Polish Canadians

Polish Canadians are Citizens of Canada with Polish ancestry, and Poles who immigrated to Canada from abroad. According to the 2011 Census by Statistics Canada, there were 1,010,705 Canadians who claimed full or partial Polish ancestry, an increase compared to the 984,585 recorded in 2001.

History

The first Polish immigrant on record, Dominik Barcz, came to Canada in 1752. He was a fur merchant from Gdańsk who settled in Montreal. He was followed in 1757 by Charles Blaskowicz, a deputy surveyor-general of lands. In 1776 arrived army surgeon, August Franz Globensky. His grandson, Charles Auguste Maximilien Globensky, was elected to the House of Commons in Ottawa in 1875.

Among the earliest Polish immigrants to Canada were members of the Watt and De Meuron military regiments from Saxony and Switzerland sent overseas to help the British Army in North America. Several were émigrés from Poland who took part in the November Uprising of 1830 and the 1863 insurrection against the Russian occupation of their own homeland.

Canadians

Canadians (French: Canadiens) are the people who are identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical, or cultural. For most Canadians, several (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being Canadian.

Canada is a multiethnic society home to people of many different ethnic and national origins, with the majority of the population made up of Old World immigrants and their descendants. Following the initial period of French and then the much larger British colonization, different waves (or peaks) of immigration and settlement of non-aboriginal peoples took place over the course of nearly two centuries and continue today. Elements of Aboriginal, French, British and more recent immigrant customs, languages and religions have combined to form the culture of Canada and thus a Canadian identity. Canada has also been strongly influenced by its linguistic, geographic and economic neighbour, the United States.