by Kurt Korneski
Winnipeg, Manitoba
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On 1 January 1947 the Canadian Citizenship Act, the legal basis for citizenship in Canada, came into effect. To celebrate the passage of the Act, politicians, diplomats, and other officials carried out citizenship ceremonies across the country. CKY Radio in Winnipeg provided listeners with a live broadcast of the Winnipeg ceremony which took place on 10 January 1947. The following document represents substantive portions of a transcription of that broadcast. In part, the Act was significant because it replaced ad hoc and ambiguous legislation (in particular the Immigration Act of 1910, the Naturalization Act of 1914, and the Canadian Nationals Act of 1921) that had defined who officially “belonged” to the Canadian community before 1947. [1] As the Winnipeg ceremony demonstrates, however, there was much more at stake than formal politico-legal procedures. Indeed, the timing of this decision to make a formal statement about “who Canadians were and what they should become” was a response to decades of instability and uncertainty. [2] The disillusionment of the post 1918 decades, combined with the near total collapse of the global capitalist order in the late 1920s, provided fuel for political movements of both the left and the right in Canada and elsewhere. In 1945 allied forces finally secured a military victory over the Axis powers. But the kind of political and social order in Canada, and in international affairs had yet to be established.
Working-class men and women, many of whom spent several years fighting or losing loved ones in a second “struggle for democracy,” took up with greater vigilance their prewar demands for a more humane existence. Indeed, they undertook what still stands as the most intense period of labour upheaval in Canadian history. [3] Taken in combination with the fact that socialist societies emerged from the war as some of the foremost powers in the world, this period of uncertainty and instability inspired middle class men like those who led the ceremony to articulate and to seek support for their vision of the future.
Two themes are worth mentioning. First, the older ideal of assimilating a culturally diverse populace into an Anglo-Canadian norm was giving way to a more tolerant, if still implicitly chauvinistic, view that might be termed protomulticulturalism. All speakers argued that Canada was a composite of many groups, each of which brought traditions that enriched and informed the character of the nation as a whole. They also argued that the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. That is, they suggested that what unified a populace divided not only along ethnic, but also along class lines, was that all were defined by certain qualities, and the definition of those qualities served to legitimize a particular type of political order. Canadians were the “type” of people best suited to an existence in a liberal democratic state (as opposed to the fascist or communist states that had been and, in 1947 still were, popular in other parts of the globe). These leaders also acknowledged that citizenship was about duties and privileges and they put forth a new vision of the role of the state itself. In the postwar period, the efficacy of the state (and the degree to which Canadians owed it allegiance) would be connected to its ability to provide citizens with a reasonable quality of life, a quality of life that, as John Bracken noted, surpassed that afforded by other models of social organization.
The ceremony, then, must be understood as an effort to celebrate a significant step in the constitutional history of “the nation.” It also should be viewed as part of a broader negotiation. In this process a host of contenders sought to imbue a fundamentally contestable concept with meanings that favoured their own political, economic, and social interests. The middle class men who spoke at the ceremony provided evidence that there remained in Canada a strong commitment to the project that the Fathers of Confederation laid out in 1867. They also indicated how changing local and global realities were refashioning the Canadian community.
Citizenship Ceremony, 10 January 1947: From CKY Radio Collection C 759 - C760 Tape 36-37, transcribed by Kurt Korneski.
Introduction by Provincial Secretary: My lord, the Canadian Citizenship Act has now come into force as of January 1, 1947 providing a full and complete definition of Canadian citizenship. Under this act all persons naturalized heretofore, all British subjects domiciled in Canada, and all brides of Canadian servicemen are declared to be Canadian citizens. The act also provides that persons other than Canadian born may become Canadian citizens … The act provides that certificates of Canadian citizenship may be provided to persons acquiring Canadian citizenship and also to previously naturalized or natural born Canadians if they desire or require them.
We are … today presenting a number of Canadian citizenship certificates to a representative group of people to illustrate that while we are all bound together by the ties and interests of Canadians we may also retain from our various backgrounds something of the traditions and the cultures of many lands and peoples which helped to build up Canada a stronger nation of better men and women. It is therefore a great honour to present to you a group of people who have applied for Canadian citizenship. None of these people are born in Canada, and none of them have heretofore been British subjects. They have been duly examined by the proper authorities and have been found to be fit persons to accept the privileges and responsibilities of Canadian citizenship.
Esten Kenneth Williams, Chief Justice of the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench, presided at the citizenship ceremony held on 10 January 1947.
Source: University of Manitoba Archives, PC-18, 18-10674-002.
