English Canadians or Anglo-Canadians refers either to Canadians of English ethnic origin and heritage or to English-speaking (Anglophone) Canadians of any ethnic origin; it is used primarily in contrast with French Canadians. Canada is an officially bilingual country, with English and French official language communities. Immigrant cultural groups ostensibly integrate into one or both of these communities, but often retain elements of their original cultures. The term English-speaking Canadian is sometimes used interchangeably with English Canadian.

In addition to the terms "English Canadian" and "Canadian", the terms "Anglophone Canadian" and "Anglo-Canadian" are also used.Government of Canada website Minister Dion Asserts that Anglophone Canadians are Becoming More and More Supportive of French, retrieved May 5, 2009 Wall Street Journal, Severe Winter Storm: Conan O'Brien finds Anglophone Canadians can't take a joke about Francophone ones, by Mark Steyn, retrieved May 5, 2009 Review by Kevin Dowler of A Border Within: National Identity, Cultural Plurality and Wilderness, by Ian Angus, Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol 23, No 3 (1998), retrieved May 5, 2009 Randy Widdis, With Scarcely a Ripple: Anglo-Canadian Migration into the United States and Western Canada, 1880-1920, (Canadian Association of Geographers Series in Canadian Studies in Ethnic History Series) McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998 An additional 11,135,965 Canadians describe their ethnic background as "Canadian", many of whom may also be of English ancestry.

History

Newfoundland (and Labrador)

English Canadian history starts with the attempts to establish English settlements in Newfoundland in the sixteenth century. The first English settlement in present-day Canada was at St. Johns Newfoundland, in 1583. Newfoundland's population was significantly influenced by Irish and English immigration, much of it as a result of the migratory fishery in the decades prior to the Great Famine of Ireland. Although the location of the earliest English settlement in what would eventually become Canada, Newfoundland itself (now called Newfoundland and Labrador) was the last province to enter Confederation in 1949.

Nova Scotia

The area that forms the present day province of Nova Scotia was contested by the British and French in the eighteenth century. French settlements at Port Royal (Annapolis Royal), Louisbourg and what is now Prince Edward Island were seized by the British. After the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht ceded the French colony of Acadia (today's mainland Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) to Great Britain, efforts to colonize the province were limited to small settlements in Canso and Annapolis Royal. In 1749, Colonel Edward Cornwallis was given command of an expedition for the settlement of Chebucto by some three thousand persons, many of whom were Cockney. Cornwallis' settlement, Halifax, would become the provincial capital, the primary commercial centre for the Maritime provinces, a strategic British military and naval outpost and an important east coast cultural centre. To offset the Catholic presence of Acadians, foreign Protestants (mainly German) were given land and founded Lunenburg. Nova Scotia itself saw considerable immigration from Scotland, particularly to communities such as Pictou in the northern part of the province and to Cape Breton Island, but this began only with the arrival of the Hector in 1773.

Loyalists: New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario

The history of English Canadians is bound to the history of English settlement of North America, and particularly New England, because of the resettlement of many Loyalists following the American Revolution in areas that would form part of Canada. Many of the fifty thousand Loyalists who were resettled to the north of the United States after 1783 came from families that had already been settled for several generations in North America and were from prominent families in Boston, New York and other east coast towns. Although largely of British ancestry, these settlers had also intermarried with Huguenot and Dutch colonists and were accompanied by Loyalists of African descent. Dispossessed of their property at the end of the Revolutionary War, the Loyalists arrived as refugees to settle primarily along the shores of southern Nova Scotia, the Bay of Fundy and the Saint John River and in Quebec to the east and southwest of Montreal.

The colony of New Brunswick was created from western part of Nova Scotia at the instigation of these new English-speaking settlers. The Loyalist settlements in southwestern Quebec formed the nucleus of what would become the province of Upper Canada and, after 1867, Ontario.

