Canada Is More Than One Story
Canada’s history runs far deeper and wider than most of us were ever taught — here are some of the stories that didn’t make it into the textbooks
Happy Canada Day.
It’s worth pausing for a moment today — not just to celebrate, but to think about who and what we’re actually celebrating. Because Canada’s story has always been far more layered than the homogenous version most of us learned in school.
It’s also worth acknowledging that today is not a celebration for everyone. For many Indigenous peoples — the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities whose histories go back long before Confederation — July 1st carries pain as well as complexity. That’s a part of the fuller picture too.
But there is so much more of that fuller picture worth knowing — and Canada Day is as good a day as any to get curious about it. This country was built by people from every corner of the world, many of whom have been here for generations, whose grandparents and great-grandparents only ever knew Canada as home. Their stories are Canadian stories. They’re just not always the ones that made it into the textbooks.
Here are a few of them. And at the end of this post, a plain-language guide to surfing safely — so you can follow your curiosity wherever it leads.
Stories this country doesn’t always tell
Black Canadians: here before Canada was Canada — up to 9 or 10 generations
Most people know the broad outlines of the Underground Railroad — but the deeper story starts even earlier, in Nova Scotia, in 1783. After the American Revolution, over 3,000 Black men, women, and children who had fought for the British Crown in exchange for the promise of freedom and land made their way to Nova Scotia. They formed the largest free Black community outside Africa at the time. They were called the Black Loyalists. They arrived before Confederation by 84 years. Their descendants are still there. These families are now 9 or 10 generations Canadian.
Then came the Underground Railroad. Between roughly 1820 and 1861, somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 people escaped slavery in the United States and made their way north — through a secret network of safe houses, sympathizers, and coded signals. They settled across Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, building churches, schools, and communities that still exist today. Families whose ancestors settled in communities like Owen Sound, Ontario in the early 1850s have been in Canada longer than Canada has been a country. Those families are now 6 or 7 generations deep. There are forgotten cemeteries in Ontario where Black families have been buried for nearly two centuries.
And then there is Alberta. Black settlers — many from Oklahoma and Texas, fleeing violence and segregation — homesteaded communities like Amber Valley, north of Edmonton, starting in 1910. The cowboy culture of the Canadian West that everyone thinks of as white? Historians estimate roughly a quarter of the cowboys who drove cattle north into Alberta were Black. John Ware, one of the most skilled ranchers in Alberta’s history, is among the most famous Albertans that most Canadians have never heard of. Nova Scotia, Ontario, Alberta — three provinces, three eras, one continuous story that Canadian history class barely touched.
Chinese Canadians: they built the railway that built the country — 5 or 6 generations
In the early 1880s, approximately 17,000 Chinese labourers came to Canada to complete the most dangerous section of the Canadian Pacific Railway — blasting through the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia. They were paid a fraction of what white workers earned and given the most hazardous work. Without them, the railway — promised as a condition of British Columbia joining Confederation — could not have been completed.
Once the railway was finished, Canada thanked them with the Chinese Head Tax — a fee charged to virtually no other nationality, raised from $50 in 1885 to $500 by 1903 (roughly a year’s wages for a Chinese labourer at the time). Between 1885 and 1923, approximately 81,000 Chinese immigrants paid this tax. Then came the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1923, which nearly banned Chinese immigration altogether for over two decades. A federal apology came only in 2006 — 121 years after the first head tax was levied. Today, Chinese Canadians number over 1.7 million, with families that have been here for 5 or 6 generations.
Sikh Canadians: they fought for a country that wouldn’t let them vote — 4 or 5 generations
Sikh Canadians have been here since the late 1800s — and ten Sikh men served in the Canadian Army during the First World War, at a time when the Canadian government denied South Asian people the right to vote or become citizens. Private Buckam Singh, recognized as the first Sikh man to enlist with the Canadian army, was wounded twice in battle and is said to have been treated by Dr. John McCrae — the man who wrote In Flanders Fields. Singh died in Kitchener, Ontario in 1919. His grave at Mount Hope Cemetery is the only known First World War grave of a Sikh Canadian soldier in the country. His medals sat in a British pawn shop for nearly a century before a historian found them.
Canada now has one of the largest Sikh populations in the world outside India — over 500,000 people — with communities that go back 4 or 5 generations. In 2025, Canada Post issued a commemorative stamp honouring over a century of Sikh contributions to the Canadian Armed Forces.
Arab Canadians: here since 1882, and almost nobody knows it — 5 or 6 generations
The first documented Lebanese immigrant to Canada was a 19-year-old named Ibrahim Abou Nadir, who arrived in Montreal in 1882 and began walking door to door across Quebec and Ontario selling dry goods and textiles. He arrived with Ottoman papers — Lebanon didn’t exist yet as a country — so the Canadian government classified him as a “Turk.” The early Arab settlers were mostly young Christian men from what is now Lebanon and Syria, drawn first to Montreal and then spreading across the country as pedlars and shopkeepers. By 1912 there were approximately 7,000 Arabs in Canada, in cities from Halifax to Edmonton.
