Ontario

Germans established their long-standing presence in Ontario during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. They were among the province’s early pioneers, with a particularly high concentration in Water­loo County and on the Niagara peninsula.

The United Empire Loyalists The arrival of the United Empire Loyalists, who came to Canada following the Ameri­can War of Independence (1775—1783), marked the beginning of Ontario’s modern settlement history. More than 45,000 Loy­alists, among them many Germans, who had supported the British cause during the war, accepted the British government’s in­vitation to leave their homelands in the newly independent United States and to resettle in British North America. Loyalists received free land, provisioning, and finan­cial compensation for the lands they had lost in the United States from the British government.

About 20,000 Loyalists settled on the Niagara peninsula in what is present-day Ontario. While no precise data is available as to the exact number of Germans among the Loyalists, estimates range from between 10 and 30 percent (Bassler 1991, 129).

Loyalists established settlements along the Niagara River, at the Bay of Quinte, and, most of all, east of Kingston. In the latter region German Loyalists were partic­ularly concentrated in the townships of Williamsburg, Matilda, Osnabruck, and Cornwall. They founded ethnic neighbor­hoods in communities such as Ernestown, Fredericksburgh, Adolphustown, and Marysburgh.

Hessians

The second German group to establish permanent residency in Ontario were mer­cenary troops, mostly from Hesse, who re­mained in Canada after the War of Inde­pendence. They are commonly referred to as the Hessians. Several hundred of those 2,400 soldiers who chose Canada as their new home settled in Ontario. Mostly single soldiers, they did not establish a common settlement pattern. Attracted by various ethnic and nonethnic communities, most of them intermarried with the local, mostly anglophone population. As a result, the Hessians became quickly assimilated.

Pennsylvania Germans

The third defined group to come to On­tario was the so-called Pennsylvania Ger­mans, mostly Mennonites from Pennsylva­nia, who settled in Upper Canada from 1786 onward. They were descendants of those anabaptists who had responded to William Penn’s call in 1683 to establish a faith-based community in the New World. They left Pennsylvania for Ontario for a number of reasons. First, population pres­sure in Pennsylvania made it increasingly difficult for members of the younger gen­erations to acquire land for farming. Sec­ond, Mennonites felt their lifestyle threat­ened by American nationalism as expressed during the American War of Indepen­dence. Third, they felt more loyalty to the British Crown, which had previously guar­anteed them religious freedom, cultural au­tonomy, and exemption from military ser­vice, than to the newly founded United States.

Even though many Mennonites had held strong sympathies for the British cause during the American War of Inde­pendence, they—as opposed to the United Empire Loyalists—did not receive free land from the British authorities. The main at­traction for Mennonite immigration to Upper Canada was the British colonial government’s renewed promise of those freedoms they had previously enjoyed under British rule, in combination with the availability of fertile land at affordable prices. These motivating factors made the Mennonites political and economic mi­grants at the very same time.

Beginning in 1786, the first Menno- nite settlements were established just north of the U.S.-Canadian border. In 1800 the first settlers from Franklin County, Penn­sylvania, arrived in what would later be­come Canada’s largest German-speaking settlement, Waterloo County. By 1802, when some twenty-five families were al­ready living in Waterloo, immigrants learned that they held insecure land titles, because preexisting mortgages had not been fully discharged by United Empire Loyalist Richard Beasley, from whom they had bought their land. Word of insecure land titles in Ontario quickly spread in Pennsylvania causing many Mennonites to avoid the Waterloo settlement and to es­tablish the Markham colony in York County instead. Responding to their On­tario brethren’s call for help, a group of Mennonite investors in Pennsylvania founded the German Land Company and bought an area of 60,000 acres. This pur­chase cleared all the land of preexisting mortgages and secured the exclusive Ger­man character of the Grand River settle­ment for the future. Corresponding with the continuing demand for land in Upper Canada, the German Land Company in 1807 bought an additional 45,000 acres, later called the German Block, in the adja­cent township of Woolwich. By 1841 On­tario’s Mennonite population counted 5,400 people (Bassler 1991, 124), mostly concentrated in Niagara and Waterloo counties, around Markham and on the northern shore of Lake Erie.

