Arab Canadians are not a recent addition to the Canadian mosaic. It is widely believed the first Arab immigrant was a Lebanese man who arrived in Canada in 1882. Ibrahim Abou Nader came from the city of Zahleh, then in Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, an autonomous territory within the Ottoman Empire. He settled in Montreal.
Now, 130 years of immigration later, Arab Canadians and their history and reality in this country have not been very widely publicized or explored. Find out more in our special in depth website.
ARAB-CANADIAN HISTORY – THEN AND NOW Raja Khoury, of the Canadian Arab Institute, says the majority of Arab Canadians come from about 10 countries. Arab Canadians are very diverse, he says, there is no one community; they are people of various ethnicities, various religions and various sects. READ MORE
LEARNING ARABIC Arabic is the language of the religion of Islam, but the language itself pre-dates Islam by about a thousand years. 20 million Arabs of Christian, or other religious affiliations also speak it. READ MORE
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