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Immigrant Foodways in Canada

Diaspora

Canada’s food is mostly immigration, and the waves are datable. Irish and Scottish in the nineteenth century. CHINESE from the 1850s gold rush and the CPR, then excluded by head tax and the 1923 Exclusion Act — and it is from that exclusion, which barred families and pushed men into laundries and cafés, that the small-town CHINESE-CANADIAN CAFÉ comes, serving ginger beef (an Alberta invention) and chop suey on the same menu as club sandwiches. UKRAINIANS to the Prairies from 1891. ITALIANS to Toronto and Montréal. JEWISH communities to Montréal and Toronto — the bagel and smoked meat. Japanese, Sikh Punjabi, Portuguese, Greek, Caribbean from the 1960s, Vietnamese boat people, Somali, Ethiopian, Filipino — now among the largest sources — Iranian, Sri Lankan, Syrian. ⚠ EACH IS RECORDED AS CANADIAN FOOD OF SOMEWHERE’S ORIGIN, not as foreign food in Canada.

Atlas — where and when

Where in the world

Communities and languages

Languages: Ukrainian, Italian, Portuguese, English

What is recorded

  • The small-town Chinese-Canadian café is documented as a consequence of the head tax and the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act, which barred family reunification and channelled Chinese men into laundries and restaurants. Ginger beef is documented as an Alberta creation. Japanese Canadian fishing families on the British Columbia coast were dispossessed and interned in 1942, their vessels confiscated and sold. documented
  • The Chinese head tax and then the 1923 Exclusion Act bar family migration, channelling Chinese men into laundries and cafés — the origin of the small-town Chinese-Canadian café. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • related to Chinese documented

    ⚠ The small-town Chinese-Canadian café is a documented product of the head tax and the 1923 Exclusion Act, which barred families and pushed men into laundries and cafés.

  • related to Italian documented
  • related to Portuguese Foodways documented

Recipes

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