Estonian-Canadians in Alberta:
A Demographic Snapshot
The first Estonian settlers-the Kingsep brothers- arrived in Canada in 1899 and settled in the Sylvan Lake area of central Alberta roughly halfway between Edmonton and Calgary. Within five years an additional 22 Estonian families settIed in the vicinity. Owing to increased immigration in the region and the unavailability of large blocks of land for an Estonian settlement, some of the first Estonian settlers soon moved to new homesteads in the Medicine River Valley near Eckville. By 1920, there were nearly 200 Estonian settlers in the area, with close family and community ties and traditions.
The other major concentration of Estonian settlers developed a few miles south of Stettler and, by 1905, there were about 60 Estonian households in the area. The third significant colony of Estonian settlers, involving 26 families, became established near Barons in southern Alberta by 1908.
By the end of the First World War there were about 500 Estonians in Alberta. Smaller groups of Estonian immigrants arrived in the 1920s and 1930s, but they didn't have a significant impact on the population dynamics of this small ethnic group. Near the beginning of the Second World War, many of the pioneers had passed away and their offspring were being assimilated into the Canadian mainstream.
A relatively large number of Estonian immigrants-about 400 in total- arrived in Alberta in the late 1940s and the 1950s. They settled largely in Edmonton and Calgary and revitalized Estonian social and cultural traditions.
Thus the 1951 and 1961 Census of Canada data show 819 and 1,115 people, respectively, of Estonian ethnic origin living in Alberta. Thirty-five years later, ie. in 1996, the comparable figure had increased to 1,735.
Preliminary information suggests that nearly one-quarter of the respondents gave a single answer to the question about their ethnic origin, i.e. both parents were Estonian. The remaining three-quarters identified multiple ethnic origins, reflecting the assimilation of the offspring of the early Estonian pioneers into the province's population mosaic.
Note: Most of the statistical information in this article was gleaned from" Estonians in Alberta" by Howard and Tamara Palmer (in Alberta History 31: 22-34, Summer 1983) and from various Census of Canada sources.
A. Dave Kiil
