Topic: War

In September 1973, Chile’s military staged a coup d’état leading to the removal of Salvador Allende, the country’s first socialist to be democratically elected as president. The military regime’s subsequent campaign of repression forced some 200,000 Chileans to seek safe haven elsewhere. Heightened public awareness and lobbying pressured the Canadian federal government to loosen existing exclusionary immigration criteria. This permitted nearly 7,000 refugees from Chile to enter Canada.

After the Second World War, Canadian military authorities helped to permanently resettle a unique movement of ‘preferred’ immigration to Canada: nearly 44,000 war brides and their 22,000 children. They represent the single largest contiguous movement of migration to Canada, specifically through Pier 21. The war brides arrived in Canada at a time when the country’s doors remained largely closed to immigrants, due in part to the economic effects of the Great Depression .

In February 1998, widespread ethnic tensions led to an outbreak of armed conflict between the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Some 350,000 Kosovars fled to neighbouring countries in search of safe haven. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) appealed to the international community to provide these refugees with temporary protection until they could return home. In 1999, over 7,000 Kosovar refugees arrived in Canada.

During the Second World War, Soviet authorities imprisoned and forcibly displaced thousands of Polish nationals to labour camps in Siberia. Upon their release, many civilian deportees included unaccompanied children who later found temporary security in Africa’s refugee camps. Upon hearing of their plight, the Archbishop of Montreal initiated a plan to sponsor the permanent resettlement of Polish orphans in Canada. In 1949, an initial group of 123 Polish orphans arrived in Canada through Pier 21.

In the summer of 1955, the Canadian government took the “bold step” of admitting displaced Palestinian refugees from the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. The government approved the resettlement of 100 skilled workers and their families. Canadian officials believed that alleviating the refugee problem in the Middle East would help in furthering regional stability. Although the resettlement scheme was politically sensitive, it served as an important “experiment” for the future selection and resettlement of non-European refugees.

The War of 1812 saw approximately 2,000 escaped slaves arrive in Nova Scotia, where they experienced hardships and were marginalized from society. The Black Refugees struggled during an economic depression and difficult farming conditions, and endured inequitable treatment by, white Nova Scotians including the government. Colonial authorities attempted to resettle the Black Refugees, but most refused and established sustainable communities. Black Nova Scotian communities have continued their growth over time.

In 1939, MS St. Louis carried Jewish German passengers fleeing the Nazi State to Cuba, where most were de-nied entry. The Canadian government under Prime Minister William Lyon MacKenzie King chose not to admit the passengers in Canada, and they returned to Europe. The Canadian government’s exclusion of the pas-sengers of MS St. Louis was rationalized based on sharp immigration restrictions during the Great Depression, but was rooted in the persistent climate of anti-Semitic exclusion. The event has been marked as such a dire failure that it has spurred more compassionate approaches to humanitarian admission since.

In the 1920s, immigrants from Czechoslovakia came to Canada in search of industrial work and available land for agriculture. Czechoslovakia’s diplomats in Canada promoted loyalty to Prague’s policies in the hopes that Slovaks and Czechs would unite into a “Czechoslovak” national community, and defend their homeland in the event of a war. During the Second World War, Czechoslovak diplomats lobbied Canadian officials for political recognition to legitimize their efforts to re-establish a postwar Czechoslovak Republic.