Books – Immigration
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The Search for a Socialist El Dorado
Finnish Immigration to Soviet Karelia from the United States and Canada in the 1930s
The untold story of the founding and subsequent destruction of a Finnish socialist community in the Soviet Union.
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Rewriting the Break Event
Mennonites and Migration in Canadian Literature
A thoughtful and engaging argument that re-situates the discourse of migrant writing in Canada.
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The Constructed Mennonite
History, Memory, and the Second World War
One man, four identities, and a son’s quest to reconcile the public and private histories of his Mennonite father in WWII.
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Storied Landscapes
Ethno-Religious Identity and the Canadian Prairies
Storied Landscapes is a beautifully written, sweeping examination of the evolving identity of major ethno-religious immigrant groups in the Canadian West. Viewed through the lens of attachment to the soil and specific place, and through the eyes of both the immigrant generation and its descendants, the book compares the settlement experiences of Ukrainians, Mennonites, Icelanders, Doukhobors, Germans, Poles, Romanians, Jews, Finns, Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes.
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Families, Lovers, and their Letters
Italian Postwar Migration to Canada
Families, Lovers, and their Letters takes us into the passionate hearts and minds of ordinary people caught in the heartbreak of transatlantic migration. It examines the experiences of Italian migrants to Canada and their loved ones left behind in Italy following the Second World War, when the largest migration of Italians to Canada took place.
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Sounds of Ethnicity
Listening to German North America, 1850 - 1914
Sounds of Ethnicity takes us into the linguistic, cultural, and geographical borderlands of German North America in the Great Lakes region between 1850 and 1914. Drawing connections between immigrant groups in Buffalo, New York, and Berlin (now Kitchener), Ontario, Barbara Lorenzkowski examines the interactions of language and music — specifically German-language education, choral groups, and music festivals—and their roles in creating both an ethnic sense of self and opportunities for cultural exchanges at the local, ethnic, and transnational levels.
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Imagined Homes
Soviet German Immigrants in Two Cities
Imagined Homes: Soviet German Immigrants in Two Cities is a study of the social and cultural integration of two migrations of German speakers from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to Winnipeg, Canada in the late 1940s, and Bielefeld, Germany in the 1970s. Employing a cross-national comparative framework, Hans Werner reveals that the imagined trajectory of immigrant lives influenced the process of integration into a new urban environment.
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My Parents
Memoirs of New World Icelanders
My Parents: Memoirs of New World Icelanders is a collection of essays written by second-generation Icelandic immigrants in North America, describing the lives of their parents. A prevailing sense of community emerges from the writers’ stories, showing how Icelandic culture and tradition sustained the immigrants through hardship, illness, and isolation. My Parents also details some of the genealogy of the New World Icelanders who settled in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Minnesota.
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Providence Watching
Journeys from Wartorn Poland to the Canadian Prairies
At the start of the Second World War, Poland was invaded by both the German and the Soviet armies. After the war, Canada accepted over 4000 Polish immigrant soldiers and their families who did not want to return to a communist regime in their country. This book is a moving oral history of the experiences of forty-five individuals during that transition period between the outbreak of war and their eventual relocation in Canada.
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Icelanders in North America
The First Settlers
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, thousands of Icelanders emigrated to both North and South America. Although the best known Icelandic settlements were in southern Manitoba, in the area that became known as “New Iceland,” Icelanders also established important settlements in Brazil, Minnesota, Utah, Wisconsin, Washington, Saskatchewan, and Nova Scotia. Earlier accounts of this immigration have tended to concentrate on the history of New Iceland. Using letters, Icelandic and English periodicals and newspapers, census reports, and archival repositories, Jonas Thor expands this view by looking at Icelandic immigration from a continent-wide perspective.
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