2

ORIGIN, BIRTHPLACE AND NATIONALITY

Provided (1) “that the child of a British subject, whether that child was born before
or after the passing of this Act, shall be deemed to have been born within His Majesty's
allegiance if born in a place where by treaty, rapitulation, grant, usage, sufferance, or other
fawebal means, His Majesty exercises jurisdiction over British subjects.”
(2) “The wife of a British subject shall be deemed to be a British subject.”
(3) “A woman, who having been an alien, has by or in consequence of her marriage
become a British subject, shall not, by reason only of the death of her husband or the dissolution
 of her marriage, cease to be a British subject.”
The approximate number of Canadian nationals in 1921, on the assumption that all
Canadian-born persons resident in Canada are Canadian nationals, was 8412383, including
6,832,747 Canadian-born, 1,065454 resident British-born and 514,182 naturalized foreign-born,
of whom 237,994 had been born in the United States. Doubtless there were domiciled in
Canada at the date of the census certain Canadian-born people who had at some time or
other given up their original Canadian citizenship and had not resumed it either because of
personal preference or because they had not been resident in this eountry the necessary period
of five years required for repatriation. Again, certain of our British-born people domiciled
in Canada were not Canadian citizens either because they had been naturalized in some
foreign country and had mever given up such allegiance or because they had not been resident
 in Canada for the one year required to vote at elections or the five-year period required
by the Immigration Act.l
On the other hand, many Canadian citizens are residents of other countries, the largest
number being in the United States, where the census taken on January 1, 1920, showed that
out of 1,117,778 white persons of Canadian birth reported as residents of the United States
at the date of the census, 607,303 were naturalized citizens, 72,714 had taken out their first
papers and 345,557 were, from the point of view of the United States, aliens, and therefore,
from our point of view, presumably Canadian citizens, while the citizenship of 92,304 was not
ascertained. Thus a very considerable mumber of Canadian citizens were domiciled outside
of Canada in 1920 and 1921.
USE OF THE TERM “ORIGIN” AS DISTINGUISHED FROM “RACE?”
In a strictly biological sense, the term “race” signifies a subgroup of the human species
related by ties of physical kinship. Scientists have attempted to divide and subdivide the
human species into groups on the basis of biological traits, such as shape of the head, stature,
colour of skin, etc, and to such groups and to such only, would the biologist apply the term
“race”. The use of the term, however, even in this strictly scientific sense is neither
definite nor free from confusion, for there is no universally accepted classification. Furthermore,
 the identification of certain types of culture with definite biological types has led
inevitably to the result that, even in the hands of the ethnologist, the term “race” has
acquired a cultural as well as a biological implication.
Most modern national groups are composed of widely varying racial strains. The
English type, if such exists in the biological sense, is the product of the commingling of
perhaps half a dozen primitive stocks. The same applies to the French, Italians and indeed
to any European group. Whether these peoples, during the past thousand years, have
evolved distinct and homogeneous biological types ‘which could approximately be termed
“races” is a matter for debate. Homogeneity is always relative; so with race differentiation.
 The technical biological question as such, however, is of minor importance as far as
the census is concerned. Even in such cases as Scottish and Irish, where it is well known
that distinct strains exist, the cultural consideration is predominant.
The significant fact in the present connection is this. The combined biological and
cultural effect on Canada of the infiltration of a group of English is clearly different from
that produced by a similar number of, say, Ukrainians coming to the country. This is
partly due to the different biological strains and partly to different cultural environment in
the home country. It would be futile from a practical point of view to attempt to separate

10ut of 1,065,454 British-born residents of Canada on June 1, 1921, 90,056 immigrants had
arrived since January 1, 1920, most of whom would presumably not have been residents of
Canada for the one year required by the Dominion Election Act. Further, a total of 177,920
British-born immigrants had entered the country since January 1, 1915, and most of these
would not have been five years in the country and would not be considered as “ Canadian
ritizens >> under the definition of section 2 of the Immigration Act.