Assyrians in Canada

Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac Canadians are Canadians of Assyrian descent. The community has a history in Canada dating back to 1902, with most arriving due ethnic and religious conflicts, leaving Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.

History

The migration to Canada may be broken up into a number of distinct periods: early settlement and the subsequent waves of migration sparked by the Assyrian genocide and, more recently, the Iraq War. The last 2006 Census Canada counted 8,650 . Other sources claimed that only the Chaldean Catholic Assyrians are more than 38,000 in Canada. One of the earliest settlements was in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. In 1902, about one hundred Assyrians from Stavropol came to the town for farming labor opportunities. The first period of known mass-migration came just after the Assyrian Genocide in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire. The second and perhaps largest wave of migration into came during the Iran-Iraq War. Under the shadow of war, Saddam Hussein's al-Anfal Campaign constituted a major force for migration for Iraq's Assyrian population.

Identity

There is often a misconception regarding the term Syrian and Assyrian. While Syrian traditionally refers to people from Syria regardless of whether Arab or another...
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