at St. Joseph's Church, Vancouver Mainstream Vietnamese communities began arriving in
Canada in the mid-1970s and early 1980s as refugees or
boat people following the end of the
Vietnam War in 1975, though a couple thousand were already living in
Quebec before then, most of whom were students. After the
Fall of Saigon, there were two waves of Vietnamese immigrants to Canada. The first wave consisted mostly of middle-class immigrants. Many of these immigrants were able to speak French and or English and were welcomed into Canada for their professional skills. The second wave consisted of Southern Vietnamese refugees who were escaping the harsh regime that had taken over the former South Vietnam. Many of them were of
Chinese descent and were escaping ethnic persecution resulting from the
Sino-Vietnamese War. These south Vietnamese refugees were known globally as the "boat people". In the years 1979–80, Canada accepted 60,000 Vietnamese refugees. Most new arrivees were sponsored by groups of individuals, temples, and churches and settled in areas around
Toronto, Ontario,
Vancouver, British Columbia,
Winnipeg, Manitoba and Montreal, Quebec. Between 1975 and 1985, 110,000 resettled in Canada (23,000 in Ontario; 13,000 in Quebec; 8,000 in Alberta; 7,000 British Columbia; 5,000 in Manitoba; 3,000 in Saskatchewan; and 2,000 in the Maritime provinces). As time passed, most eventually settled in urban centres like
Vancouver (2.2% Vietnamese),
Calgary (1.6% Vietnamese),
Montreal (1.6% Vietnamese),
Edmonton (1.6% Vietnamese),
Toronto (1.4% Vietnamese),
Ottawa (1.0% Vietnamese), and
Hamilton (0.8% Vietnamese). The next wave of Vietnamese migration came in the late 1980s and 1990s as both refugees and immigrant classes of post-war
Vietnam entered Canada. These groups settled in urban areas, in particular Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and Calgary. In Metro Vancouver, they have settled mainly in East
Vancouver,
Richmond, and
Surrey. In the Montreal area, they settled in Montreal's downtown,
South Shore, and the suburb of
Laval. In
Toronto, they have settled in the city's
Chinatown area near
Spadina Avenue and
Dundas Street West and in the inner suburbs of
North York,
York,
Scarborough, and
Etobicoke. Other municipalities in the Toronto area with large Vietnamese Canadian populations include
Mississauga,
Brampton,
Vaughan, and
Markham. is used by the majority of the Vietnamese diaspora in North America. == Demographics ==