Judo was introduced to Canada in the early twentieth century by Japanese migrants, and was limited to British Columbia until the forced expulsion, internment, and resettlement of Japanese-Canadians after Japan entered the Second World War in 1941.
New dojos opened in the Prairies, Ontario, and Quebec, primarily in the mid-to-late 1940s, and the centre of Canadian judo shifted from Vancouver to Toronto, where a significant number of judoka had settled after the war.
[1] Glen and George Pridmore, two brothers and police officers from the St. James area of Winnipeg, started a nominal judo club at the Central YMCA in 1937, but they reportedly taught a mix of jujutsu and other unarmed combat techniques and called it 'judo' because it was a popular term at the time.
[2][3][4][5] There was a club at the RCAF base again as early as 1956, organized by Flying Officer Vinsel and Leading Aircraftman Delasalle, and supported by Mitani[6] (it may have operated sporadically or had different incarnations, as a 1960 article reports that it was founded by Masao Takahashi in 1958[7]).
The first club outside of Winnipeg was established at the Brandon YMCA in 1953 by Harold Starn, a former British special forces soldier who received his judo training from Japanese prisoners he guarded in Burma during the war.