By late 1700s, Filipinos, then-known as "Manila men"[7] were recruited in naval operations, aboard the ship San Carlos el Filipino sent to support the short-lived Spanish settlement of Santa Cruz de Nuca and Fort San Miguel, Nootka Island, off the coast of Vancouver.

Beginning in 1858, early settlers formed Victoria's Chinatown and other Chinese communities in New Westminster, Yale, and Lillooet.

Mainly hailing from Guangdong Province, the Chinese helped build the Canadian Pacific Railway through the Fraser Canyon.

Early immigrants from the East Asian island nation most notably worked in canneries such as Steveston along the pacific coast.

Similarly in the late 19th century, many Indians hailing from Punjab Province settled in British Columbia and worked in the forestry industry.

[12] Later, many Indian immigrants also settled on Vancouver Island, working on local sawmills in Victoria, Coombs, Duncan, Ocean Falls, and Paldi.

[13] Early West Asian Canadian history featured Lebanese and Syrians first immigrating in Canada during the late 19th century; as both countries were under Ottoman dominion at the time they were originally known as Turks or Syrian−Lebanese on census reports.

[14] The first Lebanese immigrant to Canada was Abraham Bounadere (Ibrahim Abu Nadir) from Zahlé in Lebanon who settled in Montreal in 1882.

Additionally, Canada's earliest documented Filipinos coincided with North America's first wave of Asian immigration in the 1800s.

It included Fernando Toreenya, a fisherman who came to Canada from the Philippines in 1886 at the age of 20 years old with his First Nations partner Mary/Marie Adams.

Several others worked as loggers, millhand, mine laborers, and longshoremen intermarrying with Indigenous peoples and other Pacific Islanders.

Other settlements such as Quesnelle Forks were majority Chinese and many early immigrants from the East Asian country settled on Vancouver Island, most notably in Cumberland.

A decade later, the fear of the "Yellow Peril" prompted the government of Mackenzie Bowell to pass an act forbidding any East Asian Canadian from voting or holding office.

[24] Many Chinese workers settled in Canada after the railway was constructed, however most could not bring the rest of their families, including immediate relatives, due to government restrictions and enormous processing fees.

[28] Furthermore, the turn of the 20th century featured a small wave of Syrian−Lebanese settlement into the southern prairies including Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.

[29] A majority of the Syrian−Lebanese families settling in the prairies were of the Christian faith, with a minority adhering to Islam, mirroring earlier settler demographics in Nova Scotia, Quebec and Ontario.

Prominent settlement occurred in communities such as Swift Current, Saskatchewan, and Lac La Biche, Alberta.

[36] The second Gurdwara to be built in Canada was in 1908 in Kitsilano (Vancouver), aimed at serving a growing number of Punjabi Sikh settlers who worked at nearby sawmills along False Creek at the time.

As a result, the oldest existing Gurdwara in Canada today is the Gur Sikh Temple, located in Abbotsford, British Columbia.

In May 1914, hundreds of South Asians hailing from Punjab were denied entry into the country, eventually forced to depart for India.

By 1916, despite a declining population due to immigration restrictions, many Indian settlers established the Paldi mill colony on Vancouver Island.

[47] However, due to bad relations between the Ottoman Empire and Allied Powers of WWI, further migration was made difficult for the Turks and the Canadian government discouraged "Asian" immigration.

Immigration regulations gave preference to those with advanced education and professional skills, and the Pakistanis who came during this period, and throughout the 1960s, generally had excellent credentials.

Many of them considered themselves to be sojourners, who had come to earn but not to settle or were students who intended to return home when their degree programs were completed.

Large-scale Vietnamese immigration to Canada began during 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.

[62] Many new Vietnamese arrivees were sponsored by groups of individuals, temples, and churches and settled in areas around Southern Ontario, Vancouver, British Columbia, and Montreal, Quebec.

The Canadian Parliament created the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada in 1985 to better address issues surrounding Asia–Canada relations, including trade, citizenship and immigration.

[65] One pair of researchers demonstrated that numbers of migrants were correlated with the exchange rate; the weakness of the Canadian dollar relative to the United States dollar meant that South Korean migrants bringing savings to Canada for investment would be relatively richer than those going to the United States.

[66] Other factors suggested as drivers behind the growth of South Korean immigration to Canada included domestic anti-Americanism and the large presence of Canadian English teachers in local hagwon.

[68] In recent decades, a large number of people have come to Canada from India and other South Asian countries.