Click on the title of this article to view an excellent interactive map illustrating immigration and mother tongue data from the StatsCan report on the 2006 Census. (Courtesy the Canadian Press, via CBC.)

While checking it out, keep in mind this interesting fact from the 2006 Census:
93.6 per cent of Canadian immigrants can speak either English or French.

It tends to rather put things in perspective.
Not such a tower of Babel, eh?


Article: Creative Commons License 2008 Gavin Barrett



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.

The 2006 census shows that between 2001 and 2006:

58.3 per cent of all immigrants came from Asia,
including the Middle East.
16.1 per cent came from Europe.
10.8 per cent came from the Caribbean, and Central and South America.
And 10.6 per cent hailed from Africa.

The foreign-born account for 19.8 per cent of Canada's population,
the highest it has been in 75 years.
Australia is the only country in the world with a higher percentage,
with 22.2 per cent not born in Australia.
The United States' foreign-born population by comparison
is just 12.5 per cent.



Source: StatsCan, Census 2006
Article and pie chart: Creative Commons License 2008 Gavin Barrett



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.

More than 200 different ethnic origins were reported in the 2006 Census. 11 ethnic origins have grown beyond one million in population. The largest group was composed of the 10 million people who reported Canadian as their ethnic ancestry, either alone (5.7 million) or with other origins (4.3 million).

Approximately 5,068,100 belong to the visible minority population accounting for 16.2% of the total population of Canada.

Due to the increasing number of recent immigrants from non-European countries, the visible minority population grew faster than the total population. The visible minority population grew at a rate of 27.2%, five times faster than the total which only only grew at 5.4%.

75.0% of all immigrants who arrived between 2001 and 2006 belonged to a visible minority group.

South Asians are now Canada's largest visible minority group, surpassing the Chinese. Both groups are over one million.
An estimated 1,262,900 individuals say they are South Asian, representing one-quarter (24.9%) of all visible minorities, or 4.0% of the total population in Canada. The Chinese accounted for 24.0% of the visible minority population and 3.9% of the total Canadian population. The chart above shows the composition of Canada's visible minorities - the numbers shown are percentages, rounded up.

In the census metropolitan area of Toronto, 42.9 per cent identified themselves as a visible minority and a total of 27.8 per cent of the visible minority population was born in Canada.

South Asians account for 684,070, followed by Chinese 486,325 and black 352,220.



Article and pie chart: Creative Commons License 2008 Gavin Barrett



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.

No, it's not Lucy's husband.

Hindi in origin, desi literally means countryman and is used to refer to people and things that are of South Asian origin. If you belong to gen HipHop think of it as the South Asian equivalent of homeboy or homie. It's a derivation of the Hindi word desh which means country. Used between South Asians in much the same way that Italians refer to each other as paisans. It's a handy word because, when used colloquially, it crosses boundaries and groups various South Asian nationalities together.

Article: Creative Commons License 2008 Gavin Barrett



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.

Blessed are those who see but do not jump to believe. Click the article title to play this provocative spot by Avion Films' Mike Thompson.