This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "British Canadians" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(May 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

British Canadians
Canadiens d'origines Britanniques

Total population
11,211,850[1][nb 1][a] 32.5% of the total Canadian population (2016)
Regions with significant populations
ThroughoutCanada less prevalent inQuebec and theNorth
Languages
Canadian English,Canadian French
Religion
Protestant,Catholicism
Related ethnic groups
British people,Irish people,British Americans,British Australians,British New Zealanders,Old Stock Canadians

British Canadians primarily refers toCanadians who were either born in or can trace theirancestry to theBritish Isles, which includes the nations ofEngland,Ireland,Scotland,Wales, andNorthern Ireland.^[a]

The term British Canadian^[a] is a subgroup ofEuropean Canadians and, according toStatistics Canada, can further be divided by nationality, such asEnglish Canadian,Irish Canadian, orScottish Canadian.

As of 2016, 11,211,850 Canadians hadBritish Isles geographical origins, constituting 32.5% of the total Canadian population and 44.6% of the totalEuropean Canadian population.^[1] However, this number is likely an undercount due to the"Canadian" ethnic origin category onthe census being the sole choice for many Canadians of British Isles descent who are several generations removed from their country of origin.^{[nb 1]}

"British Canadians" may include:Cornish Canadians;English Canadians (meaning either ethnic origin and heritage, or English-speaking (Anglophone) Canadians of any ethnic origin);Irish Canadians;Manx Canadians;Scottish Canadians;Scotch-Irish Canadians andWelsh Canadians.^{[citation needed]}

The first documented source of individuals from theBritish Isles in what would become Canada comes from theSaga of Erik the Red and theViking expedition of 1010 AD toVinland (literally, the land of meadows), which is believed to refer to the island ofNewfoundland. The Viking princeThorfinn Karlsefni took two Scottish slaves to Vinland.^[15] When thelongships moored along the coast, they sent the slaves ashore to run along the waterfront to gauge whether it was safe for the rest of the crew to follow. After the Scots survived a day without being attacked, by either human or animal, the Vikings deemed it safe to spend the night ashore. The expedition was abandoned three years later; the original sagas were passed on in an oral tradition and then written down 250 years later.

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 theGreat Famine of Ireland.^{[citation needed]}

The first recorded Irish presence in the area of present-day Canada dates from 1536, when Irish fishermen fromCork traveled to Newfoundland.^{[citation needed]}

The area that forms the present day province ofNova Scotia was contested by the British andFrench in the eighteenth century. French settlements atPort Royal,Louisbourg and what is nowPrince Edward Island were seized by the British. After the 1713Treaty of Utrecht ceded the French colony of Acadia (today's mainlandNova Scotia andNew Brunswick) to Great Britain, efforts to colonize the province were limited to small settlements inCanso andAnnapolis Royal.^{[citation needed]}

In 1749, ColonelEdward Cornwallis was given command of an expedition for the settlement ofChebucto by some three thousand persons, many of whom wereCockney. Cornwallis' settlement,Halifax, would become the provincial capital, the primary commercial centre for theMaritime 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 foundedLunenburg. Nova Scotia itself saw considerable immigration from Scotland, particularly to communities such asPictou in the northern part of the province and toCape Breton Island, but this began only with the arrival of theHector in 1773.^{[citation needed]}

After the fall ofNew France to the British in 1759, a colonial governing class established itself inQuebec City. Larger numbers ofEnglish-speaking settlers arrived in theEastern Townships andMontreal after the American Revolution.

A large group ofUlster Scots, many of whom had first settled inNew Hampshire, moved toTruro, Nova Scotia in 1761.

New Brunswick became the home for many Scots. In 1761, a Highland regiment garrisonedFort Frederick. The surrounding lands surveyed by Captain Bruce in 1762 attracted many Scottish traders when William Davidson of Caithness arrived to settle two years later. Their numbers were swelled by the arrival of thousands of loyalists of Scottish origin both during and after the American Revolution. One of the New Brunswick and Canada's most famous regiments was "The King's First American Regiment" founded in 1776. It was composed mostly of Highlanders, many of whom fought with their traditionalkilts to the sound ofbagpipes. The regiment distinguished itself when it defeated Washington's forces at theBattle of Brandywine. When it disbanded after the War, most of its members settled in New Brunswick.

