Early Migration Chapter 4Author: Fr Lawrence E.Attard CANADA:THE SECOND CHOICE Before 1900 few Maltese had ventured to the vast and thinly populated regions of British North America. In 1836 a Maltese Jesuit had ventured as far as Idaho where he finally settled among the Coeur d'Alenes Indians at the mission called De Smet. He travelled to Spokane and through the state of Montana but no records show that he ever entered Canada. Another pioneering emigrant was Louis Shickluna who emigrated to St. Catherine's, Ontario, in 1836 where he set up a shipbuilding yard and became well known throughout Upper Canada. Louis left a very thriving business when he died in 1880. Maltese who wished to emigrate to North America knew of the large country called Canada which was part of the British Empire and which was both rich and stable. It was also on the doorstep of the U.S.A. and one could always cross the frontier if he found that Canada was not the place for him. In a report published by the Malta Emigration Committee in 1910 it was stated that British Columbia was a region highly suitable to Maltese settlers because of its healthy climate, sparse population and the great demand for unskilled workers. Maltese newspapers carried reports, invariably reproduced from foreign sources, which proved that there was a serious shortage of manpower throughout Canada, especially in the Western regions. One such report quoted the general superintendent of the Canadian Pacific Hotels, Mr Hayten Reed, who was reported to have said that workers could not be persuaded to stay at one job for any length of time because of the stiff competition between those who wanted to hire men and those who kept offering them higher wages. Maltese underpaid or unemployed workers were told by the media that in Canada not only was work available to all, but a common labourer could earn three dollars a day while a mechanic could take home five dollars. The pro-British party in Malta which had strongly opposed emigration to Brazil was now all in favour of mass emigration to the prairies of Canada. At the time however, Maltese interest was positively turned to the American West. What Canada wanted were sturdy farmers who could fell the trees and clear the way from the prairies to the Pacific Coast. The opportunities open were those in the lumbering industry, the building of canals and railways, in the dockyards and in the mines. Canada tried to lure immigrants in order to develop the empty spaces particularly those in Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia. By 1905 the population in the prairies had so increased that Alberta and Saskatchewan were raised to the status of provinces with Edmonton and Regina as their respective capitals. The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1886 had made traffic across the Rockies to Vancouver less difficult and this important link made it possible for thousands of immigrants to reach the prairies and the West. It is assumed that up to 1914 about 400,000 new arrivals were settling in various provinces each year. Up to 1895 Canada did not have a specific policy which determined the inflow and quality of immigration. 1-his situation changed when Sir Clifford Sifton was made minister of the interior responsible also for immigration. Sifton was a former prime minister of Manitoba and therefore was familiar with what the West needed. He encouraged immigrants from Great Britain, Europe and the U.S.A. with grants of free land. When immigrants from such countries were not enough Sifton looked to Southern Europe. Sifton had ushered in Canada's greatest immigration phase when, between 1896 and 1914, some three million outsiders entered Canada lured by the official advertisement that the "last best West was Canada's West". Trouble for Canadian immigration policy makers started when non-Europeans, especially Chinese, Japanese and Indians, began pouring in. Popular prejudice was against these people and it was soon rumoured that Asiatic immigration was detrimental to national unity and morals. Racial prejudice in Canadian legislation concerning immigrants could not be concealed even by legalistic verbiage when in 1910 an Immigration Act was passed which excluded two categories of immigrants. The first class of unwanted people were those considered by popular opinion as unlikely to assimilate and who supposedly created a threat to the fragile unity of the country. This was obviously directed against immigrants of Asiatic origin. The second group of unwelcome guests was made up of those who, even if they were acceptable on racial grounds, were considered as inferior because of their way of life. These were the immigrants from Southern Europe who were likely to live in congested urban areas and create ghettos which, in turn, would debase the standard of Canada's national life. In other words, Canada was not happy about the unemployed masses who tried to emigrate in order to find work in the cities. Where did the Maltese stand against such a background of hostile legislation? Political leaders in Malta who favoured emigration to the domains of the Empire insisted that Canada was not a foreign country. After