Ontario Finns

The province of Ontario was a primary destination for Finnish emigration to Canada. Finns settled most often in Thunder Bay district for its farming and logging opportunities, Sudbury district for the Copper Cliff mines, and Cochrane district for the Porcupine gold mines near Timmins. Ontario still has the largest Finnish-descending population in Canada.

Largest Finnish communities in Canada Census of 1971 (source: Raivio, Yrjö, Kanadan suomalaisten historia, Copper Cliff 1975)

• Thunder Bay district - 11105
• Toronto district - 7775
• Sudbury district - 7095
• Algoma district - 2805
• Cochrane district - 1610

The project serves as an umbrella of local projects for Ontario communities with significant Finnish population. If there is no suitable local project, you can add profiles of Finnish immigrants and their descendants also to this project.

Please start a project discussion if you would like to have a new project established for a particular area.

Existing local projects:

Thunder Bay Finns

Useful links

Cemeteries of Ontario

"Finns in Ontario", 1981, (CU12801573) by Lindstrom-Best, Varpu. personal. Courtesy of Local Histories Collection, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary. https://digitalcollections.ucalgary.ca/asset-management/2R3BF1OG38V...