Most people in North America are either immigrants themselves or
have ancestors who immigrated at a time when these passages were documented. In
Canadian genealogical circles a common question is, “When did your family come
to Canada?” I am never quite sure what to answer. Should I talk about when my
family and I moved to Canada or perhaps when my maternal grandfather came to
Canada in the 1910s? But that leaves out the Scots who came in the previous
century and then there is that line that immigrated to the United States at a
time before they were even united and later came north. What story can I tell
to answer the question of when my family came to Canada?
Starting with the latest arrivals, my immediate family’s
immigration story starts in England or perhaps in Canada. (We never could make
up our minds which side of the Atlantic to live on.) As conditions were hard following
WW2, my maternal grandparents decided leave England and return to Canada. Their
Canadian-born daughter went with them. By that time, she had met the man she
was to marry and urged him to put in for a transfer with his work so he could
follow her.
Canada is a large country. I am not sure where the family went but
there is evidence that the daughter, my mother-to-be, worked in Victoria, BC. The
move didn’t go well. Post war laws restricted the amount of money that could be
removed from Britain. My grandparents couldn’t adequately finance their lives wherever
they had landed. They returned to England and so did their daughter.
A few years later, the daughter married her young man and they set
up house together. The man, my father-to-be, still worked for the same airline
company. Steady employment was a good thing to have as the young couple started
a family, first having a son and then a daughter. The grandparents were happy
having their daughter and her family close by. Then the work transfer, the one
that had been requested years before, came through. Well, he couldn’t turn it
down. His wife, my mum, said “anywhere but Montreal.” So, of course, that was
where we were sent.
Our journey was not the slow sea voyage common to immigration in
the past nor was it a fast jet plane common to much current immigration, it was
a ten-hour trip to New York and then another leg to Montreal. My mother made
the journey with two toddlers in tow. My father must have gone on to Montreal
ahead of her. I don’t envy her that journey, prop planes often hit turbulence
as they couldn’t climb as high as modern jets. Still, at least the journey was
over in a short time, unlike immigrant journeys in the past.
A Northstar airliner similar to the one we immigrated on*
Our official greeting to Canada was different as well. There was no large immigration hall, such as Pier 21, for us to wait in. In fact, the airport wasn’t set up to deal with immigrants. They had to figure out how to process our family group. The airport saw their fair share of immigrants in the years after our arrival.
According to information at The Museum of Immigration at Pier 21
in Halifax, at the time we arrived as immigrants in Montreal the usual means of
immigrant transport was by ship. Ships were the predominant mode of transport
from Europe until 1960 when airline journeys became more frequent. Gradually
this mode of immigration overtook sea voyages so that Pier 21, the main port of
entry for immigrants to Canada, closed in 1971.
Canadian Immigration Museum at Pier 21
Sources:
* By
RuthAS - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6019351
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