all King Edward Vil was the recognised monarch of both Malta and Canada. The Maltese were British subjects, of European stock and professed the Christian religion. Canadians were not exactly impressed by such loyalist declarations. The Maltese spoke little if any English. They were Roman Catholic and the Orange Lodges were not very favourably inclined to accept Christians of the Roman tradition. Moreover the Maltese did not look very Nordic because of their Mediterranean stature and complexion. In short, the Maltese fell under the category of the excluded classes. Later on, in the 1920's, someone in Montreal roundly declared that the Maltese had no Semitic or Arabic blood in them in spite of the strange language which they muttered between themselves; they were also one of the best races in Europe and belonged to an autonomous government of the British Empire. Politicians however, do not easily shed their prejudices especially when such prejudices make them popular with their constituencies and trade unionists. Official suspicions hindered the growth of Maltese immigration to Canada up to 1946 when the Canadian government felt that Malta could be shown some consideration after the ordeal of the Second World War and Maltese loyalty should be recognised. It was after 1946 that the movement of Maltese to Canada began to stir itself in considerable numbers. The emigrants from Malta to Canada in the early years of the twentieth century settled in Toronto, Winnipeg and British Columbia. The difficulties these pioneers faced were enormous. Few of them were prepared for life in a country which was completely different from what they had been used to. Uneducated and poorly clad, with very little money,-the emigrants from Malta were not ready for the rigours of the Canadian winter. They went about in groups with one of them acting as interpreter. Complaints about their general appearance found their way even in Maltese newspapers. A settler from Malta who was then living in British Columbia, warned against the poor image projected by emigrants from Malta who arrived in Canadian ports shabbily dressed, without jackets, some of them even barefoot or simply in sandals. This Maltese complained that his fellow countrymen preferred walking in batches, sometimes playing the guitar and singing unintelligible songs which made Canadians mistake them for Arabs. In July 1913 six Maltese, members of the crew of the steamship "Dumblane" arrived in Seattle. On July 15th they tried to cross the border into Canada but were detained. The men said that they wanted to reach Vancouver but the Canadians did not accept the claim of the Maltese that they were British subjects because the Maltese "appeared to be of Italian extraction and did not come direct from their native land". The condition that immigrants into Canada had to travel directly from their native land was specifically intended to exclude Asians and other undesirables who came from poor countries which had no direct shipping with Canada. No one in Malta raised a protesting voice against the treatment given to the Maltese. One local editor of a pro-British newspaper simply moaned ... "we cannot imagine a sister Government such as that of the Dominion of Canada undoubtedly is, refusing assistance to British subjects of European extraction". The true facts of Maltese emigration to Canada early in the twentieth century were that those who decided to leave the island were mostly unemployed, unskilled and illiterate men who had either been discharged from the Naval Dockyard or had finally abandoned their small holdings because they could not eke out a living from the impoverished soil. Even those who managed to put some money by usually had to spend it on the long and arduous trip from Malta to Canada which they had to do through some Continental port. The Maltese Colonial Government had consistently refused to give financial assistance to would be migrants even though London knew that in previous years thousands of immigrants from the British Isles had been given assistance by the British government when they were given ocean transportation, supplies, land, rations and implements. The British ruling classes wanted to relieve congestion in over-crowded cities and so they financed emigration from the industrial areas to Canada's open spaces. This same policy was not applicable to Malta because no funds were put at the disposal of the Maltese. Local funds to help prospective migrants came from the foundations left by Pappaffy and Bugeja. In 1911 the Committee for the Vincenzo Bugeja Bequest had approved the payment of the passage to Canada of twelve youths who were to proceed to various destinations: one went to Ottawa, another to Vancouver and ten to Winnipeg in Manitoba. A serious disadvantage to the Maltese was that they were not the type of immigrant Canada mostly wanted: the full time farmer who had experience of large farms and who had lived all his life dedicated to animal husbandry and agriculture. Maltese workers naturally gravitated towards the city centres, preferably cities situated near the sea. European and Canadian farmers possessed the capital to buy land