Chief Justice: Before I administer the oath of allegiance it is incumbent upon me to make certain that you understand the nature of the obligations you are about to undertake. The oath of allegiance is simple and plain. It means exactly what it says. By repeating them now you have publicly renounced all of your loyalty and services which heretofore you may have owed some other foreign country or government. You now become a Canadian citizen, and with this oath of allegiance you bind yourself to all of your fellow Canadians in common loyalty to His Majesty the King in common observance of the laws of this land and in the common performance of those duties which if faithfully undertaken promote the common good. Whatever rights and privileges pertain to Canadian citizenship are yours as long as you faithfully fulfill what you undertake. But I would be remiss in my duty to you if I did not remind you that every right enjoyed by you brings a corresponding responsibility. Every measure of freedom demands an equal measure of self control, and every benefit of equality requires that acceptance of mutual responsibility. It is only as you are willing fully to accept these obligations that the common good, your welfare and mine and the welfare of our children can be ensured.
Provincial Secretary: My lord, it is now my privilege to present to you a second group of persons. These persons were all born outside of Canada but have since been naturalized or were British subjects who have become domiciled in Canada.
Various people called
Provincial Secretary: My lord, it is now my privilege to call before you to receive certificates of Canadian citizenship three persons all of whom are well known in Manitoba. These men were born in Canada and are Canadian born British subjects. … We are presenting these three with citizenship certificates to illustrate the fact that even those who have no other home or loyalty are now for the first time able to call themselves Canadian citizens in law as well as in fact.
Various people called
Stuart Garson: My lord, ladies and gentleman, it is with great pride and yet, in view of what we’ve witnessed this afternoon a considerable humility of spirit, that as a Canadian citizen I rise to give thanks to you sir for the thoughtful charge that you have addressed to us this afternoon … But I realize that on this particular occasion we are celebrating something more than merely the granting of certificates in the ordinary way … We are using these certificates as symbols in the ceremonious celebration of the passing and the becoming effective of the Canada naturalization act under which we shall in this country no longer have English Canadians, Scotch Canadians, or French Canadians, or new Canadians but all just Canadians.
Premier Stuart Sinclair Garson attended the citizenship ceremony in 1947.
Source: Archives of Manitoba, Personalities, S. S. Garson #3.
Now my lord there are those of us who think that perhaps the Act is the more welcome because it is perhaps a little overdue. I’m sure that there are men in this audience today who have found that before the passing of the Act that the giving to census takers and the like of one’s national and racial derivation is a very complex problem in veracity. I know that in my own case with my maternal ancestors having been pursued out of the United States at the time of the American Revolution because they backed the King’s party rather than the revolutionary party. And with my paternal ancestors coming from a little island in the North Sea that had been exposed to Viking raids, Scottish settlement and the remnants of the Spanish Armada that to state truthfully what one’s racial and national origins was is a matter of some complexity, and now, we won’t have to search the past for the honoured nationality of our honoured ancestors, but we can say looking at only the present and the future that we are Canadians all. And [I] can say, … in answer to the census takers and other officials that I am a Canadian citizen. …
My lord, it was about five centuries before the Christian era that the ancient Greeks first extricated the science of political philosophy from the superstition and mythology with which it had formerly been bound up, and from that time until the present many are the political doctrines that have waxed and waned … But, throughout all of these doctrines or nearly all of them it is most remarkable that the conception of citizenship has remained basically much the same. That is, that citizenship is a compound of rights and duties neither of which can be divorced from the other except to the detriment of the citizenship and the state in which that citizenship is exercised ... I think that it is safe to say that in all recorded history it is very questionable as to whether there has ever been a time when the balance between rights and duties has been as favorable to the individual as it is in Canada in 1947. And this balance between our rights and duties in citizenship constitutes that freedom which is the greatest glory of the British tradition. Now, that freedom and the democratic form of government which protects it are not immortal … We have but to cast our minds back to the first Great War which, as you will recall, was fought to make the world safe for democracy and when, as a result of it, the great autocratic empires of Germany, Austria, and Russia disappeared from the face of the earth and in their place in most of the states of Europe democratic governments were set up in their stead. We might have thought then that the purposes for which that war had been fought had been fulfilled. But what happened? The citizenship of the peoples of these newly erected democratic states, exposed it is true to environments that were desperately trying, proved too much for that citizenship and as a result Primo de Rivera in Spain, Mussolini in Italy, Lenin in Russia, Hitler in Germany, [Englebert] Dollfuss in Austria, King Alexander in Yugoslavia, and others could be named, one by one overthrew democratic governments which were inefficient and in some cases corrupt and replaced them with ruthless dictatorships that provided stable government. Why was it that freedom was of such short duration? … I think that it is not an oversimplification to say that the peoples of these newly erected states, unaccustomed to the democratic tradition, were unable to discharge the terribly heavy responsibilities that democratic government always makes upon its citizens. Responsibilities which are much heavier perhaps than we realize because we are accustomed to them. But it is harder to operate a democracy so far as the individual is concerned. … Well, these other democracies survived but a few years but Canada did not collapse. Under more favourable conditions perhaps it is true but we as a new nation have survived two great wars and in both of them in our war effort, both on the home front and on the war front, have given an account of ourselves which has won the acclaims of other peoples and other governments the world over … I think, my lord, that without being unduly smug, we can take considerable pride in our democracy in this province and in this city of Greater Winnipeg.
