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A Displaced Person in Canada (popularly known as "D.P.") was someone forced from their homes by the Second World War who was brought west out of Central and Eastern Europe by Nazi German forces as slave labourers or as prisoners of war or who fled westward to escape the advance of the Soviet Red Army and who eventually settled in Canada before the closure of the International Refugee Organization (IRO) closed its displaced persons camps and the signing of the United Nations convention on Refugees most countries (but not Canada), both in 1951. Despite Canada's refusal to sign the convention until 1969, the terminology of "refugee" largely replaced that of D.P. after 1951. This was a large wave of migration relative to the size of Canada's population at the time: more than 157,000 by 1951. The majority of the D.P.s were Poles and Ukrainians, with smaller numbers of Croatians, Czechoslovakians, Estonians, Hungarians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Romanians and Yugoslavians, including many Jews who were Holocaust survivors.

Canada began accepting D.P. as contract labourers in 1947. Most of these were men who worked in manual labour roles in remote mines and forestry camps before relocating to cities following the term of their contracts. Government officials specifically selected for men with calloused hands who would be good labourers, leading some to hide their education.https://www.cbc.ca/history/EPISCONTENTSE1EP15CH3PA1LE.html

This was the largest wave of refugees to come to Canada in the twentieth century, and had a large cultural impact on Canada.