WHEN IT WAS RECORDED IN 1664 that Hans Bernard had purchased land near Quebec City, this was the first recognition of the German presence in Canada. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, German-speaking immigrants who established homesteads in New France, included demobilized soldiers who had served in the French military forces at Port Royal, Louisbourg, and Quebec.

Between 1750 and 1753, some 2,400 German newcomers landed at Halifax. These “foreign Protestants" spearheaded a movement that resulted in the creation of the largest German-speaking community in British North America before the American Revolution. The settlers who were part of this initial immigration came from the region known as the Palatinate and they could recite a litany of disasters in the form of war and famine. In Halifax, they were supplied with provisions and accommodation and put to work on the city's fortifications. In 1753, some 1,400 of them demanded and were given land on the coast southwest of Halifax. There, in Lunenburg, they became expert fishermen and boat builders renowned for the Bluenose schooner. Their legacy, today, was honoured in 1995 when UNESCO declared Lunenburg a World Heritage Site.

Between 1760 and 1770, Germans from Europe and from Pennsylvania (a principal hub of German settlement in the Thirteen Colonies) came to Annapolis County (Nova Scotia) and to several other areas including Albert County, Coverdale Parish, Elgin Parish, and Hillsborough Township, which later became part of New Brunswick.

The American Revolution motivated many United Empire Loyalists of German origin to move to British North America. German-speaking people from New York and Georgia, Mennonites from Pennslyvania, militiamen and members of German regiments, Hessians, who had fought for the British Crown – these made their way to Upper Canada (Ontario) where they founded settlements along the St. Lawrence River, in the Ottawa valley, and in small packages along the north shore of Lake Erie, setting the stage for those who would soon come after them in still larger numbers.

Between 1792 and 1837, German settlers (a high percentage of them Mennonites) arrived from New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Popularly known as “Pennsylvania Dutch,” the group sought not only free land but also religious freedom and exemption from military service. They founded communities in the Niagara district in Welland, Lincoln, and Haldimand counties. They also contributed to the growth and industrial development of the Grand River settlement and substantially helped to make the twin cities of Berlin (Kitchener) and Waterloo into the centre of Ontario's German community. Extolling the community's German heritage is Oktoberfest, an annual celebration which today has become a national tourist attraction.

German-born William Berczy (1744-1813), artist, teacher, and land speculator and his “German Company" brought out settlers to Markham Township, north of York (Toronto), 1794. There, these immigrants cleared land, cultivated fields, and erected a church and school. They also cut a road (Toronto's Yonge Street) through a virgin forest from Lake Ontario to Lake Simcoe, thereby creating a model settlement. The visionary Berczy is acknowledged to be not only one of the leading portrait painters of his day but also the co-founder of Toronto and the architect of some of its earliest public buildings.

During the nineteenth century, Canada experienced a large influx of German Catholics and Amish people. Most who emigrated at this time were drawn to Ontario, particularly to Perth, Huron, Bruce, and Grey counties. Others, including a substantial number from Prussia, chose to settle along the Ottawa River in Renfrew County and in Quebec's Pontiac County. The prosperity of the newly established German Empire served to bring about a substantial drop in German immigration in the middle of the 1870s. Thus, it was the large number of German-speaking Mennonites from the Ukraine who helped Canada's Minister of the Interior, Clifford Sifton, to realize his dream of aggressively peopling the prairie provinces. They were among the first settlers to arrive in Manitoba after it became a province in 1870. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, thousands of settlers of German origin from eastern Europe including Austria-Hungary, the Russian Empire, and the Balkans settled in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.

A small number of German settlers made their way to British Columbia under the auspices of the Hudson’s Bay Company at the time of the Fraser River gold rush in 1858 and, later, of the Cariboo gold rush, to achieve success only later as grocers, farmers, craftsmen, shopkeepers, and brewers. The outbreak of the First World War prompted the Canadian government to restrict direct immigration from Germany. During this period, a small group of German-speaking Hutterites did, on religious grounds, immigrate to Canada from the Dakotas. They settled in Manitoba and Alberta where locals and neighbouring residents regarded their distinctive communal way of life as a threat to society.

During the interwar period, 97,000 German-speaking immigrants came to Canada from Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Germany. Farmers and agricultural workers settled in the vicinity of older German settlements on the Prairies. A smaller number of artisans, labourers, and shopkeepers who had had only limited success in the urban centres of eastern Canada and the prairie provinces moved on to British Columbia. During the late 1930s, a small group of Sudeten Germans were permitted to come to Canada from Czechoslovakia in order to escape Nazi persecution for their Social Democratic political affiliation.

