Abstract: | Studies of British peoples in Upper Canada have emphasized the Irish and Scots rather than the English despite the fact that in 1871 439,429 people - 27 per cent of Ontario residents - claimed English ancestry (Clarke and McLeod 1974; Houston and Smyth 1980; Akenson 1984). Those of English nativity constituted 28 per cent of foreign-born in the same year (Census of Canada 1871). Two decades earlier, in 1851, the English-born numbered 82,699, and they had increased to 124,062 by 1871. The overall proportion of those of English birth remained quite uniform, at approximately 8 per cent throughout the twenty-year period. |