Promoters, Planters and Pioneers: The Course and Context of Belgian Settlement in Western Canada
Support Canada's History in other ways (more)
by Cornelius J. Jaenen
University of Calgary Press, Calgary, 2011
362 pp., illus., $34.95 paperback
By the end of the nineteenth century, Canada was working hard to recruit immigrants to the Canadian West. One promotional pamphlet assured Euro-peans that the Canadian prairies had “the finest climate on earth for constitutionally healthy people.”
Although Belgians were not as heavily recruited for immigration as their British counterparts, Belgium was considered one of the preferred countries for Canadian immigration. Thousands of Belgian immigrants — who included the Dutch-speaking Flemings of northern Belgium and French-speaking Walloons from the country’s south — came to Canada in four main phases during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
These settlers are the subject of Cornelius Jaenen’s book Promoters, Planters, and Pioneers. Jaenen looks closely at three regions of the West — Manitoba, Alberta/Saskatchewan, and British Columbia — and explores the settlement patterns, economic endeavours, family structures, and cultural and linguistic integration of Belgian pioneers.
A comprehensive history of Belgian immigration in Canada by a leader in the field of ethnic studies, Jaenen’s book also provides a close look at immigration processes and the settlement of the Canadian West. It will be a welcome addition to the bookshelf of anyone interested in settlement and immigration history.
This review appeared in the August-September 2012 issue of Canada's History magazine.
— Joanna Dawson (Read bio)
Joanna Dawson is Canada's History Society's Acting Director of Programs.