Byzantine Rite Christianity in Canada refers to all Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic groups in Canada who use the Byzantine Rite.
It is unclear when Eastern Christians first reached Canada. Russian Orthodox missionaries from Alaska may have entered Canada, but this has not been proven. It is clear that by the 1890s Eastern Christian immigrants began arriving in Western Canada from Eastern Europe.
In 1891, Ukrainian immigrants began to settle in Canada, and they were either Ukrainian Catholic (mostly from Galicia) or Eastern Orthodox (mostly from Bukovina a region under the Romanian Orthodox Church). Very few priests accompanied the settlers, however, "out of deference to the jurisdictional claims of the Russian Orthodox Church" over North America among the Orthodox, and because in 1894 the Catholic Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith issued a decree forbidding married priests in North America; consequently there are a shortage of Ukrainian priests in Canada. In 1896, a group of Russophile Ukrainians from Wostok, Northwest Territories wrote to the Russian Bishop of Alaska asking for a priest. In 1897, the first recorded Orthodox service was held in Canada at Wostok. Subsequently, Russian Orthodox priests were active in the Ukrainian community, and attracted many converts. The Greek Catholic church's few priests often clashed with Latin adminstrators such as Bishop Legal.
The coming of World War I dramatically affected the Eastern Church in Canada. The Russian Church lost the prestige of government support and in fact came under suspicion of being controlled by the Bolsheviks. Non-Russian ethnic groups set up their own churches in North America. And the Russian church split into the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in America, the Russian Orthodox Church in America, and some parishes who maintained links with Moscow.
In June 1918, a group of disgruntled Ukrainian Catholics met to create the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Brotherhood, which became the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church of Canada.