Introduction | Bison Economy | Kootisaw | Fort Calgary | Ranching | Agriculture
1895-1946 | 1947-1970 | 1971-1991 | Oil & Gas | Diversification | Ethnicity | Labour | Women
Calgary & Southern Alberta
|
|
In 1896, Clifford Sifton, the federal minister responsible for immigration (1896-1905) began an aggressive immigration campaign that not only increased Alberta's population but also altered its ethnic complexion. Because Anglo-Canadian Albertans equated prosperity with demographic growth, they initially applauded the new immigrant arrivals. As non-Anglo-Saxon newcomers began flooding into the region at the turn of the century, the initial enthusiasm was replaced with hostility borne of the same sort of prejudices directed towards indigenous Albertans. The majority of politicians, the press, and the Anglo-Saxon public measured the "quality" of the new immigrants through the nationalistic prism of God, king, empire, and the supposed superiority of the Anglo-Saxon "race". They slotted newcomers into an "ethnic pecking order" based on presumed ease of assimilation and the threat different immigrants allegedly posed to British institutions and values. At the top of the "pecking order" came settlers from Northern Europe, who were both racially suitable and easy to assimilate. Racial "suitability" did not entirely protect settlers of Anglo-Saxon stock from public disfavour. Mormon settlers aroused animosity when they began arriving in the Cardston area the late 1800s. Public concern had dissipated by 1908, however, as these experienced American farmers adjusted to local customs. Likewise, nationalistic fears and bitterness generated physical attacks on Calgary's German community in World War I. Anti-German sentiment gradually subsided after the war, however. Ironically, it was the fervently pacifist Doukhobor, Hutterite, and Mennonite immigrants, and Ukrainian and other non-German settlers from the old Austro-Hungarian Empire who suffered much of the "anti-German" discrimination connected with the war and labour unrest that followed the Armistice. Albertan supporters of a British Canada clearly saw Central, Eastern, and Southern European settlers as a serious threat to mainstream society. Both before and after World War I, politicians debated the advisability of allowing such ethnically "inferior" people into the region, and argued about how best to speed their assimilation. Little debate ensued about non-European immigrants. Nativists of all political persuasions relegated Asians and Blacks to the bottom rungs of the "pecking order". Politicians and the press argued for immigration laws to bar non-Europeans from the region altogether on the grounds that they could not – and should not – be assimilated. The more visible the perceived social and economic threat a group of newcomers posed, the more often they became targets for public discrimination. Japanese residents, small in number, economically useful, and hidden in scattered farm settlements, received relatively tolerant treatment. Black residents, however, suffered much informal discrimination, as did Alberta's resident Chinese. In small southern Alberta towns, Euro-Canadians excluded Chinese residents from community life. In Calgary, this undercurrent of animosity erupted in 1892 into a violent attack on residents of the town's highly visible Chinatown. |
In the 1920s, politicians imbued with the spirit of boosterism again actively encouraged people from Central and Eastern Europe to settle in Alberta. The influx generated nativist reaction not just from "patriotic" groups like The National Association of Canada and the Ku Klux Klan, but also from mainstream journalists, Protestant fundamentalists, and United Farmers of Alberta (UFA), who supported a eugenics movement to rid Alberta of "mental defectives" allegedly living in Eastern European communities. When economic prosperity abruptly vanished in 1929, public objections to immigration multiplied, and resident Eastern Europeans, some of whom were involved in suspect left wing political movements, came under increasingly adverse scrutiny.
The history of southern Alberta's small Jewish community demonstrates that nativism and overt expressions of violence have not always been synonymous in Alberta. The Social Credit party came to power in Alberta in 1935 advocating a political program with clearly anti-Semitic overtones. While some historians credit William Aberhart with toning down his party's anti-Semitic vitriol, it is noteworthy that (like the federal government and other provincial leaders), he did little either before or during World War II to help Jewish victims of Nazi oppression.
Since the Second World War, the face of nativism in southern Alberta has altered dramatically. Over the past three decades, Alberta has spawned several incidents involving neo-Nazis and other anti-Semitic propagandists who deny that the Holocaust occurred. The most notorious of these vocal nativists was the Eckville teacher James Keegstra. Even today, nativism in its more subtle guises endures as a dark reminder that ethnic prejudice in southern Alberta is not an arcane relic of the past. Nevertheless, popular attitudes and government legislation have eradicated the more blatant forms of prejudice that were once hallmarks of Alberta's ethnic history. It is no longer legally or socially acceptable to discriminate against people in the job market on the basis of ethnicity.
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
Images Courtesy of
the Canadian
Tourism Commission