and develop it. In 1910 Canada was offering free homesteads in the West of 160 acres to any immigrant who was of British stock or else intended to become a British subject. The grant stipulated that the immigrant should settle permanently on the farm and to break at least thirty acres within three years. Twenty of these acres had to be used for crops. These grants were mostly situated in Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba. This was tough work which presupposed intensive experience in tilling the land; and the grants were distant from cities and far away from the ocean. It was not surprising that few Maltese opted for a farming life in areas that were miles and miles away from the familiar sight and scent of the waves of the sea. Maltese spokesmen in Malta were not unaware of the unsuitability of the Maltese to farming conditions in the prairies. The report of the Malta Emigration Committee of November 26th 1910 stated ... "The class of emigrants required are farmers with some capital to take up land ... in Malta we have not the class of men known in Canada, Australia and the U.S.A. as 'farmers' and 'settlers' who have put under cultivation tracts of land of say, one hund'red acres, and upwards. Our unemployed comprise labourers, mostly unskilled and artisans of all sorts who, as a rule, have not as much as £15 in their possession". The conclusion of the Report was, that taking into consideration the type of immigrant Canada wanted, coupled with the problem of the Canadian weather, Maltese emigration to that country on any considerable scale was not possible. Dr Lawrence Manche' of the Emigration Committee wrote on January 25th 1911 that ... "Canada and Australia are not adapted for Maltese emigrants; the former on account of its climate and the latter for its being too much on the English style". The unemployed workers of Malta did not endorse Manche's views. They knew that thousands of immigrants had successfully started a new life in Canada and not all of these new Canadians had been previously living in cold climates. A statement issued on June 7th 1912, by the Passport Office in Valletta, showed that between January 1909 and May 1912, eighty-two passports had been given to Maltese emigrants who had applied to go to Canada. It is estimated that between January and July of 1913 some four hundred and seventy one Maltese had left for Canada. These migrants usually left by ship for the French port of Le Havre or some English port and from there they boarded a transatlantic liner which would take them either to New York, Montreal or Quebec. The indefatigable doctor, Charles Mattei, who played such an active role with the Emigration Committee, wanted to see conditions in Canada for himself. In 1912 he made an extensive tour of North America and in his report he emphatically suggested that British Columbia was a land which was very suitable to Maltese who wanted to live and work in Canada. Mattei established useful contacts with provincial authorities in Vancouver and he promised them that by 1913 he would send thousands of Maltese workers to work in the lumbering industry where the saw-mills guaranteed work for all the year round. According to Mattei's report wages in that industry averaged between 8s and 12s a day. Other possibilities of work in British Columbia, according to Mattei, were in the canneries and in market-gardening. Mattei thought that Maltese could also find good jobs in the building industry and on the railways. During his tour of Canada Mattei had interviewed some forty workers who had left Malta a couple of years back; they told him that they had no complaints and that they were earning anything between 10s and 15s for eight hours of work. These Maltese were working on the construction of roads. A typical success story was that of Vincenzo Mifsud who had emigrated to Vancouver, British Columbia in 1900. In Malta he had acquired a good education up to university level but he felt that there were no good opportunities for him locally and so he decided to emigrate. Even Canada was not then a paradise on earth and although Vincenzo was looking for a clerical job he was only offered manual work on the construction of railways. But after a few years in this work he won a top clerical post with the Canadian Pacific Railway, and stayed with that company for the rest of his long working life. In December 1981 Vincenzo was still in Vancouver where he celebrated his hundredth birthday! The Council of Government which ruled Malta at the time was convened on July 30th 1913, to discuss the report which Mattei had presented. The Council accepted it and voted the substantial sum of £500 to cover the expenses incurred by Mattei during his explorations. Although there was an outcry about that remuneration, Mattei s report could have been used as a guideline for a future Maltese plan about organised emigration from the island. As had happened so often before the results from Mattei's explorations never justified the expense involved because the Colonial administration could not be moved to action. In March 1913, three hundred prospective migrants had approached Mattei in the hope