July 30, 2025
This time is the most tense time period between the country of my birth, the US, and the country I have lived in for the last 53 years, Canada. So tense that I don’t even want to go on a planned trip to the US next fall. But I pretty much have to, for family and financial reasons.
The situation has caused me to think back to the late sixties to early seventies, in other words, to the time frame in which I emigrated.
I’ve become so reflective, I have even resurrected a thesis I wrote, enabling me to graduate from what was then called the College of Lifelong Learning at Wayne State University in Detroit. And to bring back (after at least two previous online versions) this website, Americans in Canada.
I completed the document called “Better Lands and a Perfect Home” in 1989, fifteen years after I came to Canada. It is a general history of Americans’ movement to Canada, outlining four peak periods: (1) the migration of the Loyalists, during and just after the American Revolution; (2) the development of the Underground Railroad and the escape from the US of black slaves, before the US Civil War; (3) the movement of pioneers seeking “the Last Best West” in Canada around the turn of the 19th/20th centuries (the largest of the four migrations, involving about a million immigrants from the US); and (4) the Vietnam Era migration, which is more complicated than the name implies – much more than the war was involved in the migrants’ decision making.
At the end of what was called my “senior essay,” I included the results of a study I had conducted into my fellow emigrants, all from the last period I had outlined. It was basically a sociology paper, so it had to have a study!
The results conformed essentially to what my research had indicated: a significant number of basically well-educated Americans, somewhat more women than men (especially in the young adult age range), had – for a variety of reasons, including the US government’s war with Vietnam – decided to move to Canada in the years, 1965-1975.
This was preceded by a period of gradual increase in the immigration levels to Canada. The peak year was 1974, but the numbers began to significantly drop in 1976. By 1978, the level of Americans emigrating to Canada was roughly what it had been in the mid-1950s.
I’m writing this post and putting my essay back online, because it could be that we’re entering another time when many Americans think about coming to Canada.
Whether they do or not is another question. Immigration to Canada is much more complicated, difficult, and expensive than it was when I came in 1972. I essentially just showed up at the border and had an interview with a customs agent on the spot. I answered a few questions, had enough “points” awarded on the basis of my answers, and was welcomed into the country on an interim basis.
I received a document of “landing” in the mail a few weeks later, which concluded the immigration process. I have never been contacted since by the government of Canada about my immigration status unless I have initiated it (though I’ve fully participated in government programs like the income tax system, health care, pensions, and unemployment insurance).
That was what it was like then. This is now. Like I said, I don’t know how many Americans will pursue emigrating to Canada. I just think that, as things change in the US, more will. There have been waves of immigration to Canada, as I’ve outlined, in the past. They are typically the result of profound problems and changes in the US.
I’ll go into my thoughts about the current situation – and how it might affect population flows between the two countries – in my next post. Look for it in mid-August. In the meantime, I’m going on vacation!
Americans in Canada 