Who Was Welcome? Immigration, Racism and Resilience, 1914–1929

Reading the numbers first (B1.1)

Before deciding what the government did, look at what happened. The chart shows immigrant arrivals each year, from Statistics Canada's historical records.

What shaped the trend?

• War (1914–1918): dangerous seas, soldiers needed at home in Europe, and Canada's restrictions on people from enemy countries.
• Postwar recession (1920–1922): fewer jobs meant fewer newcomers were wanted.
• New laws (1919): Parliament amended the Immigration Act to let the government bar immigrants by nationality or because of their "customs" or "modes of life". People from former enemy countries were barred for several years, and Doukhobors, Mennonites and Hutterites, whose faiths forbade military service, were barred for a time.
• Boom (mid-1920s): businesses, railways and farmers wanted workers. In 1925, the Railways Agreement let the CPR and CNR recruit farm workers from central and eastern Europe. Britain and Canada also helped British families come under the 1922 Empire Settlement plan. About 20 000 Mennonites from the Soviet Union, fleeing persecution and famine, settled in Canada in the 1920s.
• 1929–1931: the Depression cut immigration sharply (next unit).

The Chinese Immigration Act, 1923

Since 1885, Chinese immigrants had paid a head tax to enter Canada, rising to $500 in 1903 (you met this in Grade 8). In 1923, Parliament went further. The Chinese Immigration Act banned almost all Chinese immigration; only a few groups, such as diplomats, some merchants and students, were exempt. Every Chinese person already in Canada had to register with the government. The Act took effect on 1 July 1923, Dominion Day, which many Chinese Canadians called Humiliation Day and refused to celebrate.

Consequences: fewer than 50 Chinese immigrants were admitted between 1923 and 1947. Families were separated for decades: men in Canada could not bring wives and children. Chinese Canadian communities, in Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto and Montreal, became mostly communities of ageing men. Chinese Canadians organized through benevolent associations to support one another and protest. The Act was repealed in 1947, and in 2006 the Government of Canada formally apologized for the head tax and exclusion.

Other ethnocultural groups (B2.6)

• Japanese Canadians: an agreement with Japan in 1908 limited Japanese immigration to 400 people a year; in 1928 it was cut to 150. In B.C., Japanese Canadians could not vote and were barred from some jobs and professions.
• South Asian Canadians: the continuous journey rule (1908) still blocked almost all immigration from India; from 1919, wives and children of men already in Canada were allowed to join them.
• Jewish Canadians: many Jewish immigrants came from eastern Europe and built communities in Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg, with synagogues, schools, newspapers and mutual-aid societies. They faced antisemitism: some universities, such as McGill, made admission harder for Jewish students in the 1920s; "restrictive covenants" in property deeds and "Gentiles only" signs at some resorts excluded them. In 1929, Adrien Arcand began publishing antisemitic newspapers in Montreal; in the 1930s he would lead a Canadian fascist movement (next unit). Groups such as the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society helped newcomers settle.
• Eastern Europeans: Ukrainian, Polish and other newcomers, many of them recently labelled "enemy aliens", faced suspicion and were often stereotyped as radicals during the Red Scare. They built churches, community halls, reading clubs, newspapers and cooperatives.

Black Canadians: barriers and contributions (2026 focus)

Black communities had lived in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Ontario for generations, and newer communities had formed on the Prairies and in cities. In the 1920s, newcomers from the Caribbean came to cities such as Montreal and Toronto and to Sydney, Nova Scotia.

Barriers: Black Canadians faced segregation in schools (especially in Nova Scotia and parts of Ontario), theatres, restaurants, hotels and some hospitals, and job discrimination: many Black men could find railway work only as sleeping car porters. Immigration officials discouraged Black immigrants.

Organizing and contributions:

• The Order of Sleeping Car Porters, founded in Winnipeg in 1917 by John A. Robinson and others, was the first Black railway union in North America; within two years it won contracts with two railways.
• The Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) opened its first Canadian divisions in Montreal and Toronto in 1919; at its peak there were 32 divisions across Canada. Its Liberty Halls were centres of political, social and cultural life, and its Black Cross Nurses provided care in their communities.
• Black churches, such as those of the African United Baptist Association in Nova Scotia, were centres of education, leadership and mutual support.
• The No. 2 Construction Battalion's chaplain, Rev. William A. White of Nova Scotia, was one of very few Black commissioned officers in the British Empire's forces in the war.
• Newspapers such as The Dawn of Tomorrow (London, Ontario, from 1923) gave Black Canadians a voice.

Organized hatred: the Ku Klux Klan and the Orange Order (B2.3)

• The Ku Klux Klan, a white-supremacist hate group from the United States, set up branches across Canada in the 1920s. It was strongest in Saskatchewan, where by the late 1920s it claimed 40 000 members. It targeted Catholics (including French Canadians), Jewish people, Black people and eastern European immigrants. Its influence helped defeat Saskatchewan's Liberal government in 1929. The Klan is an example of an extreme ideology in Canada.
• The Orange Order, a Protestant fraternal organization with roots in Ireland, was very influential in Ontario. Many members held strong anti-Catholic views and opposed French-language Catholic schools, supporting measures like Regulation 17. Unlike the Klan, it was a mainstream organization with many members in government; its influence shows how religious prejudice shaped Canadian politics.

Who stood against hate? Catholic and Jewish organizations, Black churches and the UNIA, labour unions, some newspapers, and many individual Canadians spoke out against the Klan and discrimination.