PEOPLE OF BELGIAN ORIGIN have been involved in virtually every aspect of Canadian life but they have probably made their most important and obvious contribution in agriculture. Many of the Belgians who pioneered in the West or established farms in Ontario and Quebec were experienced farmers in their home country. Their expert knowledge of dairy farming, tobacco and sugar beet growing, fruit and market gardening, has been of considerable importance to Canada. Belgian farmers made a number of improvements in rural land use that included the reclamation of swamp lands, a better system of drainage, wider application of fertilizer, and more intensive cultivation.

At the turn of the century, Belgian capitalists and investors were attracted by the possibilities open to them in pulp and paper production, in railway construction, and in public works. For example, the Shawinigan based Belgo Canadian Paper Company, founded in 1902, enjoyed a long and successful run until its union with Consolidated Bathurst in 1975.

Belgo-Canadian land and development companies played a leading role in promoting settlement in the prairies and in developing the urban centres of Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Calgary. They were also closely associated with the development of the Okanagan Valley into a prime fruit producing area. When Belgians moved into urban centres, they branched out into a variety of occupations and enterprises. Some distinguished themselves in the diamond cutting business; others became insurance agents, salespeople, retailers, or owners of hardware stores, lumber yards, plumbing, building, and electrical supply outlets. Of particular note is Michael DeGroote’s trucking company in Elliot Lake, Ontario, which evolved into the Laidlaw group of enterprises.

Belgian Canadians have held many important positions in the field of education. In Quebec, Belgians excelled as school organizers and administrators. Auguste Joseph de Bray of Louvain founded the École des Hautes Études Commerciales in Montreal in 1908. Alfred Fyen, a former officer in the Belgian army, headed a new institution for the training of surveyors in Quebec City in 1907 and became a director of the prestigious École Polytechnique in Montreal in 1908. This human dynamo went on to found the École des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels in 1912 and subsequently the École d’architecture. And Charles De Konick, as Professor and Dean of the faculty of Philosophy from 1934 to 1965, played a long and important role as a liberal thinker and educational reformer in the life of Laval University.

Throughout the rest of Canada, Belgians contributed to the quality of existing separate school systems. The Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur came from Cincinnati to open schools in eastern and northern Ontario in the 1880s. In 1914, another Belgian order, the Ursuline Sisters from Tildonk, took charge of the village school in Bruxelles in southern Manitoba. Members of the community were active in the public school system, vigorously championing the right of French language instruction and the creation of bilingual schools. Louis Hacault played a prominent role in the Manitoba Schools Question of the 1890s as the representative of francophone Catholics.

As well, Belgian Canadians made important contributions in the world of arts and letters. Music in Canada owes a great deal to the priest, Father P.J. Verbist, who helped to found the Academie des Beaux Arts in Montreal in 1873. Composer Guillaume Joseph Mechtler, the organist of Notre Dame church in Montreal between 1792 and 1832, is believed to be the first Canadian to be paid for his compositions. Joseph Jean Goulet helped to found the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in 1894.

The visual arts are an aspect of Canadian cultural life to which Belgians have contributed much. Henri Leopold Masson is a painter, well known in international art circles, who opened the eyes of Canadians to the splendour of the Gatineau region near Ottawa. Among sculptors are Marcel Braitstein, Yosef Gertrudis Drenters, Auguste Hammerechts, and Pierre Hayvert whose work was featured at the Quebec Pavilion at Expo 67.

Belgians played a useful part in helping develop the Canadian Roman Catholic Church. Belgian bishops helped to solidify a Catholic presence in Canada’s Far North and on the Pacific coast. Religious orders from Belgium were important in many rural and isolated communities. For example, Trappist monks established a monastery in Oka, Lower Canada (Quebec), in 1862. Here, building a grist mill, saw mill, and cheese factory, they devoted their lives to the community.

According to the 1996 census, 123,595 people of Belgian origin live in Canada with 31,375 persons declaring a single ethnic origin and 92,225 indicating multiple ethnic origins. Belgian immigration consisted mainly of two groups: the Flemings who hailed from the northern half of the country including Antwerp and Limburg and spoke Flemish, a Dutch dialect; and the Walloons, who came primarily from the southern provinces including Hainaut, Namur, Liege, and Luxembourg and spoke French.

The first major movement of Belgian peoples took place between 1906 and 1914. The liberalization of Canadian immigration criteria brought Belgians to the prairie provinces. A small colony of Belgians and Dutch settlers was established at Davidson, Saskatchewan. Belgian settlements were also founded in Manitoba surrounding Winnipeg and St. Boniface and to the southwest including the towns of Bruxelles, St. Alphonse, and Swan Lake. Another wave of immigrants followed in the decade after World War I when thousands came at the behest of railway company recruiters, sugar beet manufacturers in Ontario and Alberta, and tobacco companies. Many of the immigrants made their way to the tobacco fields of southwestern Ontario including Kent, Essex, and Lambton counties, settling in the communities of Tillsonburg, Delhi, Simcoe, and Aylmer. After World War II, Belgians followed the general trend to urbanization, settling in the “golden horseshoe” of Ontario’s commercial and industrial development. Ontario is now home to 39,640 Belgians: 30,075 reside in Quebec, primarily in the urban setting of Montreal (18,405); 16,445 live in the province of Manitoba.

As the Belgians had a tendency to integrate rather easily into the English or French-Canadian way of life, they did not form many organizations of their own to maintain their identity in Canada, choosing rather to form local social clubs for mutual help and recreation as well as for the promotion of cultural relations between Belgium and Canada.