that they would be allowed to accompany him on his next trip to British Columbia. By June Mattei had accepted only seventy. Twenty of these were detained at Le Havre by the French authorities because they failed their medical examination and they were deported the next day. Each man was to have on him at least £25 to meet other expenses on the journey. A circular letter published by the Emigrants' Information Office at Westminster, England, reminded migrants that the Canadian Authorities expected them to have twentyfive dollars on them if they entered the country between March 1 st and October 31 st and double that amount during the rest of the year. Also, they were to have enough money to take them to their final destination. Failing this they would be sent back to their country of origin. A clean health certificate was one condition emigrants had to meet. Then they had the added problem of finding enough money to meet the expenses for the long trip to Canada; this was even more expensive if they intended to go to the west of that country. The journey itself was far from a pleasure trip. The group which left under Dr Charles Mattei left Grand Harbour, Valletta, on July ]6th 1913, on board the French steamer ss Carthage, for Marseilles. They had to stay on deck because that was the cheapest way to travel; the decks of the Carthage were already badly crowded with other emigrants picked from Tunis. The sea was rough and in order to obtain a drink of hot water they were charged 2d each. At Marseilles the Maltese were accommodated in a hostel called D'Orta, but a certain boy Tanti got lost and was finally traced at the local railway station. From Marseilles the Maltese party boarded a train for the French port of Le Havre, on the English Channel. Once they left Marseilles they saw the last of their beloved Mediterranean. On the train they were cramped, ten persons in each compartment. Dr Mattei did not travel with them. He arrived later to find the Maltese being urged by a local owner of a boarding house to take lodging in his place. The Maltese were lost because they could not communicate in French and some of them had mislaid their meagre belongings. The Maltese group was not very lucky. When it was found that twenty of them had trachoma the French health officials ordered them out of Le Havre because they were considered as a health hazard to the whole town. Arrangements were made for those rejected to proceed to Portsmouth in England where it was hoped they would be cared for by th Maltese community while their condition improved sufficiently to allow them to continue their voyage to Canada. Dr Mattei wrote to the Catholic bishop of Portsmouth and to Cardinal Bourne of Westminster pleading for their help to assist the Maltese. Lord Charles Beresford, member of Parliament for Portsmouth, used his influence with the city's mayor to find work for the Maltese in the local naval yards. What was left of the original seventy eventually boarded the ship s.s. Sicilian on July 26th bound for Quebec. After an uneventful crossing the Maltese disembarked on August 5th and two days later they were in Toronto. A Canadian reporter, who probably had been waiting for something to happen, caught sight of the Maltese and splashed a big headline in his paper, proclaiming to his readers that "a big Maltese Party was on its way to the West". Among the Greeks, Macedonians, Swedes and Hungarians who were boarding the train to go west, the reporter singled out the Maltese as a somewhat bewildered group among whom only one could utter some monosyllabic words in English. But the man at the gates of the Toronto station pronounced them as the finest lot of foreigners he had ever seen. On August 8th the group arrived in Winnipeg where they made a very short stop of forty-five minutes. The small Maltese community in that town had read from newspapers about the expected arrival of their countrymen and some went to meet them at the C.P.R. station. When the train from Toronto pulled into Winnipeg at 2.00pm exactly the Maltese on the train received a most pleasant surprise when they saw four Winnipeg Maltese on the platform waiting to welcome them. The party on the train soon recognised the four gentlemen on the platform and they instinctively shouted in their own language: "Ara dawk Maltin bhalna", which could be freely translated as "Look, those are Maltese like us". One of the welcoming party, Mr C.J. Salinos wrote to The Malta Herald: ... "We soon made acquaintance. For about three quarters of an hour we remained encouraging them to be sober, honest, industrious, diligent and thrifty. They told us that their journey was splendid and that Dr Mattei was continually doing his best. They had two special cars for them. They seemed to be very happy and anxious to start work". Eventually the Maltese arrived in Victoria B.C. on August 11th, twenty-six days after leaving Malta. Once in Victoria however, their headaches really started. An economic recession had hit that region and work was not so abundant as some newspapers in Malta had led them to believe. The fact that most of them were illiterate and spoke no English did not make their