Most geographically concentrated ethnic groups

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Docere

I think this is basically correct. Hindus dominate the Indian-American population.

There are some exceptions of course, like the Sikhs in the interior of California and Indo-Guyanese in NYC.

So I'm guessing Canada's early Sikh community (though really small, say in the thousands in the early 1900s) persisted long enough and got "critical mass" to allow family reunification (or perhaps also influenced the acceptance of some of the refugees fleeing communal violence in the Punjab in the 80s) by the time of liberalization of immigration policy, that did not happen for the US (where the California interior Sikhs have little connection to the later Silicon Valley wave of immigrants).

The points system favouring skill vs. family reunification would have already been in place in the 70s, 80s and 90s yet Sikhs continued to immigrate disproportionately relative to non-Sikhs from India in Canada.

I still wonder how Mississauga, Brampton or the western GTA still came to be heavily Sikh/Punjabi even if there's not a connection to the BC Sikh community (the time gap is too long, since the GTA only got south Asians in large numbers by the 70s). After all, if the GTA's Sikh community is from the 1970s, 80s and 90s, one would suspect that family reunification would be less important as they are in say BC, as opposed to skill selection (but the skills selected for, such as English speaking, having degrees etc. would not be expected to favour Sikh Indians over non-Sikh Indians, and immigrants moving to Toronto might be more skills-selected seeing how it's the largest city, or well was becoming the largest city, then). And after all, in the US, the California Sikh presence never led to say, a Sikh presence further east (in say, Chicago or NYC), so is there any reason to suspect the BC Sikh presence was responsible for influencing the western GTA in having a high Sikh immigrant population?

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Docere

Has anybody here actually ever filled out the Long Form Census? There is no Canadian "box" to "check off."

Probably must have gone along with that phrasing while typing that without thinking too much, since Acajack in a few posts prior to mine used the phrasing "check off Canadian" (and somehow for the next few sequences of posts in the thread Acajack and I kept on saying "check off"), but I realize it's not a box to check off, but an option suggested at some point for a write-in response as an example.

[Docere]

The early 20th century Sikh population in BC was pretty tiny.

British Columbia, 1941:

Japanese 22,096
Chinese 18,619
East Indian 1,757

https://books.google.ca/books?id=60g...orever&f=false

[Docere]

Some of the instructions on how to fill out the ethnic origin question.

This question refers to the ethnic or cultural origin or origins of a person's ancestors. An ancestor is someone from whom a person is descended and is usually more distant than a grandparent. Other than Aboriginal persons, most people can trace their origins to their ancestors who first came to this continent. Ancestry should not be confused with citizenship or nationality.

For all persons, report the specific ethnic or cultural origin(s) of their ancestors, not the language they spoke. For example, report 'Haitian' rather than 'French', or 'Austrian' rather than 'German'.

But..."Austrians" weren't an ethnic group in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they were considered "Germans." But now that Austria is more or less an ethnic homogeneous state, I can see descendants of immigrants from present-day Austria identifying as "Austrian" particularly if they're post-war immigrants.

But Germans in Eastern Europe were a distinct cultural minority and they wouldn't identify with as "Russian" or "Romanian" obviously. In Canada this a sizable group. Most German Canadians in the Prairies are descendants from German-Russians, very few actually came from Germany proper.

[Docere]

My grandparents' parents were born in what today is Poland and Romania, but they weren't native speakers of Polish or Rumanian and weren't ethnic Poles or Romanians and it would weird to write that on the Census.

[Capsicum]

Where does one draw the line, especially for "new world" ethnic groups? Haitian Canadians would probably not put African as ancestry, but identify as Haitian. Mexican Canadians even if of Spanish heritage wouldn't likely put Spanish, since that relates to Spain itself. Argentine Canadians of Italian descent might put Argentine ancestry, not Italian ancestry. Indo-Trinidadians might put Trinidadian not East Indian. But many of these new world identities are the same age as or not older than identities rooted in colonial Canada (1600s, 1700s, 1800s), like Quebecois, Maritimers and Newfoundlanders.

[Capsicum]

"Other than Aboriginal persons, most people can trace their origins to their ancestors who first came to this continent."

So Canadians of "American" or Mexican ancestry, if not of indigenous ancestry, should put the place in the old world they came from, if known at all, prior to settling the new world?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

I'd forgotten that the assumption that Hindu = immigrant from India isn't as true in Canada (probably compared to the US and maybe other western countries?) because of the heavy Sri Lankan Tamil immigration and other Indian diaspora. I think apart from Punjabi Sikhs, a surprisingly high share of the Indian diaspora in Canada is not directly from India -- but Indo-Caribbean, Indo-Tanzanian (like Naheed Nenshi's roots) etc., probably much more than the US.
.

