A couple of days ago I’d gone bean picking with my wife as part of our vacation time. We picked at a semi-farming community nearby, which has lots of references to “Kanaka” like Kanaka Creek, so it reminded me of this tiny bit of research I did a few years ago. And in a comment to a blog entry I promised to lay my theory on the origin of the word “Canuck” on you.
I wrote this years ago but I think it still holds water—maybe not much…
I delved into the deepest darkest crevasses of history in order to come up with the best answer to the question: What is the origin of the word “Canuck”?
There seems to be a lot of non-answers. Many supposedly good researchers seem to get to a certain point then give up and fake us out with a picture or obscure reference.
Most people seem to think the origin of the word Canuck is “Johnny Canuck”, who first appeared in 1869 as a younger, simpler cousin to the U.S.A.‘s Uncle Sam or Britain’s John Bull, and later became very popular in a WWII comic book as a “hero” and in a wartime recruitment poster.
OK fine, but where did the name “Canuck” come from, I kept asking.
OK, earlier, there was a Canadian postal service 
flight initiated by the Aero Club of Canada (before Canada Post and airmail), and the plane they used? It was a biplane called a “Curtiss JN-4 Canuck”. Later, they even made a postal stamp featuring the plane. OK, Mr Postman, but why’d they call the plane a “CANUCK”?!
OK, still earlier, there was a newspaper called “Jack Canuck” which started in 1911 and lasted until 1918, which satirized and criticized Canadian social injustice. Yawn. And still, why Jack “CANUCK”?!
And finally, the answer. And it puts me in the mind of hoola girls and fancy cocktails on the beach.
Many moons ago, in Canada’s formative years when fur trading was all the rage, the fur trading companies searched for anybody they could hire who could wield a beaver trap. In the far west of Canada at that time, there weren’t a lot of crowds. There were several Hawaiian islanders who came to the western shores of North America in search of, well, we don’t know what—but it sure as hell wasn’t “nicer weather”.
They worked out just fine. The Hawaiian word for “Hawaiian person” (or just a “person”) is “KANAKA”. Also, a “KANAKA HANA” is a worker. Still more, “KANAKA’E” is a foreigner. There’s also a creek in Maple Ridge, a suburb of Vancouver, called “Kanaka Creek” though I’m not sure how that came about. Anyway, soon, the word KANAKA was used to describe these workers. Or in another version of history, all the people already living here were deemed by them to be “Kanakas”, as in “foreigners”.
As with all words, it soon become shortened and obliterated and KANAKA eventually became “Canuck”, probably because some idiot who worked for the CBC said it wrong once (kidding).
So there you have it, fellow Kanakas. Aloha.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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