Colonizing the West: Characteristics and Determinants of Household Structures among Canada’s Ethnic Groups in 1901

Daniela Ghio, University of Catania
Simona Bignami, Université de Montréal
Kris Inwood, University of Guelph

Canada's population history is inextricably linked with that of its ethnic groups, namely, the Indigenous peoples who first inhabited its territory, and the European immigrants who colonized it. However, the fact that Canada's aboriginal peoples preceded the arrival of the Europeans by thousands of years is often lost in the “saga” of French and British settlement (Boyd, 2015). The study aims at filling this gap by taking advantage of the newly released 100% count for 1901 census. The main research question is: what are the characteristics and determinants of household and family structures among ethnic groups in Western-Canada in 1901? Settling the Western-Canada created three concurrent population flows: i) Indigenous peoples, being regionally relocated from their native land through treaty-making; ii) Canadian-born immigrants from Eastern Canada; iii) International European immigrants, coming in search for gold and, later for farming opportunities. Results reveal how these flows reconfigured household and family structures to an extent that remained unknown to date because of the lack of appropriate data. Moreover, findings reflect the pace of immigration and Indigenous displacement across Canada. The study would help deepening our understanding of well-documented differences in family dynamics by ethnic origin in contemporary societies (Smock and Schwartz, 2020).

Keywords: Historical Demography, Families, Unions and Households, The Demography of Indigenous Populations

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