German Canadians

German Canadians are either citizens of Canada who have German heritage or Germans who were born in Germany but now live in Canada. There are 3,322,405 people living in Canada who can trace their roots back to Germany, either in whole or in part, according to the census completed in 2016. More came from other regions of the German Confederation, including Austria-Hungary and Switzerland, while still others came from what is now known as Germany. The German settlements in Eastern Europe and Imperial Russia accounted for the largest number of immigrants.

The contemporary German language makes use of the endonym Deutsch to refer to both the German people and the German language. Before the modern era, and especially before the unification of Germany, "Germany" and "Germans" were ambiguous terms that could at times encompass peoples and territories not only in the modern state of Germany, but also in modern-day Poland, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Austria, France, the Netherlands, and even Russia and Ukraine. This was especially the case before the unification of Germany. For instance, throughout the Middle Ages, the Latin name "Theodiscus" was used to refer to West Germanic languages in general. Additionally, in English, the term "Dutch" was occasionally used as a shorthand for any generically Germanic population. Even later historians in the 19th and 20th centuries were prone to using ambiguous terms such as "Pennsylvania Dutch." This term is sometimes described as a "misnomer" for Germans; however, in its usage by English colonial authorities. In other words, the term "Dutch" encompassed people with Germanic ancestry from all of these places.

When France first conquered the region, a small number of Germans made their way to New France. However, large-scale immigration from Germany did not begin until the territory was ruled by the British and Governor Edward Cornwallis created Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1749. Between the years 1750 and 1752, migration of Protestants from the continental United States to Nova Scotia, often known as the Foreign Protestants, was promoted as a means of redressing the imbalance caused by the huge number of Acadians who identified as Catholic. Along the South Shore of Nova Scotia, family surnames, Lutheran churches, and community names, such as Lunenburg, continue to reflect the region's strong German ancestry. The Little Dutch (Deutsch) Church in Halifax, which is the first German church to be built in Canada, is located on property that was designated in 1756 for the use of the German-speaking people. In 1997, the building was given the status of a National Historic Site by the Canadian government.