they predominantly settled.

In the 1991 Canadian census, 47,175 persons claimed that they were wholly (21,190) or partially (25,985) of Czech ethnicity. Nearly 80 percent of Czechs (single and multiple responses combined) live in three provinces: Ontario (18,025), British Columbia (10,430), and Alberta (8,975). Within those provinces, Czechs live primarily in urban areas, with metropolitan Toronto (7,655), Vancouver (5,400), Edmonton (2,420), and Montreal (2,350) having the largest concentrations.

In addition to persons who claimed Czech ethnicity (single and multiple responses), in 1991 there were another 54,030 persons who claimed that they were wholly (21,990) or partially (32,040) of “Czechoslovakian” ethnicity. A certain percentage of them were undoubtedly of Czech background. Therefore, a reasonable estimate of the number of persons of Czech ancestry in Canada would be between 50,000 and 60,000.

Since the 1960s, Vancouver and Toronto have replaced Montreal as the primary destination for newly arriving Czechs. After 1968–69 only a few hundred Czechs have arrived each year, often enfranchised business people and young people looking for economic opportunities. A small number of Czechs have chosen to return to their European homeland, in order to take advantage of business opportunities, to be reunited with their families, or simply because of homesickness.