In 1772, a wave of Gaels began to arrive inPrince Edward Island, and in 1773, the shipHector brought 200 Gaels toPictou, beginning a new stream of Highland emigration — the town's slogan is "The Birthplace of New Scotland". At the end of the 18th century,Cape Breton Island had become a centre of Scottish Gaelic settlement, where onlyScottish Gaelic was spoken. Furthermore, a number of Scottishloyalists to the British crown, who had fled the United States in 1783, arrived inGlengarry County (in easternOntario) and Nova Scotia.

Prince Edward Island (PEI) was also heavily influenced by Scottish Gaelic settlers. One prominent settler in PEI wasJohn MacDonald of Glenaladale, who conceived the idea of sending Gaels to Nova Scotia on a grand scale after Culloden. The name Macdonald still dominates on the island, which received a large influx of settlers, predominantly Catholics from the Highlands, in the late 18th century.

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 manyLoyalists following theAmerican Revolution in areas that would form part of Canada. Many of the fifty thousand Loyalists who were resettled to the north of theUnited 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 withHuguenot andDutch 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, theBay of Fundy and theSaint John River and inQuebec to the east and southwest of Montreal. The colony ofNew 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 ofUpper Canada and, after 1867,Ontario.

At the end of the 18th century,Cape Breton Island had become a centre of Scottish Gaelic settlement, where onlyScottish Gaelic was spoken. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries,Canadian Gaelic was spoken as the first language in much of "Anglophone" Canada, such asNova Scotia,Prince Edward Island, andGlengarry County in Ontario. Gaelic was the third most commonly spoken language in Canada.^[16]

Welsh mapmakerDavid Thompson was one of the great explorers of theNorth West Company in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and is often called "Canada's Greatest Geographer". He covered 130,000 kilometres on foot and surveyed most of theCanada–United States border in the early days of exploration.

This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "British Canadians" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(December 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Upper Canada was a primary destination forEnglish,Scottish andScots-Irish settlers to Canada in the nineteenth century, and was on the front lines in theWar of 1812 between theBritish Empire and theUnited States.^{[citation needed]}

Another large group of Scottish Gaels immigrated to Canada and settled in Prince Edward Island in 1803. This migration, primarily from theIsle of Skye, was organized by theEarl of Selkirk, LordThomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk. The Earl, who was sympathetic to the plight of the dispossessedcrofters (tenant farmers in the Highlands), brought 800 colonists to Prince Edward Island. In 1811, he founded theRed River Colony as a Scottish colonization project on an area of 300,000 square kilometres (120,000 sq mi) in what would later be the province ofManitoba — land that was granted by theHudson's Bay Company, in what is referred to as theSelkirk Concession.

After the permanent settlement in Newfoundland by Irish in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, overwhelmingly fromCounty Waterford, increased immigration of the Irish elsewhere in Canada began in the decades following theWar of 1812 and formed a significant part ofThe Great Migration of Canada. Between 1825 and 1845, 60% of all immigrants to Canada were Irish; in 1831 alone, some 34,000 arrived in Montreal. Between 1830 and 1850, 624,000 Irish arrived; in contextual terms, at the end of this period, the population of the provinces of Canada was 2.4 million. BesidesUpper Canada (Ontario),Lower Canada (Quebec), the Maritime colonies ofNova Scotia,Prince Edward Island andNew Brunswick, especiallySaint John, were arrival points. Not all remained; many out-migrated to the United States or to Western Canada in the decades that followed. Few returned to Ireland.

The earliest English and Scottish settlements inAssiniboia (part of present-dayManitoba) involved some 300 largely Scottish colonists under the sponsorship ofThomas Douglas, Lord Selkirk in 1811.

