PLANTERS, PAUPERS, AND PIONEERS, the first of three books on the English in Canada, deals with emigration from England to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland. In writing about the English, I have transferred my focus from the high-profile Scots, who formed the basis of my previous books on emigration, to the inconspicuous English. They represent a completely different challenge and their emigration story is very different.
A popular misconception is that Canada was settled primarily by the Scots and Irish. Although the English elite have caught the attention of commentators, the English as an immigrant group have been largely ignored. This has happened despite the fact that the English were the dominant immigrant group. Along with the French, the English were regarded as one of Canada’s two “founding peoples,” but they were not seen as a recognizable ethnic group. As immigrants they were assimilated into a country which had adopted their language and values. Showing a curious disinterest in their national identity, the English were happy to fade into the background. Failing to register as a culturally distinctive immigrant group, they escaped the notice of contemporary observers and later historians. This book aims to redress this past neglect by concentrating on the important role played by the English in the settlement of Atlantic Canada.
Planters, Paupers, and Pioneers studies English immigration to Atlantic Canada over two centuries, beginning with the major movements of the eighteenth century. The New England Planters, along with the others of English ancestry who came as displaced people from the United States, are one strand of the story, while the English who arrived directly from England are another. Both groups played their part in the settlement of Atlantic Canada. Both retained a sense of their Englishness, although their attributes and values were very different. While most emigration was self-financed, a significant proportion of the people covered in this study were very poor. The English tendency of exporting paupers to Canada helped give Newfoundland its Devon and Dorset fishermen, Prince Edward Island its Suffolk farm workers, and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick their many Liverpool and Birmingham immigrants who arrived as mere children.
Philip Buckner’s various publications gave me an excellent grounding in the subject, while the provincial studies of Bruce Elliott relating to Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, Graham Hancock relating to Newfoundland, and Bernard Bailyn relating to Nova Scotia’s early Yorkshire influx, were the essential building blocks of my work. However, apart from these studies, little literature exists on the English in Atlantic Canada. No comprehensive study has been carried out thus far.
In seeking to develop the broader picture I have relied heavily on the wide-ranging primary sources to be found in English County Record Offices, the Canadian national and provincial archives, and in the Special Collections at English universities, especially the reports of Anglican and Methodist missionaries. However, one limitation is the incompleteness of the customs and shipping data, which has meant that accurate figures on the numbers who came from England cannot be given. The task of quantifying English immigration statistics was made even more difficult in Newfoundland by the fact that settlement had long been discouraged in order to safeguard the interests of the West Country merchants who controlled its economy.
English emigration to Atlantic Canada was driven partly by major economic changes taking place in England and partly by the lure of opportunities and benefits that emigrants hoped to obtain in their chosen destinations. However, each province had a different set of advantages and the emigrant streams from England worked to a different timescale. New Brunswick’s timber trade, Prince Edward Island’s shipbuilding industry, Newfoundland’s cod fishery, and Nova Scotia’s more diversified economy created distinctive regional patterns and directed concentrations of English settlers to many different areas.
Religion was a constant theme, but only in the sense that the Established Church of England had to play second fiddle to the newer nonconformist religions that had far greater appeal to settlers.
And some factors worked against settlement. The unsuccessful attempts by the ruling classes to establish feudal landholding regimes in Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia retarded settlement. The early take-up of much of Nova Scotia’s good agricultural land by Planters and Loyalists meant that it attracted relatively few English emigrants after the 1820s. As transport systems developed, the Maritime provinces faced increasing competition from Upper Canada’s much better land, and few emigrants came to Atlantic Canada after the mid-nineteenth century.
The English were characterized by their energy, enterprise, and determination. Their rugged independence meant that they fitted seamlessly into an egalitarian pioneer society. Their story deserves to be told and their lasting contribution recognized.
| AR | Acadian Recorder |
| BA | Berwick Advertiser |
| BCL | Birmingham Central Library |
| BM | Bristol Mercury |
| BRO | Berwick-upon-Tweed Record Office |
| DCB | Dictionary of Canadian Biography |
| DGC | Dumfries and Galloway Courier |
| DRO | Devon Record Office |
| DHC | Dorset History Centre |
| EC | Eastern Chronicle |
| HA | Hull Advertiser |
| HCA | Hull City Archives |
| LAC | Library and Archives Canada |
| LCA | Liverpool City Archives |
| LMS | London Missionary Society Papers |
| MHC | Mildred Howard collection, Public Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador |
| MMS | Methodist Missionary Society Papers |
| NAB | National Archives of Britain, Kew |
| NBC | New Brunswick Courier |
| NC | Newcastle Courant |
| NSARM | Nova Scotia Archives and Record Management |
| PANB | Provincial Archives of New Brunswick |
| PANL | Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador |
| PAPEI |
Public Archives
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