Provincial Secretary: The following people desire to receive certificates of the Canadian citizenship they automatically acquired with the new Citizenship Act that came into force January the first.
Calling of various people
Chief Justice: You ladies and gentlemen in this class do hear what you’ve … it’s no new thing to you. It is rather a reaffirmation of what your lives have been like up to the present time. It is to your great credit that you’ve not sought to keep your gifts narrowly for yourselves but that you’ve given them freely to the life of us all. The Fathers of Confederation laid the foundations of our freedom and our opportunities. It has come to be that this nation has been enriched by the loyalty and sacrifices of persons who have come from many lands. To each this nation has given an opportunity to live, and grow, and share in the common weal. From each Canada has accepted the gifts of diverse cultures and made them into an enduring heritage. And, from sea to sea this rich inheritance is yours as it is mine because we are all Canadians. It gives me great pleasure to present to you the visible and legal proof of your citizenship.
Calling of various people
Mayor Coulter: If there be any who doubt that, if there be any who ask for proof, they can look about them and what do they see? They see a government … a city … which in its competence and integrity of administration has always had a record second to none. Which owns its own hydroelectric system in a sound and flourishing position. They see a province with a hydro and telephone system and radio station and the like also in flourishing conditions. They see in both wars heavy voluntary enlistments of all classes and conditions. They see unsurpassed support of the Red Cross and other such communal efforts. Great social projects were carried out in our city by the voluntary efforts of all kinds and conditions of citizens - rich and poor, high and low - working together, voluntarily devoting their time to the benefit of the community. These are things that are impossible in any sickly or indifferent or moribund democracy … And all of these accomplishments that I speak of in the city of Winnipeg have been carried out in a community that, I suppose, is at least as cosmopolitan as any other community in Canada … Now, we who are here today … have stemmed from many different countries, from many different cultures, and each one of these countries has made its contribution towards the Canadian culture. But no matter whence our forefathers came, nor what the difference may be between our background and our outlooks, I think there is one thing we all have in common and that is a burning desire to support freedom. Our forefathers came to Canada, explored, pioneered, endured privation, laboured, to what purpose? To be free. That they and their descendants might be free. Well, we as their children are free, and free, my lord, we are determined to remain. And, therefore, I thank you from the bottom of my heart on behalf of all those who have received certificates today and myself for these certificates of freedom.
Chief Justice: The Honorable Mr. Glen
Glen: Mr. Chief Justice, ladies and gentlemen at a ceremony similar to this held in Ottawa Friday last in the Supreme Court and presided over by the Chief Justice of Canada, one of those who received a certificate of citizenship was the Prime Minister of Canada, the Right Honourable W. L. M. King. It was all together a fitting and proper and appropriate token of the importance and the historic significance of the provisions of the Citizenship Act which came into being on the first of January last, that in our own Supreme Court the Prime Minister should appear and receive his certificate of citizenship, and the prime minister in his address later to that gallery was apparently deeply conscious of his status as such. His first sentence being “I speak as a citizen of Canada.” I would not like to use exaggerated language but I believe the year 1947 in which this Act begins marks with the indelible seal of historical fact an outstanding event in the life of our nation since the Confederation of eighteen hundred and sixty seven … When the Prime Minister received his certificate, he received it as one born in Canada. When I received my certificate today it was granted to one who was an immigrant to Canada almost 36 years ago. I along with many thousands in Canada may be allowed, I hope, to feel a modest pride in the fact that those who are born here had no choice but we immigrants chose Canada as our home. And I say with heartfelt thanks and gratitude that if I had now to make the decision that I made 36 years ago, my sole and only choice of all the countries on the globe would be Canada and within Canada, Manitoba.
