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Finnish Tailors of Toronto
The early history of the Finnish settlement in Toronto differs quite a bit from other areas of Canada, where the main occupations were forestry, mining, agriculture and railways. In Toronto, a large proportion of Finns worked in factories, as craftsmen or entrepreneurs. The proportion of women was also higher in Toronto, and Finnish women were…
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Patronymic to Surname
Shortening the original Finnsih surname into Maki, Ranta or Niemi was not the only way to facilitate the immigrant’s settlement and integration. Patronymic looking names were familiar to many people of Germanic and Anglo-Saxon origin, and therefore did not stand out from the majority population. That is why behind many an Anderson, Jacobson or Johnson…
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Just Be a Maki If You Want
Surname Maki is said to have dominated the Thunder Bay phone book as long as it was published. Often the name was shortened from an original Finnish farm name or surname ending with -mäki. Just as often it was just chosen by an immigrant for convenience. Here I list 49 immigrants who chose to be…
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Eldon Oja: From Finland to Nolalu
From the author’s preface to this 2020 publication: From Finland to Nolalu The Making of Me and You (pdf version) provides the historical ancestry for the Oja and Jacobson families coupled with the history of Finland that led to their emigration to Canada. In Canada they established homesteads in Nolalu, Ontario just southwest of Thunder…
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Eldon Oja: Who Were the Fort William Finns
This new work by Eldon Oja continues the story of his family after settling in FortWilliam. It combines personal reminiscing with local history writing, andgenealogical research covering the entire Finnish population in the target area. Inthis sense, it follows the tradition started by Salomon Ilmonen a hundred yearsago in his books on the history of…
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The House that Herman Built
In my mother’s album there was a black and white photo of a house, about 5×7 cm, with more than a dozen people on the front terrace and balcony. Under the photo she had written “Herman’s house in Port Arthur”. When I started to find out about my relatives who had emigrated to Canada and…
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The Maki Clans of Thunder Bay
There are several families with multiple Finnish immigrants who took the surname Maki in Thunder Bay District. Often they were siblings, but in some case also cousins from the same area in Finland. In this article I present four such “clans” that appeared more than 100 years ago, and still carry the surname in Canada….
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Canadian Finns Genealogy
The writings on this site are based on the study of Finnish immigrants in Canada. It began, of course, with my own relatives and continued with a few local collaborators in investigating the Finnish heritage of the residents of Nolalu, Thunder Bay. As I became familiar with the source materials in that context, I couldn’t…