I met a number of them from Trinidad and Uganda when I lived in Ontario. You also occasionally meet some from places like Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

Probably must have gone along with that phrasing while typing that without thinking too much, since Acajack in a few posts prior to mine used the phrasing "check off Canadian" (and somehow for the next few sequences of posts in the thread Acajack and I kept on saying "check off"), but I realize it's not a box to check off, but an option suggested at some point for a write-in response as an example.

You guys are right. I've seen and done the long form census and you don't check off your origin, you write it in. Still, in the examples given "Canadian" is the first one given. Whereas a couple of censuses ago it was not even there.

The reference to someone more distant than your grandparents also certainly would lead many francophone Canadians to check off "Canadien", as probably 99% of us have no knowledge of relatives who were born in France beyond genealogical documents that are contemporaries of the original Shakespearean manuscripts (or perhaps Molière would be more appropriate...)

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Acajack

You guys are right. I've seen and done the long form census and you don't check off your origin, you write it in. Still, in the examples given "Canadian" is the first one given. Whereas a couple of censuses ago it was not even there.

Yeah, I really wish they would not be encouraging it.

[Docere]

The 2016 Census has a table where you can match VM group with ethnic origin. Here's some from Black Canadians for selected cities. The much greater concentration of Caribbean origin in Toronto/Montreal compared to African immigrants is evident.

Note that I substracted "Other African origins" from African because these are mostly unspecified "Black" and "African" responses.

Toronto

Caribbean 252,335 57.1%
African 112,360 25.4%

Montreal

Caribbean 157,520 58.1%
African 74,765 27.6%

Ottawa

African 41,450 53.1%
Caribbean 24,615 31.6%

Edmonton

African 37,145 64.2%
Caribbean 9,915 17.4%

Calgary

African 34,210 63.1%
Caribbean 9,970 18.4%

Vancouver

African 12,575 42.2%
Caribbean 8,210 27.5%

Winnipeg

African 16,520 60.3%
Caribbean 5,685 20.8%

Halifax

African 2,115 14%
Caribbean 2,020 13.4%

Windsor

African 3,855 31.3%
Caribbean 2,465 20%

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Docere

The 2016 Census has a table where you can match VM group with ethnic origin. Here's some from Black Canadians for selected cities. The much greater concentration of Caribbean origin in Toronto/Montreal compared to African immigrants is evident.

Note that I substracted "Other African origins" from African because these are mostly unspecified "Black" and "African" responses.

What are the non-African, non-Caribbean responses likely to be?

In the case of Windsor and Halifax where they are either majority or close to majority, probably "old stock African-Canadian/African-Canadian"? Do they usually put down generic or unspecified "Black" or "African"? Are they also among the people who would put down "Canadian" ancestry?

Would this be like many "old stock" African Americans who on the US Census put down their race, but don't write in ancestries when surveyed because they don't know?

The other option would be other African diasporas (eg. non-Caribbean Afro-South Americans, Africans in say the Indian ocean islands like Mauritius etc.) but those numbers would probably be really small.

[isaidso]

I doubt very many Black people in Halifax put down African or Caribbean. They'd have little or no connection to either place.

[Docere]

Black VM, % Canadian origin

Halifax 51.6%
Windsor 27.5%
Vancouver 12.8%
Toronto 10.7%
Ottawa 8.4%
Edmonton 8.3%
Calgary 7.8%
Montreal 7.1%
Winnipeg 6.9%

* Often these are "African Canadian" or "Black Canadian" responses (I subtracted the "Other African origins" from the African totals).

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Docere

Black VM, % Canadian origin

Halifax 51.6%
Windsor 27.5%
Vancouver 12.8%
Toronto 10.7%
Ottawa 8.4%
Edmonton 8.3%
Calgary 7.8%
Montreal 7.1%
Winnipeg 6.9%

* Often these are "African Canadian" or "Black Canadian" responses (I subtracted the "Other African origins" from the African totals).

Interesting that Vancouver is third on the list and higher than Toronto. Migrants to BC from "back east", or likely descendants of the homegrown early black community that stayed?

If there are descendants of African Americans who went up into Canada from the US west coast (I knew that there'd been a really small, but resident African American-descended population in Vancouver including Jimi Hendrix's family), I'm wondering how much they'd claim "Canadian ancestry", which I'd guess would be more recent, versus those whose African-descent ancestors came up to Canada in the east.

[Docere]

Vancouver has a small Black population, even by Western Canadian standards. Edmonton has about twice as many Blacks as Vancouver.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Docere

Vancouver has a small Black population, even by Western Canadian standards. Edmonton has about twice as many Blacks as Vancouver.

Having a small population (and relatively little recent African/Caribbean immigration) meaning that a larger proportion is from past waves of migration, or those who were there earlier?

[Docere]

Probably. That makes sense.