job-hunting any easier. One Maltese settler who had been in British Columbia for some years complained about the language handicap and said that because of their lack of communication some Maltese had to give up their jobs or were given the sack by their employers who could not give them their orders. Twenty-five of Dr Mattei's party soon decided to leave Victoria and went to Calgary where they found work on the railways. Other Maltese had already drifted into Calgary the year before. A certain Roger Curmi had led a small group from Malta through England; they boarded the ss. Carola and travelled all the way to Calgary with the intention of setting up a thriving Maltese community in that fast expanding town. In a letter written on June 20th 1912, Curmi stated that... "if all Malta came out here there would still not be sufficient men to supply the demand that there is for labourers of all kinds". Curmi had hardly been in Calgary_for two short days when he was asked to send for one hundred workers from Malta to join him. As soon as these arrived they were employed on road maintenance or on the railways. Curmi also claimed that he had had requests for Maltese labour from other places such as Fort William and Medicine Hat. What was the real situation in the West concerning jobs? Mattei had claimed in 1912 that jobs were available to all those who wanted to work. But even in Malta there were those who were somewhat sceptical about Mattei's too sanguine picture of the labour situation in Canada. A certain Frank Fenick of Hamrun, Malta, wrote to the Canadian Prime Minister himself and asked if it was advisable for Maltese to emigrate to Canada at that time. The Prime Minister, Mr R.L. Borden acknowledged Fenick's letter which he passed on to Mr W.J. Rocke who as Minister for the Interior was then responsible for immigration. Mr W.J. Rocke wrote back to Malta and said: "... in view of the reports that have reached us regarding the labour market in Canada being so much congested, it would be inadvisable at the present time, at least, to encourage emigration from your country. Our efforts in connection with emigration are centred very largely, in fact almost entirely, on inducing agriculturists and agricultural workers and domestic servants to settle in Canada". Canada's official policy had been to expand its agriculture and other industries connected with the cultivation of the land. Yet a number of Maltese who had never been in a field in their lives refused to be put off by official statements. In 1911 a number of youngsters had been awarded paid passages and other subsidies to emigrate to Canada and settle in Winnipeg. Others followed them and Winnipeg soon bacame a familiar name to many hopeful Maltese. The Malta Herald of May 23rd 1912 had this to say about emigration to Winnipeg: "The rapid growth of Winnipeg during the last three years is almost unimaginable. From every country of the world the tide of emigration is steadily pouring to that place. Many are those here in Malta who are anxious to go there, but owing to the lack of money necessary to defray the voyage expenses, they cannot realise their wish". Emigration to Canada was financially beyond the capabilities of many labourers who wished to settle in that Dominion. Most of the men who managed to get as far as Winnipeg and settle successfully there were from the Maltese middle class who possessed some money and had a good education. One emigrant left Malta when he had already started his practice as an architect and was soon given the job of an engineer with the Canadian Pacific Railway. Another was a teacher who found work as a clerk with the Post Office. Mr. C. Salinos who had organised the welcoming party for the Maltese who where passing through Winnipeg with Dr Mattei had a job with the Education Department in Malta and in Winnipeg the local educational authorities made him head teacher. Two other gentlemen in that party were working as clerks. These gentlemen were not typical of the Maltese emigrant anywhere in the world. They spoke good English and were politically articulate. In Winnipeg they formed a Maltese Protective Society which aimed at safeguarding the rights of the Maltese in Manitoba. Captain H.W. Parnis, who in Malta belonged to the King's Own Malta Regiment, was made president of the Society and spokesman for the Maltese Community in Winnipeg. The Protective Society of Winnipeg held an important meeting in October 1913 at St. Mary's Hall, St. Mary's Avenue, and the minutes of that meeting tell that in the previous month the Maltese Community had commemorated the lifting of the Great Siege of 1565 by organising a banquet at the Manitoba Hall. The table was decorated with red and white roses, the national colours of Malta. Rignei's String Quartet provided the appropriate musical background. For the occasion the Maltese invited their Canadian friends and toasts were made to King Edward V] i, to the victory of 1565, the Pope and to Canada. In his speech Captain Parnis spoke of the imperial bond linking Malta and Canada; he praised the country which had accepted a number of Maltese immigrants but he also admitted that on September 