With Scarcely a Ripple: Anglo-Canadian Migration Into the United States and Western Canada 1880-1920

Much of the development of regions and communities on both sides of the United States-Canada border resulted from migration. With Scarcely a Ripple, the first study to link persistence, immigration, internal migration, and return migration, looks beyond the narrowly defined geographical and temporal boundaries of the aggregate census to clarify the social, economic, and demographic adjustments made at the turn of the century by both transient and persistent Anglo-Canadian migrants.

Using a prosopographical approach that combines descriptive exposition, quantitative tabulation, and structural analysis, Randy Widdis determines the geographical and social origins of migrants, the distance and direction of migration corridors, and geographical destinations in both the United States and Canada. The study provides a new view of the invisible Anglo-Canadian, one of the largest and least understood immigrant groups in the United States. Widdis's results show that there were many differences between Anglo-Canadians, and that their experience in the United States was much more complex than is usually assumed.

With Scarcely a Ripple not only contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of intra-regional, inter-regional, and return Anglo-Canadian migration but also interprets this movement in terms of the paradox of an emerging Canadian identity and a developing integration with the United States. It offers a historical geographical perspective on a subject that, in this era of free trade and globalization, is more relevant than ever.

Series One: Donald Harman Akenson, Editor
Series Two: John Zucchi, Edito

This series was launched in 1987 as a response to the growing field of ethnic and immigration history in Canada in the generation following the rise of multiculturalism. Although the original intent was to publish historical works on ethnicity in Canada, the international nature of ethnic studies has led to the series becoming truly international in its scope and authorship.

The series has therefore gone beyond Canada's borders to examine cultural history in Guyana, racial conflict in New Zealand, West Indian Blacks in Costa Rica, Syrian refugees in Sweden, and Italians in Paris and London. Books in the series have been written mainly from a historical perspective but works by specialists in geography, folklore, sociology, literature, material culture, and Indigenous studies have also been included. We firmly believe that successful and sophisticated studies in all of these fields deserve to be called to the attention of the scholarly community and all those with an interest in ethnicity, immigration, and integration.

With an extensive list of published titles, many of them award-winning, McGill-Queen's Studies in Ethnic History demonstrates what future volumes in the series should be: original, meticulous but accessible scholarly investigations in an exciting field.