Five Immigrant Waves: Their Ideological Orientations and Partisan Reverberations

This article identifies five waves of Canadian immigration over four centuries and connects them with their dominant political outlooks and partisan expressions. Taking a panoramic historical perspective, it locates immigrant groups in their regionally concentrated settings and connects Old and New World ideological currents. Immigrants proved to be formative and continuing influences in Canadian party politics by establishing and sustaining parties identifiable today. Ripples within the immigrant waves meant that their ideological orientations were neither monolithic nor static. Some of the immigrant groups in the first four waves were charter ones; they determined what other groups would be admitted and they established political parties that are identifiable today. The fifth wave, coming since the Second World War, has not ideologically reoriented party politics nor created new parties, but it has compelled the established parties to reorient themselves to and accommodate its presence. Political personalities and newspapers are presented as reflectors of their wave's ideological bias. Differentials in the political participation in the fifth, or global, wave are noted.