Oshawa
Community Organizations:
Oshawa Portuguese Club – Northern Portugal Cultural Centre
OSHAWA’S POPULATION: 170,071
STATISTICS FOR THE PORTUGUESE IN OSHAWA:
| AS MOTHER TONGUE | AS MOST SPOKEN | KNOWLEDGE OF THE LANGUAGE | BORN IN PORTUGAL | ETHNIC ORIGIN |
| 2,200 1.3% of population | 735 0.4% of population | 2,575 1.5% of population | 1,225 0.7% of population | 7,830 4.6% of population |
Audio Version:
Before becoming a city, this locality was a popular trading spot between Canada’s indigenous peoples and the Europeans. Around 1670, the French built a formal trading post on the shores of Lake Ontario, but it was later abandoned. Oshawa began to populate in significant numbers during the 1700s after Roger Conant established here a profitable salmon company that exported to the United States of America. The Americans were, coincidentally, responsible for the growth of Oshawa after they fled from the war of 1812 to establish here.
Kingston Road, built to connect York (now Toronto) to Kingston, helped Oshawa grow even more. The corner of Kingston Road with Simcoe Street, known as Oshawa’s Four Corners, became a very popular spot for travelers passing through the locality.
Oshawa means “The Crossing Place” for short, but the most accurate version is taken from an Ojibway dialect meaning “that point at the crossing of the stream where the canoe was exchanged for the trail.”
In 1850, Oshawa was elevated to Village. Two and a half decades later, in 1876, Coronel Robert Samuel McLaughlin moved his horse carriage factory to Oshawa and, three years after, the locality was officially recognized as a town. In 1907, McLaughlin began to assemble the Buick at this factory and, in 1915, he acquired the rights to assemble the Chevrolet. This industry continued to grow and attract more residents to work and live here. During the 1920s, the city grew from 4,000 to a staggering 16,000 inhabitants. Coronel McLaughlin’s success was such that he built the Parkwood Estate Mansion, one of the most famous buildings in Canada with 55 rooms, located on the current site of Alexandra Park.
Given the town’s history of manufacturing, it was no surprise to see General Motors (GM) move its assembly plant to Oshawa, in 1951. While Coronel McLaughlin’s manufacturing plant eventually closed down, the Canadian division of GM continued to grow. It was this growth that attracted many Portuguese-Canadians to the city.
A few of the Portuguese who initially settled in Toronto saw an opportunity in Oshawa to grow and prosper in Canada. However, the community took some time to become large enough to be able to create a community organization. In 1978, Oshawa had around one thousand Portuguese residents. This propelled a few to initiate the process of founding a club in that same year. Thus, the Oshawa Portuguese Club was founded by five men: Vitor Silva (who would become the first president), Chico Branco, António Bonifácio, Fernando Sousa and Rafael Roberto.
The community continued to grow, giving rise to a folk-dance group independent from the newly formed club – Rancho Folclórico do Minho de Oshawa. This group would eventually lead to the founding of another local Portuguese community organization – Northern Portugal Cultural Centre, in 1983.
The wave of immigration from Portugal in the 1980s helped these two organizations solidify and prosper. Currently, they both boast folk-dance groups, own their property and organize regular social, cultural and sporting activities for its members and supporters.
The constant threat of GMC abandoning Oshawa has led some to believe that Oshawa would become an undesirable place to live and work. However, the numbers show quite the opposite: the city is rapidly growing and, with it, the solidification of a multi-generational Portuguese community that continues to be heavily engaged in our culture.
| With files from Luso-Ontario Magazine, 2008 |
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