Little did I know when I sailed from Scotland to Canada what was in store for me. I had no money, I had no position. All I had was youth and health and as a background the somewhat stern and rigid discipline of a simple Scottish home. I recall vividly the word of a friend before I sailed. He presented me with a copy of the life and poems of Robert Burns. “Remember Scotland’s history but when you get to Canada be a Canadian.” I did become a Canadian and the rewards I received from Canada have been far beyond my desserts. I was an immigrant then; I am now the Minister of Immigration in the Dominion of Canada. I sometimes muse and wonder how it all happened, and uppermost is the thought that in this great and wonderful country there are today as great opportunities as at any time in our history for those who have the will to seek the decent things of life. I have found in Canada, as every immigrant will find who comes to her shores, a country based and founded on a great experiment a mere eighty years ago, seeming but a day in the life of a nation, and from which has stemmed nine provinces and which together form Canada. Those Fathers as we now name them, if it were possible that they could see Canada today with living eyes, would view it with incredulous wonder. They built better than they knew. Their successors the makers of Canada, with the daring, the courage, and irresistible, tireless spirit of pioneer adventurers, have hewn out a high civilization from sea to sea and are now rolling back further and further the northern frontiers of this country. These immigrants will also find in Canada a people not so much concerned with what you have as with what you are – a nation conscious of a great destiny before it proved it beyond question in the last titanic crucible of war. The equal of the best in initiative, courage, wisdom and character. A country seeking and finding the way of life best suited to the genius of its people. But this certificate of citizenship, which I am glad to have, is a symbol which gives its owners the privileges of which I have spoken, carries with it corresponding obligations. We are the heirs of that heritage and the fruits of the effort of the makers of Canada. And it is a very hard thing though, that in the great testing time of war our citizens of every race demonstrated decisively that that heritage was precious enough to fight for and in many cases to die for. One of the most moving moments of that ceremony in Ottawa was the reception given to Mrs. Mynarski, a Canadian of Polish descent, who received the Victoria Cross which her son would have worn if he had lived and who is now receiving a certificate of Canadian citizenship. The highest personages in the land paid homage to that lady in a special way. And I personally was proud of the fact that she was a Manitoban, as was her gallant son.
A group of unidentified men welcome “10,000th immigrant” Elizabeth Eck at Winnipeg’s Union Station, 28 December 1949.
Source: Archives of Manitoba, Mansell Peter Hambly Collection #23, NS4.1.23.
Mr. Chief Justice you said that the oath of allegiance that an applicant must take means exactly what it says … An individual who seeks and obtains a certificate undertakes to fulfil the duties and responsibilities of citizenship which in general terms consists of taking a place in the affairs and welfare of the community in which he lives, making a contribution to the affairs of the province, and seeking to fulfill in its entirety the necessities of the state. Whether for good or ill, and I believe good, the world is now tending toward a community of nations, and it is certain that the affairs of and the relations among nations have a wider world effect never so recognized. Canada by virtue of her great and inestimable contribution in the last war together with her geographical position, a unique and powerful place in the British Commonwealth and the acknowledged importance of her voice and opinion the deliberations of the United Nations inevitably portends that we must take a larger and much more important part in world affairs. That part will increase and become more important still. The ravages of a cruel war are yet upon us. The obligations incurred by us are not yet outlined or identified in definite form. The complex issues of peace remain, and in fact it seems to be accepted as a truism that the world is now entering upon a new era … The ceremony that is being enacted today in this era comes at a very timely moment. And that in this new year a new era one and all rededicate ourselves to the service of the land we love, the land we live in - Canada.
