• Borders, Groups, Statistics: Researching Immigrant Arrival at Pier 21
    by Jan Raska, PhD, Historian (Updated October 23, 2020) Introduction How do I find a passenger list? Is there a ledger? What if my ancestor came from a country that no longer exists? While the Scotiabank Family History Centre at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 does not hold copies of …
  • Middlemore Shillings
    I just hung up the phone with Patricia Roberts-Pichette and find myself writing in the hopes that someone out there can help us with a question. Patricia wrote to me back in 2011 while researching her book on the Middlemore home children. During our correspondence I mentioned that a visitor had let …
  • New Year, Canadian Beer
    I received an email on January 2 nd from a very excited Margot Tarajos. She asked if we would be open for her visit 363 days later. Margot was two and a half on New Year’s Eve in 1955 when her family arrived at Pier 21 and was ready to start planning a 60 th anniversary trip back. She wrote, “ We …
  • Three Halloweens with the Unforgettable Kay Collicott
    Ralph and Kay (McAndrew) Collicott Joanne Collicott Mc Guigan was born to Canadian serviceman Ralph Benjamin Collicott and his war bride Kay on a Halloween night. The moon was full as bombs fell around the Hammersmith hospital demolishing half a block across the street. After the war her father …
  • Love Stories
    We often say that the War Brides followed their hearts to Canada, and so they did, but they were not the only ones. From the Italian proxy brides to those who met on ships as children only to find each other years later in Canada we have had the opportunity to hear a lot of love stories. I think of …
  • The Children’s Trunks
    Since the Museum opened in 1999 we have been collecting stories, pictures, interviews and friends. Re-imagining the Pier 21 exhibit has given us a chance to bring some of the chapters in the site’s history to life by sharing our friends' stories. I get to do this by building five trunks based on …
  • What Goes Around, Comes Around
    Peter Biesheuvel and his son Brian visited the Museum early on a Saturday morning. I told my husband that I would meet them at 9:30 a.m., show them around the exhibit and leave when they went into the 10 a.m. multimedia film screening, thus returning the car to him by 10:30 a.m. Well, Peter, Brian …
  • The Wheel of Conscience
    The Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, and Daniel Libeskind, architect, unveil the Wheel of Conscience on January 20, 2011. © SteveKaiserPhotography.ca Commemorating the St. Louis Voyage The Wheel of Conscience is a memorial for 900 Jewish refugees aboard the MS St. …
  • The Pier 21 Story
    Step into the past and experience what it was like to immigrate to Canada through Pier 21. From the ship you sailed on, to customs and immigration in Halifax, to the train you took to your final destination, discover the past housed in the walls of our National Historic Site. Stand in history . …
  • The Canadian Immigration Story
    Witness the challenge and triumph, the joy and injustice experienced by newcomers to Canada in the past and in the present. And learn about the vast contributions immigrants have made to Canada. Trace changing migration trends throughout our history on our massive multimedia Immigration Map. …