8th, a very dear date to every Maltese, he felt a pang of pain at being absent from his Island Home. Although in the years preceding the First World War most Maltese preferred to settle in British Columbia and in Manitoba, the city of Toronto was also attracting a number of Maltese. Toronto was already a thriving city and most of the emigrants going West passed through it; it also happened that some of them liked their first stop in Canada and stayed there. This was probably the beginning of the Maltese community there, though the present Maltese presence in Toronto has no connection with that migration in the early part of the twentieth century. The Canadian authorities at that time were doing their utmost to discourage immigrants from flocking into the cities. It has already been noted that the Canadian department for the Interior which was responsible for immigration had been applying stringent regulations against unskilled labourers settling in the cities. A few Maltese had managed to join the cosmopolitan population of the city and many of them found accommodation in the area of Dundas Street West, where the Maltese National Church of St. Paul still stands. It also seems that Maltese workers in Toronto were not disliked. The Evening Telegram of July 15th 1913 carried an advertisment which said: "50 Malta laborers wanted: Richmond Str. west". But hard times were being experienced by many. In a letter written by a Maltese immigrant in Toronto bearing the date of July 18th 1913, Mr Arthur Galea said that a number of Maltese were without work because unemployment was a serious problem. He also mentions the case of three Maltese musicians who had been wandering about Toronto for three days trying to find a bandmaster who would take them in and offer them a job. Between April 23rd and 27th 1913 a vast meeting of Catholic prelates and pilgrims from all over the world was. held in Malta. The Canadian representative was the bishop of Valleyfield, Mgr Joseph M. Emard. The gentlemen on the Malta Emigration Committee contacted the Canadian bishop and asked him to give a public talk on Canada and the present conditions prevailing in his country. The bishop complied with this request and he also said that during his short stay among the Maltese he was very favourably impressed by the people and their country. He was particularly impressed by the religious fervour of Maltese Catholics and this made him even more willingto have them in his part of Canada. When Mgr Emard returned to Valleyfield he spoke highly of the traditional qualities of the Maltese, of their sobriety, industriousness and general good health. He issued a pastoral letter to his diocese in which he told his people about his visit to Malta and in which he urged Canadians to show friendship and hospitality to immigrants from that Catholic island. The bishop suggested to the Emigration Committee that reliable immigrants should be sent in groups and he promised that he would establish important contacts with the Catholic Immigration Association of Canada about possible financial assistance. Bishop Emard was as good as his word. He wrote to the director of that Association, P.H.D. Cosgrain, in Quebec. Cosgrain wrote to the Malta Emigration Committee on June 20th 1913, and promised to provide representatives of the Association who would meet newcomers from Malta as soon as they arrived in Quebec. Cosgrain was,no stranger to Malta. He had served in the British army in India where he had been a subaltern under an Englishman, John Clauson. This Clauson was now, in 1913, the Lieutenant Governor of Malta. Clauson had rwt forgotten his friend Cosgrain. In a speech delivered to the Maltese Council of Government in Valletta on July 30th about the proposed emigration scheme to Canada Clauson referred to his friendship with the director of the Catholic Immigration Association of Canada. In 1908 Cosgrain decided to enter the priesthood, but before he became a priest he had spent a number of years in Malta and served as an officer at the Auberge de Castilie in Valletta. During his years among the people of Malta Cosgrain learned their language. This effort on his part won him a number of Maltese friends. Malta's claim to Canadian interest was twofold: Maltese loyalty to the British Empire of which Canada was a very conspicous Dominion and Maita's common religious bond with the Catholics of Canada. Such an approach was beginning to make some impact on Canadian opinion and official quarters in that country were becoming more receptive to the entry of Maltese immigrants. The intervention of Emard and Cosgrain was bound to have a positive effect on establishing more friendly contacts between the two parts of the Empire. Interest in emigrating to Canada came to a temporary halt when both Malta and Canada found themselves at war with Germany when England declared war on August 4th 1914. War brought intense activity to Malta and unemployment dwindled. Emigration naturally waned but the situation was bound to become critical again as soon as the armistice was signed which came into effect on November llth 1918.
    
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