European Germans

The Mennonite settlements in Waterloo County and Niagara attracted other Penn­sylvania Germans and, from the 1830s on­ward, European Germans who arrived in the New World in ever-growing numbers. European newcomers, most often while on their way to the American Midwest, learned about the German character of the existing Mennonite communities in Water­loo and Niagara and took up residence there. This way Waterloo and Niagara counties were able to attract almost all Ger­man immigrants to Canada during the first half of the nineteenth century, making the earlier presence of the Pennsylvania Ger­man Mennonites imperative for the devel­opment of a strong ethnic German settle­ment in Waterloo County in particular.

While the county’s rural areas were mostly populated by Pennsylvania German farmers, European German immigrants were primarily attracted by the economic opportunities and the German character of Waterloo County’s growing centers: Pre­ston (now part of Cambridge), Berlin (re­named Kitchener in 1916), and Waterloo. European German immigrants established a rich denominational and cultural life with ethnic churches, Turnvereine (sports clubs), denominational associations, choirs, musical societies, theatre groups, Schuetzenvereine (shooting clubs), veterans’ societies, lodges, etc. Between 1862 and 1912 Berlin and Waterloo hosted thirteen large-scale choir festivals, the so-called Saengerfests, which attracted thousands of participants and visitors from Canada and the northern states of the United States. Throughout the second half of the nine­teenth century, the most flourishing period of German culture in Ontario, more than thirty German-language newspapers were published.

On the Niagara peninsula, European Germans founded communities such as New Germany in Welland County; and St. Catherines and Niagara had large German minorities. In the census of 1871, 25 per­cent of the Niagara peninsula’s population was of German descent (Census of Canada 1871).

During the second half of the nine­teenth century, new settlement areas were opened in Ontario. While many newcom­ers were still attracted by the existing Ger­man settlements, others became pioneers themselves. They cleared the land and es­tablished new communities in the upper Ottawa valley and the Huron region. Im­migrants’ new focus on the lands between the lower Ottawa River and Georgian Bay developed in response to the government’s attempt to establish permanent settlements in the area. Some 12,000 Germans settled in the Ottawa valley between 1857 and 1887 (Bassler 1991, 105), mostly attracted by the government’s promise of free land. The fact that Waterloo County was almost saturated by then further contributed to the immigrants’ willingness to settle in the Ottawa valley. With eleven primarily Ger­man townships, Renfrew County became the main German settlement area in the upper Ottawa valley. Community names such as Augsburg, Woermke, Rosenthal, Kramer, and Hoffman indicate the Ger­manic background of the early settlers. Due to the strength of the German group in the area, a rich German cultural life with German schools, churches, and a German- language newspaper developed in the Ot­tawa Valley.

Newcomers from Germany and immi­grants who had previously settled in Wa­terloo County worked together in the de­velopment of the Huron Tract north and west of Waterloo County. Here they founded communities such as Bern, Zurich, Sebastopol, Rostock, Wartburg, and many others in the counties of Perth, Huron, Bruce, and Grey.

While German immigrants had a ten­dency to settle in ethnic enclaves, many in­dividual immigrants and immigrant fami­lies were attracted by the growing Canadian cities, such as Hamilton or Toronto, as well.

Corresponding with the opening of the Canadian West for settlement, immi­gration to the traditional German settle­ment areas in Ontario decreased dramati­cally. Depending on the size of the local German group, the level of acculturation and assimilation differed in the variou On­tario communities with a German popula­tion. The German heritage was maintained the longest in the ethnic group settlements of Waterloo and Renfrew counties, where Germans formed the charter group and de­termined the parameters of political, eco­nomic, cultural, and denominational life in their respective communities. But even there the forces of acculturation had done their work by the turn of the twentieth century. Ethnic newspapers and clubs were dissolved or merged as the immigrant gen­eration passed away and new German im­migrants who could have reinforced Ger­man ethnic life were attracted by the Canadian West. Even more importantly, members of the Canadian-born genera­tions increasingly perceived themselves as Canadians and turned to English as their primary language. In Canada’s “German capital”—Berlin—however, community leaders publicly expressed their strong feel­ings for the old fatherland; for example, in celebrations of the German emperor’s birthday as late as in January 1914, creat­ing the false image that Ontario’s Germans identified with imperial Germany rather than with their adopted homeland of Canada.

