Haven for Immigrants

For most of the twelve years since World War II, Canada has been one of the world's prize goals for home-seeking immigrants from Europe. Needing far more producers and consumers than its natural increase could provide--and needing also to make up for the 35,000 Canadians who head for the U.S. each year--Canada in the last twelve years has welcomed 1,669,340 foreign-born settlers, most of them from Britain, northern Europe and Italy. Of Canada's 17 million people today, almost 3,000,000 were born in a foreign land; British-descended Canadians, once a dominant majority, now constitute only 48% of their nation's population.

Nearly one-fourth of the postwar immigrants have settled in Toronto, and they have made their mark there. In a city long accustomed to dining out on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, new restaurants with such names as Czarda, Moulin Rouge and House of Fujimatsu add variety to the bill of fare. Some 20 foreign-language newspapers cater to the newcomers, and the sports pages in the city's dailies report the scores of soccer games between teams named the Polish White Eagles or the Ulster Uniteds.

The postwar immigrants contributed notably to Canada's prosperity and to its culture. Fifteen years younger than the national average and with a high proportion of workers, they swarmed into mines, farms, factories. Forty percent of the scientists and engineers added to Canada's working force since 1950 were foreign-born; last year's newcomers included 1,838 teachers, 635 physicians, 54,376 skilled workers. Immigrants founded one of the West Coast's major lumber companies; another immigrant developed the nation's biggest uranium mine. Foreign-born artists organized new ballet companies in Toronto and Winnipeg, wrote some of Canada's best postwar books.

Plagued this year by a business recession and climbing unemployment, the government plans to cut back 1958 immigration to something like half of last year's 282,164. But the gates will doubtless swing wider just as soon as a reviving economy can absorb new manpower.

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