Canada is a land of many cultures and many peoples. Aboriginal peoples have occupied the territory now called Canada for several thousands of years. Everybody else, either by birth or by descent, has been an immigrant — we have all come from somewhere else. It has been said that Canada is a “nation of immigrants.”

Immigration has played and continues to play a key role in shaping the character of Canadian society. Although only a minority of Canadians have first-hand experience of immigration, all Canadians have a parent, grandparent or more distant relative who came to Canada as a stranger to a strange land. Because all Canadians share an immigrant past, there would be no Canada without immigration.

Canada has come a long way from the economic revolution sparked by the railway and the telegraph in the early 1800s.