Prost to a happy Oktoberfest!

Just under three million Canadians reported German origins in the 2021 Census, making “German” the sixth-largest ethnic group in Canada, following “Canadian,” “English,” “Irish,” “Scottish” and “French.”

Almost three-quarters of Canadians with German ancestry have been here three generations or more

Germans have played an important role in Canadian history since the country’s founding over 150 years ago. In 1871, the first national census counted 202,991 people reporting German ancestry, accounting for 5.8% of Canada’s total population.

Flashforward to 2021 and the number of people who reported German ancestry, either as their sole origin or with other origins, had risen to 2,955,695. This represented 8.1% of Canada’s total population.

Almost three in four people (73.1%) who reported German ethnicity in 2021 could trace their Canadian roots back three generations or more.

Saskatchewan is Canada’s most German province

Nova Scotia had the largest number of Canadians reporting German origins in Atlantic Canada in 2021 (86,860 people). Of these, almost half (41,645 or 47.9%) lived in Halifax.

Just over one million people in Ontario reported German ancestry in 2021, with Toronto (216,880) reporting the largest number of people with German ancestry among all cities in Canada.

Kitchener–Cambridge–Waterloo, home to Canada’s most famous Oktoberfest, had the second largest German community in Ontario in 2021, with 98,970 people reporting German origins.

Alberta had the second-largest German population among the provinces in 2021, with 641,025 people reporting German origins. Of these, over half lived either in Edmonton (200,400) or in Calgary (176,270).

Saskatchewan had the largest proportion of its population with German origins. In 2021, almost one-quarter (24.7%) of Saskatchewan’s population reported having German ancestry, representing 272,475 people.

Yukon had the largest population with German origins (5,320) in the territories.

Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

Approximately 109,460 people reported that German was the most spoken language in their home during the 2021 Census.

High German (72,920 people) and German (55,395) were the most reported dialects spoken.

Other notable German dialects reported included Plautdietsch (14,720 people) and Pennsylvania Dutch (7,725), spoken by Mennonites, and Yiddish (7,915), a Judeo-German language.

Prost!

Germans are known to raise a stein or two of beer during Oktoberfest celebrations, often followed by the cheer prost!

While Germany ranks among the leading beer drinking countries in the world, Canadians overall are drinking less beer.

By volume, beer sales declined to 65.1 litres of beer per year per person of legal drinking age in 2022/2023, an all-time low since Statistics Canada began tracking alcohol sales in 1949. This is equivalent to 3.6 standard bottles of beer per week per person of legal drinking age.