Ontario Upper Canada was a primary destination for English, Scottish and Scots-Irish settlers to Canada in the nineteenth century, and was on the front lines in the War of 1812 between the British Empire and the United States. The province also received immigrants from non English-speaking sources such as Germans, many of whom settled around Kitchener (formerly called Berlin).Werner Bausenhart, German Immigration and Assimilation in Ontario, 1783-1918, Legas, 1989 Ontario became the most populous province in the Dominion of Canada at the time of Confederation, and, together with Montreal, formed the country's industrial heartland and emerged as an important cultural and media centre for English Canada. Toronto is today the largest city in Canada, and, largely as a result of changing immigration patterns since the 1960s, is also one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world.

Quebec

After the fall of New France to the British in 1759, a colonial governing class established itself in Quebec City. Larger numbers of English-speaking settlers arrived in the Eastern Townships and Montreal after the American Revolution. English, Scottish, and Irish communities established themselves in Montreal in the 1800s. Montreal became Canada's largest city and commercial hub in Canada. An Anglo-Scot business elite controlled Canadian commerce until the 1950s, founding a Protestant public school system and hospitals and universities such as McGill University. These immigrants were joined by other Europeans in the early 1900s, including Italians and Jews, who assimilated to a large degree into the anglophone community. Many English-speaking Quebeckers left Quebec following the election of the Parti Québécois in 1976 resulting in a steep decline in the anglophone population; many who have remained have learned French in order to function within the dominant Francophone society.

British Columbia

As in much of western Canada, many of the earliest European communities in British Columbia began as outposts of the Hudson's Bay Company, founded in London in 1670 to carry on the fur trade via Hudson Bay. Broader settlement began in earnest with the founding of Fort Victoria in 1843 and the subsequent creation of the Colony of Vancouver Island in 1849. The capital, Victoria developed during the height of the British Empire and long self-identified as being "more English than the English".

The Colony of British Columbia was established on the mainland in 1858 by Governor James Douglas as a means of asserting British sovereignty in the face of a massive influx of gold miners, many of whom were American. Despite the enormous distances that separated the Pacific colony from Central Canada, British Columbia joined Confederation in 1871, choosing to become Canadian partly as a means of resisting possible absorption into the United States. Chinese workers, brought in to labour on the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, established sizeable populations in many B.C. communities, particularly Vancouver which quickly became the province's economic and cultural centre after the railway's completion in 1886. Like Ontario, British Columbia has received immigrants from a broad range of countries including large numbers of Germans, Scandinavians, Italians, Sikhs from India and Chinese from Hong Kong, Taiwan and in more recent years, the People's Republic, and the ongoing influx of Europeans from Europe continues. However, for many years British Columbia, in contrast to the Prairie Provinces, received a majority of immigrants from Great Britain: over half in 1911 and over 60 per cent by 1921.Jean Barman, The West Beyond the West, 3d ed., University of Toronto Press, 2007, p. 147 Over half of people with British ancestry in British Columbia have direct family ties within two generations (i.e. grandparent or parent) to the British Isles, rather than via British ethnic stock from Central Canada or the Maritimes (unlike the Prairies where Canadian-British stock is more common). Europeans of non-British stock have been more common, also, in British Columbia than in any other part of Canada, although certain ethnicities such as Ukrainians and Scandinavians are more concentrated in the Prairies. Except for the Italians and more recent European immigrants, earlier waves of Europeans of all origins are near-entirely assimilated, although any number of accents are common in families and communities nearly anywhere in the province, as has also been the case since colonial times. Interethnic and interracial marriages and were also more common in British Columbia than in other provinces since colonial times.

Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan

The French-English tensions that marked the establishment of the earliest English-speaking settlements in Nova Scotia were echoed on the Prairies in the late nineteenth century. The earliest British settlement in Assiniboia (part of present-day Manitoba) involved some 300 largely Scottish colonists under the sponsorship of Thomas Douglas, Lord Selkirk in 1811. The suppression of the rebellions allowed the government of Canada to proceed with a settlement of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta that was to create provinces that identified generally with English Canada in culture and outlook, although immigration included large numbers of people from non English-speaking European backgrounds, especially Scandinavians and Ukrainians.

Nunavut

Twentieth century