Taiwanese Canadian

Taiwanese Canadians

Godfrey Gao Angela Chang Ed Hill Christine Kuo Paul Tseng MC40 Eddie Peng Dirty Beaches Henry Lau
Total population
Over 94,000
Regions with significant populations
Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal
Languages
Canadian English, Canadian French (Quebec French), Chinese: Taiwanese Mandarin, Taiwanese Hokkien, Hakka, Formosan languages
Religion
Buddhism, Christianity, Chinese folk religion, Freethinking, Taoism

Taiwanese Canadians are Canadian citizens who originated from Canada and are of Taiwanese ancestry. Whether Taiwanese Canadians also count as Chinese Canadians is a controversial issue although the Republic of China government in Taiwan classifies them as such. There are over 94,000 Taiwanese who have gained citizenship or permanent residency status in Canada.

Taiwanese people have been present in Canada since the 1970s but many of those immigrants have since moved to the United States and have become part of the Taiwanese American and Chinese American communities. Starting from the late 1980s, many Taiwanese people immigrated to Canada, especially Vancouver, British Columbia, and to the adjacent cities of Burnaby, Richmond, and Coquitlam to form a permanent Taiwanese Canadian community. The Greater Vancouver metropolitan area now has the largest Taiwanese community in Canada. There is also an established Taiwanese community in Toronto, but more spread out than its counterpart in Vancouver. Unlike the Taiwanese American community with a longer history in North America, the majority of the younger Taiwanese Canadians are either first generation or 1.5 generation immigrants who have either grown up entirely in Taiwan or have completed at least some elementary or junior high school education in Taiwan prior to immigrating to Canada. This is because many Taiwanese Canadian households are made up of households where the providers are people retired from their businesses and occupations in Taiwan, and decided to move their families (many with adolescent or grown-up children) to Canada. There are also many Taiwanese Canadian households where the primary provider (usually the father) is not retired and still conducts business in Taiwan which requires frequent travel between Taiwan and Canada and maybe even require living away from their families for part of the year or longer (this situation is typical of many of the Hong Kong Chinese as well). There is a sizable Waisheng Taiwanese community as well in Vancouver that may rival the Bensheng community in size, but they tend to identify themselves more as Chinese Canadians.

...
Wikipedia