The Welsh in Canada

The.Welsh were here from the beginning of European settlement. 

John Cabot’s ship the Mathew may have had a Welsh master, Edmund Griffiths, in 1497. 

Two great Canadian explorers, Thomas Button and David Thompson, certainly had Welsh antecedents.

The Welsh provided explorers, sailors, miners, farmers, musicians, preachers, trade union leaders— and even the occasional rogue.

Those are the concluding words in an article The Welsh in Canada by Muriel E. Chamberlain published in 1998 in volume 19 of The Welsh Historical Review starting on page 265.

Another article in that volume is Falling on Deaf Ears? Canadian Promotion and Welsh Immigration to the Prairies by Wayne K. D. Davies which starts on page 679.

Volume 20 has an article Send a thousand Welsh farm labourers to Canada! by Wayne K. D. Davies which starts on page 466.

Twenty volumes of the publication, starting in 1960, are freely available online from the National Library of Wales here.