Chief Justice: Mr. Bracken
Bracken: Mr. Chief Justice, fellow Canadians I am sure it is a very great pleasure to have this opportunity of coming back to Manitoba and to Winnipeg once again … I am particularly happy that my first words here can be words of welcome to those who for the first time can call themselves citizens of this country. I congratulate them because they chose to become citizens of Canada … We accept them in Canada today as equals under the law, [and] equal opportunity within the law, and we ask of them only respect for the law and the acceptance of the responsibilities that go with Canadian citizenship … I have been asked to say a brief word with respect to … the effect of Canadian citizenship outside our national boundaries. We’re living today in a different world from that … following the First World War. A different world from what it was when we entered upon the Second World War. It’s a more challenging world. It’s a more dangerous world. It’s smaller today than it’s ever been. Today your voice and mine can be heard around the world. Today in a couple of days we can fly around the world. Today in a few hours we can send a missile to any part of the world. Today there is a conflict of ideologies which is the chief threat to peace in the future. Today there’s the threat of new missiles which can destroy large fractions of the human race in a single second. The lives of Canadian citizens touch the world outside in many places, touch the world outside when we come to settle international disputes, whether it’s going to be by war or by peaceful means. It touches the world outside when we come to determine the movement of goods over international boundaries, whether that movement is going to be restricted or whether it’s going to be expanded. It touches the lives of people outside when it comes to the movement of people across boundaries. Whether we’re going to have immigration on an expanded scale or whether we’re not. [It] touches the question of communications, of travel, of news services, radio broadcasting. It touches the question of international collaboration: whether as a means toward peace we’re going to sit down together, perhaps in the beginnings of a world federation, in order to try to bring more order to an increasingly difficult world to govern. It raises the question of whether in this new situation there is to be any difference between our relations with sister countries in the Commonwealth. Men and women can’t deal with those things in ten minutes …
… It has been my privilege during the last two months to sit in at the United Nations General Assembly in New York where now 55 nations sitting together are trying to devise means by which they might see if war can be banished from the earth … Let me just say this, … I don’t think that any of those men [at the United Nations] want war … The danger is not that men and women want war, the danger is that there is in the world today two conflicting ideologies, one of which has potentialities of danger. The majority of people holding that one view feel that there isn’t room in the world for those two ideologies. Where that philosophy leads them is where the danger lies. Those who feel that there isn’t room in the world for more than the communistic ideology. You can see for yourselves where that philosophy may lead us. What is the answer? The answer is simple. We can avoid war for a hundred years if the democracies of the world will serve their societies better than communism serves the society of the Soviet Union. That’s the challenge that’s facing the western and the democratic world today …
Russia says they want to prohibit the production of atomic energy before an international organization is able to inspect the armaments within the bounds of Russia. The United States says we want international security before we let the secret of atomic energy loose to the world. The United Kingdom says we want an international organization to inspect what’s going on in different countries before we disarm. Each one afraid of the other … I’m hopeful that as long as these larger powers sit down together there will be no danger. The danger will come when they refuse to sit down together …
… Just a word about international collaboration. Some people asked me after I came back from New York “is there any hope in that organization? We tried after World War I, they had the League of Nations, it failed, we had a second war worse than the other. Are we going to have a third?” Men and women, there can only be one answer to that … the world today has no choice but to do its best with the United Nations organization. If out of that organization there can come just one thing, the international inspection of armaments and of armed men by an international body which can’t be stopped by any other, the longest step forward toward peace will have been made that has ever been made in the history of man.
… I mentioned the Commonwealth. There need be no fear the Commonwealth won’t hold together. The organization is a voluntary organization each of its separate parts having the same King … One of those clauses says that a Canadian citizen shall be a British citizen (sic). I am sure that no one will object that half a century ago a great Canadian said, “a British citizen I was born, a British citizen I will die.” This act provides that we can live as both British and Canadian citizens, and we can die as both. Men and women, whether we are new Canadian only an hour old or whether we are Canadians … whether we had the label prior to this time, let us so conduct ourselves that when the story of these days comes to be written it may be said of us, those men followed centuries of men who tried to settle their international disputes by war. But they, realizing the possibility of their own destruction by gadgets of their own production, decided finally to sit down together around the councils of peace … Men and women I invite those who are new Canadians now for the first time to join with the others to try to see in this new world the greater prospect for peace and plenty and happiness than has been the lot of mankind in days gone by.
The author would like to thank Professor Gerry Friesen for his advice in the preparation of this article.
1. Donald Creighton, The Forked Road. Canada, 1939-57. Toronto, 1976, 129; Paul Martin, “Citizenship and the People’s World,” in William Kaplan, ed., Belonging: The Meaning and Future of Canadian Citizenship (Montréal and Kingston 1993), 67-68; Brown, Robert Craig, “Full Partnership in the Fortunes and Future of the Nation,” in Jean LaPonce and William Safran, eds., Ethnicity and Citizenship: The Canadian Case (London 1995), p. 11.
2. This quote comes from Alan Cairns, “The Fragmentation of Canadian Citizenship,” in William Kaplan, ed., Belonging: The Meaning and Future of Canadian Citizenship (Montréal and Kingston 1993), 182; Douglas Durkin’s The Magpie: A Novel of Postwar Disillusionment 1923 (Toronto 1974 [1923]) captures these sentiments well.
3. Gregory Kealey with Douglas Cruikshank, “Strikes in Canada, 1891-1950,” in Gregory Kealey, ed., Workers and Canadian History (Montréal and Kingston 1995), pp. 345-418.
Page revised: 24 April 2011
