Swedish Canadian

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Swedish Canadian refers to a naturalized Canadian citizen hailing from Sweden or professing Swedish descent. The 'Swedish-Canadian' community in Canada is 300,000 strong.[1] The vast majority of them reside west of Lake Superior, primarily in Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. Toronto is the most popular settlement spot for newcomers. Despite having an influential presence and distinctive cultural bond, only 20,000 Canadian persons of Swedish descent have command over their mother tongue. More than 175 place names in Canada are of Swedish origin. The Swedes are responsible for the introduction of skiing into Canada.

A few Swedes trickled into Canada even before it became a country in 1867, but the first real wave of immigration began in the late 1890s and ended with the onset of the First World War in 1914. Included in this group were a significant number of farmers who had settled first in the United States.

The first Swede, Jacob Fahlstrom, arrived in Canada in 1809, as an employee of the Hudson's Bay Company. He was succeeded in 1812 by yet another gentleman from Sweden, who was accompanied by two other men from Norway and Ireland to populate the Selkirk Settlement in lower Manitoba. A much more substantive wave of Swedish settlers immigrated to Canada from the United States between 1868 and 1914, as land for farming became more and more scarce in America. Crop failures in their home country between 1866 and 1868 encouraged a similar exodus from Europe.

The second and largest wave, which came during the 1920s, endured both the depression of the 1930s and the Second World War 1939-45. The third wave, although not as numerous, has been steady since the 1950s. Many of the more recent newcomers are connected with Swedish companies located in Canada, and do not intend to remain there.

Most Swedes settled in western Canada, from northern Ontario to British Columbia. There were only a handful of strictly Swedish communities, the earliest being Scandinavia, Manitoba in 1885 and Stockholm, Saskatchewan in 1886. The Census of Canada shows clearly that Swedish immigrants could be found scattered throughout every province and territory, with pockets in rural areas and in some towns and cities.

Winnipeg acted as the Swedish capital of Canada until the 1940s when Vancouver took over this title. A significant number of Swedes live in Calgary and Edmonton and their environs, but the Toronto area is home to the largest concentration of newcomers.

Adapting to the ways of a new country is never easy, but most Swedes considered it a primary goal in order to achieve success. Early immigrants made every effort to master the English language, at the same time supporting a fairly large number of Swedish-language newspapers, including two weeklies. Recent immigrants who have learned English in Swedish schools do not have this problem.

Swedes are accustomed to four distinct seasons, but not to the severity of Canadian winters. Although Sweden is located quite far north (in the Western Hemisphere it would lie in the middle of Hudson Bay), the Gulf Stream modifies its climate dramatically. The reason so many Swedes settled on the prairies was not because the landscape was similar, but because land was available. The Canadian Shield, with its rocks, trees and lakes, is the landscape most reminiscent of Sweden.

Noteworthy Canadian celebrities and personalities of Swedish origin include Pamela Wallin, Judge Tom Berger who headed the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline inquiry, architect Arthur Erickson who designed Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto and the Canadian Embassy in Washington, Harry Strom who was the former premier of Alberta (1968-1971), naturalist Louise de Kiriline Lawrence who was the most prolific contributor to the Audubon, and Ralph Gustafson who won the Governor General's Award for poetry in 1974.