New Directions in Immigration and Ethnic History

Until recently, the language and character of available sources often converged with the specific interests of investigators wanting to encourage a focus on the history of particular ethnic or immigrant groups in Canada. By their very nature, such studies, while highly valuable contributions to a larger mosaic, cannot capture the complex patterns of immigrant integration. They exclude both broader comparative analyses of different immigrant and ethnic groups, and the exploration of inter-ethnic collaboration. Each of the three volumes considered here, however, adopts and demonstrates the value of such alternative approaches to the study of immigration and ethnicity. All three, moreover, cover post-Second World War immigration, an era still not extensively studied by scholars in this field.

Frances Swyripa's beautifully written and elegantly structured Storied Landscapes (2010) examines the history of immigrant settlement on the Prairie West between 1870 and 1920 from the vantage point of roughly a dozen groups of European origin: Germans, Icelanders, Jews, Mennonites, Poles, and Ukrainians among them. Her multi-layered analysis begins by focussing on the earliest settlers. Swyripa reminds us that because these groups formed part of the original mass settlement of the West, their imprint on the Prairies forms an integral part of nation building in Canada. She explains how the immigrants decided where to settle, and how they made sense of the land and imposed order and meaning upon it by naming their settlements after their villages of origin or notable figures from their national histories and mythologies, and by building churches, shrines, and crosses upon it, and consecrating ground for burying their dead. Their strong sense of belonging to the Prairie West was the result of both the importance of landownership to these agricultural people and their shared pioneering experience.

Swyripa examines how the imagined communities of different ethnic groups were influenced by forces from beyond the pioneer settlements and the Canadian West, and how the resulting web of identities could shape the trajectories of ethno-religious groups. Later waves of immigrants revitalized pioneering communities. Prairie settlers were also influenced by their relationship to members of their group elsewhere in Canada and the United States. Strong ethnic identities led segments of some groups to move from the Prairies to other parts of Canada, the Americas and even their homelands. In the case of the Doukhobours, the exodus from Saskatchewan to the interior of BC was caused by tensions with the Canadian state over the oath of allegience. Tensions with the state over their children's education led Orthodox Mennonites to leave the Canadian Prairies for Latin America. Although the book's main focus is on ethno-religious identities, Swyripa also examines how, during the interwar years, disillusionment with Canada combined with adherence to communist ideology to lead Red Finns and Ukrainians to re-establish themselves in the Soviet Union, in Karelia, and Soviet Ukraine respectively.

Founding stories about the original settlers asserted the deep roots of different ethnic groups in Canada. Such stories—recorded by foreign-language press, publications marking important anniversaries in the group's history, and monuments—noted the progress and rewards that crowned the pioneers' hard work, and omitted failures, departures, and strife. The stories served to assert the permanence of settler communities and the rights of ethno-religious groups within locality, region, and nation. At the same time...