The British and French were battling for control of North America in the 1700s, constantly at war with one another, and trying to best each other. In 1759, …show more content…
He writes that during the 1812-1840s, there was preferential treatment towards immigrants, only allowing British immigrants to come into Canada and refusing American immigrants. At the time, the French were separated from the Anglophones due to their constant wars, which sometimes included settlement warfare, and were considered Roman Catholics. There was a big preference for British immigrants (mainly the Scottish, Irish, and English), leaving the French a small minority …show more content…
Canada’s population had remained stable due to the high birth rate, allowing the Canadian government to produce methods to promote settlements in other parts of the country. The government began to promote the West by offering low-cost land to the people, and as more immigrants arrived, the population gradually increased (Préfontaine).
Eve Préfontaine, an employee for the McCord Museum in Montreal, writes in her museum article “The Settlement of Canada” that,
Although not a mechanism for controlled demographic growth, immigration has served, and still does, as a catalyst for the Canadian economy. Throughout its early years Canada favoured British, Anglo-American and western European immigrants. Those from eastern and southern Europe as well as from Asia and Africa were often victims of discrimination and endured great hardship. In the post-WWII period, the advances in human rights and increasing general prosperity helped improve the situation of Canada 's non-British immigrants. (Préfontaine)
Suggesting that immigration was not used to control population, as the goal of the government was to populate Canada. Immigration served as a catalyst for the country, showing that even though profiling and discrimination served as pieces in the country’s history, that it post-war human rights movements helped improve the situation altogether