Syrian, Middle East immigrants developed northern Ontario, museum curator says
Timmins Museum curator Karen Bachmann says Syrians were opening businesses in the north in early 1900s
Syrians and other immigrants from the Middle East had a profound impact on northern Ontario, according to the curator of the museum in Timmins, Ont.
Using assessment rolls and other directories from the early 1900s, Karen Bachmann said that among the Finns, Germans, Italians and other European immigrants, were people from Syria, as well as people identified in historical documents as Hebrew.
"They were doing things like opening up businesses. [They were] merchants and saloon keepers, hotel owners, people who were selling to the mining community," she said.
Last week, Timmins-James Bay MP Charlie Angus posted on Facebook, saying "Syrians built northern Ontario," pointing out communities like Cobalt, Kirkland Lake, Cochrane and Timmins.
By 1925, Bachmann said Timmins had a population of 15,000 — about 150 people listed on a directory that year were from Syria and 200 were identified as Jewish.
The immigrants largely worked as local entrepreneurs, she said, adding that immigrants from modern-day Siberia, the Netherlands, China and what is now known as Yugoslavia also played important roles.
"We're already welcoming all of the world to us," she said. "I don't see why we can't be doing so now."
Immigration from the Middle East started in earnest after the First World War, Bachmann said, during the breakdown of the former Ottoman Empire.
"All of the breaking up of the Middle East at that point [created] what we know now as the Middle East, but that was a very tumultuous time," she said.
"So these were people who needed to get out of there," she said. "They made the move and a lot of them went to Montreal [or] Toronto and then came up to northern Ontario because there were opportunities here."
A town like Kirkland Lake even had its own Syrian community centre at the time, Bachmann said.
"There was a respect for these people ... they were a part of the community," she added.
"It wasn't a segregated kind of thing."
