Creating Societies: Immigrant Lives in Canada

R. Douglas Francis is a professor of history at the University of
Calgary and the co-author of Destinies: Canadian History Since
Confederation.

The basic argument of this book is that immigrant and ethnic Canadians
have tended to be absent from our national histories, except where they
have contributed to the building of national edifices (such as the
Canadian Pacific Railway) or to the populating of the country (the
prairies, for example). Hoerder wants to correct that imbalance by
putting immigrants and ethnic Canadians front and centre. In presenting
the immigrant voice, he has relied on primary sources such as diaries,
letters home, and memoirs.

A collective and cohesive society forms, Hoerder argues, essentially
through “cooperation and mutual support across ethnic boundaries and
colour lines.” People need to rely on others simply to survive. They
tend to look to friends and acquaintances within their own ethnic
community before reaching out to other ethnic communities in the
vicinity. Initially, the incentive is economic: the need for a job.
Indeed, it was economics that dictated who came to the New World,
Hoerder argues. Single men usually came first, because they were most
needed for work. Women followed in smaller numbers, followed by children
and only occasionally elderly parents. Ultimately, Canadianization took
place, and an “interactive culture” (as opposed to a
“multicultural mosaic”) emerged.

Despite these valuable insights, the book as a whole is disappointing.
For one thing, it is too ambitious in scope. Hoerder wants to recount
the individual experiences of a very wide variety of immigrants who
settled in Canada, from the pre-Confederation era through to large-scale
immigration at the turn of the century and the post–World War I
migration, ending his story roughly in the 1930s. The result is sweeping
generalizations and reliance on a few personal accounts that are assumed
to be representative. Such an approach belies the author’s original
intention to let individual voices speak and to value the diversity and
differences of the immigrant experiences.

As well, the individual experiences ultimately do not add up to a
whole, nor does the book succeed in the end in explaining or enriching
our understanding of Canadian multicultural society. It is not even
clear whether Hoerder believes that Canada is a multicultural society.
He distinguishes between a mosaic and a multicultural society, although
he does not make clear the difference between the two concepts. Even
less clear is his distinction between a mosaic or multicultural society
and a “Canadian” society that somehow ultimately transcends the
differences or embraces them somehow. Hoerder is elusive when it comes
to dealing with these fundamentally “Canadian” issues.