German Canadian
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (3,203,330 (by ancestry, 2011 Census)) |
|
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Ontario, Western Canada, Atlantic Canada, Quebec | |
| Languages | |
| English, French, and German | |
| Religion | |
| Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Mennonite, Hutterite | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Germans, German Americans |
German Canadians (German: Deutsch-Kanadier or Deutschkanadier) are Canadian citizens of ethnic German ancestry. The 2006 Canadian census put the number of Canadians of some German ethnicity at 3,179,425. Some immigrants came from what is today Germany, while larger numbers came from German settlements in Central Europe and Russia; others came from former parts of the German Confederation like German-Austria and some emigrated from Switzerland.
After the fall of New France a smaller number of Germans who had fought for prince-elector king George III during the Revolutionary War stayed in North America and mixed with the French-Canadians. However, the first major round of German immigration to Canada began already after the British conquest of Nova Scotia. Many Germans had served in the British army and elected to settle in the new lands. Far more arrived as some of the Foreign Protestants. These were continental Protestants encouraged to come to Nova Scotia to counterbalance the large number of Catholic Acadians. This influx began in about 1751 and to this day the South Shore of Nova Scotia is filled with German town names, surnames, and Lutheran churches. The Little Dutch (Deutsch) Church in Halifax, located on land set aside for the German-speaking community in 1752, was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1997 as the oldest known surviving church in Canada associated with the German Canadian community.
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Wikipedia