In future Canada is going to be careful in selecting her people, the High Commissioner for Canada, Mr. G. H. Ferguson, former Prime Minister of Ontario, said yesterday when he opened the Canadian display at the Empire Shop at Birmingham. They were not going to have an open door for all nationalities, he declared. They wanted to maintain the domination of British blood and British stock.
Immigration had been suspended for a time, the High Commissioner continued. They thought that people in distress were perhaps more comfortable at home than among strangers and it would be a great mistake to mislead the public in Great Britain by saying that, at the present time, there were opportunities in Canada. For the next couple of years they did not think it was wise for people to go to Canada unless they had ample capital. Canada had felt the general depression, he concluded, but would emerge from the present foggy state more quickly than any other country in the world because she depended on raw materials.
“There are those who attempt to cast a slur on the foreign population of Canada. No British subject is anxious to see an undue proportion of foreigners in Canada, but the foreign population of Canada has added much to its art, its music, its crafts and its education”, Mr. Bruce Walker, Director of Canadian Immigration in Europe, said speaking in London before the Royal Empire Society at the end of 1928.
“Those of us who know the ‘foreigner’ at close quarters”, he said, “have been struck by a few things that even some of our English brothers could afford to contemplate-sobriety, industry, thrift, cleanliness and loyalty to the flag”.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