Several Ontario communities were di­rectly affected by the anti-German feel­ings that developed all over Canada dur­ing the years of World War I. The War-Time Election Act of 1917 disen­franchised all Pennsylvania German Men- nonites, as well as German immigrants who had arrived in Canada after 1899. German Canadians working in govern­ment and education were laid off in Toronto, London, Guelph, and elsewhere in Ontario. German-sounding street names were changed, and in 1916 Torontonians formed an Anti-German League, aimed at forcing the dismissal of all Canadians of German heritage from public office and the administration. German clubs were ransacked in Berlin and Waterloo, and cit­izens of Austria-Hungary living in Guelph were interned. Facing growing public pressure, several Ontario communities with German-sounding names were re- named—most outstandingly Berlin, which became Kitchener after the British minister of war, Lord Kitchener, in 1916.

Having been the victims of stigmatiza­tion as disloyal elements of Canadian soci­ety and anti-German measures during World War I, German Canadians at large were reluctant to identify themselves as Germans any longer. Correspondingly, the numbers of Ontarians claiming German ethnic origin decreased dramatically in the census of 1921. While more than 192,000 had identified themselves as German in the 1911 census, the number had dropped by almost 60,000 to 130,545 in 1921 (Census of Canada 1911, 1921). Even though sev­eral German clubs were reconstituted and German-language services were resumed in several congregations, Ontario’s German community became silent and almost dis­appeared after World War I. New organiza­tions that were formed in the interwar years were also of a different character from those active prior to World War I. When German immigrants were allowed into Canada again from the 1920s onward, the character of German immigration had changed entirely from Reichsdeutsche immi­grants from Germany to ethnic Germans from eastern Europe. This change was fur­ther perpetuated after World War II, when ethnic Germans who had been expelled from their homelands in Yugoslavia, Ro­mania, Hungary, the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Baltics constituted the majority of German immigrants to Ontario and Canada at large.

Even though, according to the 2001 census, 8 percent of Ontarians are of Ger­man origin (Statistics Canada Census, 2001), a strong German presence has sur­vived only in Kitchener-Waterloo. While the area’s countryside is usually referred to as Mennonite County for its strong Penn­sylvania German influence, German life in the cities of Kitchener and Waterloo is based on clubs, choirs, churches, an annual Pioneer Day celebration, the Christkindl market, and North America’s largest Okto­berfest. Almost exclusively supported by German immigrants who arrived in the fifties and sixties, German clubs and Ger­man cultural life are facing an insecure fu­ture, with the exception of Oktoberfest, which has developed into a multiethnic large-scale community event. In view of demographic development, lack of recent German immigrants, as well as ethnic or­ganizations’ difficulties in attracting mem­bers of the Canadian-born generations, it is safe to conclude that German life in On­tario is entering a difficult stage: many clubs will be forced to merge and consoli­date again to secure their own survival. In the end, only the adoption of the English language will guarantee the continuing ex­istence of German cultural life in Ontario beyond the early decades of the twenty-first century.

Ulrich Frisse

See also Berlin/Kitchener, Ontario; Canada, Germans in (during World Wars I and II); Hessians; Ontario, German-Language Press in; Verein; Waterloo, Ontario; Waterloo County, Ontario; World War I

References and Further Reading

Bassler, Gerhard P. The German Canadian Mosaic Today and Yesterday: Identities, Roots and Heritage. Ottawa: German-Canadian Congress, 1991.

English, John, and Kenneth McLaughlin. Kitchener: An Illustrated History. Toronto: Robin Brass, 1996.

Frisse, Ulrich. Berlin, Ontario: Ontario (1800­1916): Historische Identitaeten von “Kanadas Deutscher Hauptstadt. ” Ein Beitrag zur Deutsch-Kanadischen Migrations-, Akkulturations- und Perzeptionsgeschichte des 19. und fruehen 20. Jahrhunderts. Kitchener, ON: Transatlantic Publishing, 2003.

Government of Canada. Census of Canada 1870—1871. Recensement du Canada. Volume I. Ottawa, 1873.

------. Fifth Census of Canada 1911: Religions, Origins, Birthplace, Citizenship, Literacy and Infirmities, By Provinces, Districts and Sub-Districts. Volume II. Ottawa, 1913.

------, Sixth Census of Canada 1921. Volume II—Population. Ottawa, 1925.

Lehmann, Heinz. The German Canadians 1750—1937: Immigration, Settlement & Culture. Translated, edited, and introduced by Gerhard P Bassler. St. John’s, NF: Jesperson, 1986.

Statistics Canada, Census 2001, http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/ home/index.cfm (accessed May 2005).