One of the first efforts to encourage Welsh emigration to Canada began in 1812, when Welsh native John Mathews endeavoured to bring his family to Canada. Mathews left home at a young age and went on to become a successful businessman in the United States. When he returned to Wales, he found his family living in poverty and became convinced they should emigrate to Canada. In 1817 his family settled in the township of Southwald, near what is nowLondon, Ontario. By 1812, he had brought over more relatives who built homes on the 100-acre (0.40 km²) lots granted to them by Colonel Thomas Talbot.

English, Scottish, and Irish communities established themselves in Montreal in the 1800s. Montreal would become Canada's largest city and commercial hub in Canada.

A continual influx of immigrants from Scotland and Ulster meant that by 1843 there were over 30,000 Scots in New Brunswick.^[17]

Broader English, Scottish, and Irish settlement of British Columbia began in earnest with the founding ofFort Victoria in 1843 and the subsequent creation of theColony of Vancouver Island in 1849. The capital,Victoria developed during the height of theBritish Empire and long self-identified as being "more English than the English".

During theGreat Famine of Ireland (1845–1852), Canada received the most destitute Irish Catholics, who left Ireland in grave circumstances. Land estate owners in Ireland would either evict landholder tenants to board on returning empty lumber ships, or in some cases pay their fares. Others left on ships from the overcrowded docks in Liverpool and Cork.^[18] Most of the Irish immigrants who came to Canada and the United States in the nineteenth century and before wereIrish speakers, with many knowing no other language on arrival.^[19]

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 19th century.^{[citation needed]}

This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(September 2022)

This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "British Canadians" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(December 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

In 1902, Welsh immigrants arrived fromPatagonia, which had been incorporated intoArgentina in 1881. Compulsory military service and a series of floods that ruined Welsh farmers' crops led to some emigrants resettling atLlewelyn near Bangor, Saskatchewan, where they once again took up farming. A community of Welsh farmers was also established at Wood River nearPonoka, Alberta.^{[citation needed]}

‹ Thetemplate below (Graph:Chart) is being considered for deletion. Seetemplates for discussion to help reach a consensus. ›

This graph was using thelegacy Graph extension, which is no longer supported. It needs to be converted to thenew Chart extension.

Canadians of British Isles descent total population (1871−2016)^{[nb 1]}
Note1: 1981 Canadian census only included partial multiple ethnic origin responses for individuals with British and French ancestry, thus population is an undercount.
Note2: 1996-present census populations are undercounts, due to the creation of the"Canadian" ethnic origin category.

‹ Thetemplate below (Graph:Chart) is being considered for deletion. Seetemplates for discussion to help reach a consensus. ›

This graph was using thelegacy Graph extension, which is no longer supported. It needs to be converted to thenew Chart extension.

Canadians of British Isles descent percentage of the total population (1871−2016)^{[nb 1]}
Note1: 1981 Canadian census only included partial multiple ethnic origin responses for individuals with British and French ancestry, thus population is an undercount.
Note2: 1996-present census populations are undercounts, due to the creation of the"Canadian" ethnic origin category.

This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(September 2022)

This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(September 2022)

• European Canadians
• English Canadians
• Irish Canadians
• Scottish Canadians
• Welsh Canadians
• British North America
• British Columbia
• British Americans
• Canadian British
• British–Canadian relations

• Campbell, Wilfred; Bryce, George (1911).The Scotsman in Canada. The Musson Book Company.

• British diaspora in Canada
• Canadian people of British descent
• British-Canadian culture
• European diaspora in Canada

• Pages using the Graph extension
• Pages with disabled graphs
• CS1: long volume value
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles needing additional references from May 2025
• All articles needing additional references
• Articles containing French-language text
• "Related ethnic groups" needing confirmation
• Articles using infobox ethnic group with image parameters
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from May 2025
• Articles with unsourced statements from August 2025
• Articles needing additional references from December 2022
• Articles to be expanded from September 2022
• All articles to be expanded