Significant German immigration did not occur again until the movement of displaced persons after the Second World War. Between 1947 and 1950, immigration to Canada included many German-speaking refugees from Romania, Yugoslavia, and the former Austria-Hungary. When the ban on immigration of German nationals was lifted in 1950, the number of Germans entering the country increased dramatically. Between 1950 and 1961,250,000 arrived; they tended to settle in the urban areas of Canada, particularly in Ontario, Quebec, and western Canada.

The 1996 Canadian census recorded the presence of 2,757,140 persons of German descent living in Canada of whom 726,145 identified themselves as being exclusively of German origin while 2,030,990 claimed German as one of their origins. As we have seen, few Canadians of German origin came from the German nation-state. Most came to Canada from central or eastern Europe and from the United States. The largest number of German Canadians live in Ontario, followed by Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. In 1996, there were 95,545 Germans living in Vancouver; 78,760 in Edmonton; and 57,520 in Winnipeg. In Ontario, there were 116,955 living in Toronto; 47,675 in Kitchener; and 26,540 in St. Catharines-Niagara. A total of 60,765 of the 102,930 German Canadians in the province of Quebec lived in Montreal. And in the Maritimes, there were 101,050 in Nova Scotia and 30,450 in New m Brunswick.

Since the beginning of their settlement in Canada, Germans have contributed much to the growth and development of our country. Initially, as missionaries, soldiers, fishermen, boat builders, and farmers and, later, as artisans, engineers, manufacturers, entrepreneurs, professionals, and artists, German Canadians have made a dramatic impact on the economic sector. German immigrant work gangs were a necessary precondition to the growth and development of packing houses, machine shops, mills, railway yards, and construction sites in such western cities as Edmonton, Calgary, and Medicine Hat. Farmers began grape growing in the Niagara Peninsula, and craftsmen established themselves in wood processing and furniture production, tanning, brewing, and in the production of rubber goods and textiles.

An important pioneering industrialist was Alfred Freiherr von Hammerstein of Alberta, founder of the Alberta Herald, the Athabasca Oil and Asphalt Company, and early developer of the Alberta Tar Sands. In British Columbia, the daring investor and speculator, Gustav Constantin Alvo von Alvensleben, was believed to have pumped $7 million into the provincial economy in the pre-World War I period. As well, Montreal exporter Wilhelm Christian Munderloh is remembered for helping to initiate the first steamship connection between Canada and Europe in the 1860s.

In 1906, Adam Beck, E.W.B. Snider, and D.B. Detweiler of Ontario combined their business savvy and community effort to create a public utility, the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, later changed to Ontario Hydro. In the nineteenth century, music proprietors, Abraham and Samuel Nordheimer, followed by Theodore August Heintzman, became Canada's leading piano manufacturers.

No less important is the role that Canadians of German origin have played in the food industry (notably, J.M.Schneider Inc., of Kitchener, Ontario), in science, in music, and the political arena. Henry Sittler and Walter Hachborn, moreover, descendants of nineteenth century German immigrants, helped co-found one of Canada’s great success stories when they created Home Hardware Stores Limited, 1964, which today has over 1,000 stores across Canada.

Among the scientists of distinction on the international scene is Gerhard Herzberg. This physicist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1971, helped to establish the reputation of the National Research Council of Canada as a scientific “centre of excellence.”

Many other Germans who came to Canada as musicians with the early British regimental bands stayed on as music teachers. These men and others such as Joseph Hecker, who founded the Winnipeg Philharmonic Society in 1880, and Dr. Augustus Vogt, founder of the Mendelssohn Choir in Toronto, did much to develop Canadians’ appreciation of good music. The late Elmer Iseler, a native of Kitchener, made a great contribution to choral music in Canada as conductor of the Mendelssohn Choir and as the founder and director of the Festival Singers of Toronto. Postwar arrival Herman Geiger-Torel helped make opera a lively part of the Canadian arts scene as general director of the Canadian Opera Company.

We would do well to remember that Germans have been active in the public life of Canada from the earliest days of their settlement. At least two of the Fathers of Confederation – Charles Fisher of Fredericton and William Henry Steeves of Saint John – were of German origin. Over the years, many have also been elected as members of the federal and provincial governments. The Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker, of mixed German and Scottish descent, was Prime Minister of Canada from 1957 to 1963. As well, the Right Honourable Edward Schreyer was to serve as Canada’s Governor General from 1979 to 1984.