AFTER SLAVERY ended in the Caribbean, it became common for people to search elsewhere for better jobs or good, arable land. Migrants from the Caribbean region who left their homelands to work abroad, travelled to Britain and the United States. Migration became essential for the survival of family life, a practice that continues to this day. Only a handful of Caribbean migrants came to Canada before the 1900s, and these settled in such places as Nova Scotia, Ontario, and British Columbia.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, a small group of men were brought from Barbados to perform the hard and exacting work in the coal mines and in the blast furnaces of Sydney, Nova Scotia. With little money and no access to credit, these men congregated in a defined area of Whitney Pier separated from the rest of Sydney by the steel plant and the railway tracks.

An entirely new era of immigration from the Caribbean was the result of Canada’s adoption of a nonracist immigration policy in the 1960s. Education and skills became the main conditions of admissibility, and “race” orethnic origin was largely irrelevant. This opened the country to Barbadians and other people of Caribbean origin, especially from the English-speaking former British colonies.

In the 1996 Canadian census, 21,415 people identified themselves as either exclusively (10,240) or partially (11,170) of Barbadian ethnic origin. Of this total, 14,080 lived in Ontario; 4,185 in Quebec; 1,180 in British Columbia; and 980 in Alberta. The large majority of the ethnocommunity chose to live in the cities of Toronto and Montreal.

Barbadians often gather with their compatriots for social occasions. A variety of island-centred organizations such as the Barbados ex-Police Association sprang up to cope with the settlement problems of the Barbadians with many of their socio-cultural needs. (A number of former Barbadian law enforcement officers had chosen to come and settle in Canada.)

Barbadians today are very much a part of the rich mosaic of Canadian life. Committed to making life safer for children, Barbadian Seraphim (“Joe”) Fortes at the turn of the century taught hundreds of Vancouver children to swim. He saved scores of people from drowning and was given a public funeral at his death in 1922. His epitaph read: “Little Children Loved Him.” The writer, Austin Clarke, born in Barbados in 1934, immigrated to Canada in 1955 and attended Trinity College at the University of Toronto. One of Canada’s most prolific writers, Clarke expressed in his works the fears, struggles, hopes, and dreams of the African-Canadian community in Toronto. Through his writings, Clarke has become a powerful spokesperson for many immigrants, especially racial minorities. Barbadian Canadians, in sports, are well known for their cricket expertise but they are, as well, making an impact contribution to Canada’s national pastime – hockey – in that Fred Brathwaite, Anson Carter, and Kevin Weekes all have Bajan roots.