The Bridge Volume 29 Number 1 Article 7 2006 Captain S. S. Heller and the First Organized Danish Migration to Canada Erik John Nielsen Lang Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/thebridge Part of the European History Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, and the Regional Sociology Commons Recommended Citation Lang, Erik John Nielsen (2006) "Captain S. S. Heller and the First Organized Danish Migration to Canada," The Bridge: Vol. 29 : No. 1 , Article 7. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/thebridge/vol29/iss1/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Bridge by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact
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[email protected]. Captain S. S. Heller and the First Organized Danish Migration to Canada by Erik John Nielsen Lang The first, largest, and only organized migration of Danish settlers to Canada in the 19th century was directed to the settlement of New Denmark in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. The active recruitment of Danish migrants was a shift of focus for the provincial government, which had before relied almost exclusively on British settlers. Established in 1872, New Denmark's location placed it amongst the traditional ethnic groups of Victoria County: French-Canadian, English, Scottish, and Irish. Danes would not have chosen to migrate to the province at all had it not been for a Danish emigration promoter whose life, motivations, and intentions have remained understudied. The main stimulus for the Danish migration to New Brunswick resulted from a proposal put forth in 1871 by Captain S0ren Severin Heller and George Stymest to the provincial government.