A Syrian trader nicknamed “the Arctic Arab” by Indigenous peoples moved to Edmonton in 1907 and travelled the North trading with First Nations communities. Syrian settlers homesteaded in Manitoba alongside their Indigenous neighbours — one family learned food preservation techniques from local Anishinabe women while growing vegetables from seeds they had brought from Syria. Canada’s first mosque was built in Edmonton in 1938. These families are now 5 or 6 generations Canadian, and almost no one outside their own communities knows they were here.
And there is so much more
These four stories are just a starting point. Here are some of the others:
- Japanese Canadians have been on Canada’s west coast since the late 1800s. In 1942, the Canadian government forcibly removed all 22,000 of them from their homes — the majority Canadian-born citizens — seized and sold their property, and sent them to internment camps. The war ended in 1945 but they weren’t allowed to return to the west coast until 1949. A formal apology came in 1988.
- Jewish Canadians have been here since the 1700s — the oldest known Jewish grave in Montreal dates to 1776. When Jewish refugees were fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930s, Canada’s immigration minister was asked how many Jews Canada would accept. His answer: “None is too many.” Jewish Canadians have been in this country for 10 or more generations and that history is almost never taught.
- Ukrainian Canadians broke the Prairies starting in the 1890s, building farms and communities across Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba — and were then interned by their own adopted country during the First World War.
- South Asian Canadians in BC go back to the early 1900s, with Punjabi communities working in lumber, mining, and railways decades before most Canadians knew they were here.
- Vietnamese Canadians arrived after 1975 as refugees, many sponsored by Canadian churches and families, and rebuilt their lives from nothing.
- Filipino Canadians are one of the largest and fastest-growing communities in Canada, with roots going back several generations. Heavily concentrated in Manitoba and BC, they are a community whose deep history here is rarely taught.
- Caribbean Canadians and many others trace their Canadian story to 1967 — the year Canada replaced its racially discriminatory immigration policy with a points-based system that evaluated people on their skills and education, regardless of where they were born. Six years later, a 1973 amnesty allowed approximately 39,000 undocumented immigrants already living and working here to apply for permanent residency.
These are just a few of the threads. There are so many more.
The 2021 census from Statistics Canada recorded over 450 distinct ethnic or cultural origins reported by Canadians — and more than 450 languages are spoken here. One in four Canadians has a mother tongue other than English or French.
None of this is recent. It didn’t start in the 1990s. It has always been who Canada is.
Where to look it up — and how to know it’s safe
This is exactly what the internet is good for. And you don’t have to limit yourself to any list — the internet is full of good history, written by historians, journalists, and communities telling their own stories. The goal isn’t to stay inside a safe little box. The goal is to feel confident enough to follow your curiosity wherever it leads.
Here’s the one thing worth knowing before you start: look at the web address before you click anything. A web address ending in .ca is a Canadian website. One ending in .gc.ca is the Government of Canada. Those two endings are your most reliable signal that you’re on solid ground. If a site asks you to log in, create an account, or enter personal information just to read an article — close the tab. Good history sites don’t ask for that.
If you’re ever unsure about a site, the easiest thing to do is close it and try a different one. You won’t break anything. Nothing bad happens from closing a tab.
To get you started, here are five well-established Canadian institutions — all free, all reliable, no account required:
- The Canadian Encyclopedia (thecanadianencyclopedia.ca) — free, readable, well-sourced articles on every community, event, and person mentioned in this post and thousands more
- CBC Archives (cbc.ca/archives) — decades of radio, television, and journalism on Canadian history and culture, including oral histories from communities whose stories are often overlooked
- Library and Archives Canada (bac-lac.gc.ca) — the national record, including immigration documents, photographs, and genealogical resources going back centuries
- Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 (pier21.ca) — stories of people who came to Canada from every part of the world, told in their own words where possible
- Canadian Museum for Human Rights (humanrights.ca) — including deep coverage of the Chinese head tax, Japanese internment, and other chapters of Canadian history that deserve to be understood
These are starting points, not boundaries. Once you’re comfortable with how a trustworthy site looks and feels, you’ll recognize that same quality elsewhere. Follow one question. See where it takes you.
From me to you
Happy Canada Day — to all the people this country is made of. I hope your summer is warm, and full of the stories that matter most to you. 🍁
⚠ Disclaimer
This article is for general information and awareness only. Historical accounts are drawn from publicly available Canadian sources including Statistics Canada, The Canadian Encyclopedia, CBC, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, and the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21. The Lady Tech is not affiliated with any organizations mentioned. Website links were active as of July 1, 2026.
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