Ignoring English migration

Dr Murray Watson, an honorary research fellow in the Department of History, recently visited the National Archives of Canada, located on a very chilly Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario. The purpose of the trip was to scope out a major research project into post-war English immigration to Canada.

The potential for research attracted the attention of Canadian government officials and academics, as historians appeared to have ignored the phenomenon of English immigration. There are countless studies on Canada's many other ethnic groups, including the Scots, but very little on the English, one of Canada's founding communities. Hearing about Murray's pioneering work, published in his book, 'Being English in Scotland', the Canadian High Commission in London, in association with the Foundation for Canadian Studies in the UK, provided a grant of £750 for this exploratory research.

Murray found that in Canada, just as in Scotland, English immigration was largely absent from the historiography other than a few studies about Canadian War Brides. At the end of the Second World War the English accounted for the largest group of immigrants but this fell to a trickle by the end of the century.

In addition to work in the archives, Murray also had discussions with Professor Bruce Elliott at the Centre for Migration Studies at Carleton University. He also took advantage of his time in Canada to obtain valuable input from the Chief of Audio-Visual Archives and officials of the Canadian Oral History Association for a distance-learning module he is developing for the University’s Archive Services on Oral History and Archiving.