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There are some 179,000 (2006 Census) Canadians of Lebanese origin, making them by far the largest group of people with Arabic-speaking roots. Lebanese immigration began in 1882, because of situations within Lebanon and restrictive Canadian laws these immigrants were 90% percent Christian. These immigrants were mostly economic migrants seeking greater prosperity in the New World. In more recent years this pattern has changed, and large numbers of Lebanese Muslims and Druze have come to Canada. Immigration laws were liberalized after the Second World War, and immigration steadily increased in the 1950s and 1960s. The greatest influx of Lebanese was during the Lebanese Civil War, and this period saw a number of Lebanon's wealthiest and best educated move to Canada to flee the violence in their homeland. Canada was the only western country (besides Australia) to set up special programs to enable Lebanese to more easily come to Canada and it set up an office in Cyprus to process Lebanese refugees. Many Lebanese speak French and unlike most other immigrant groups preferred to settle in francophone Montreal than anglophone Toronto and Vancouver. About half the Lebanese-Canadian community is located in and around Montreal, and most Lebanese-Canadian organizations, especially religious ones, are based in that city. There are substantial Lebanese populations in Vancouver, Halifax, Windsor, Calgary, Toronto and Lebanese-Canadians are one of the largest ethnic groups in Ottawa and Edmonton. Media reported that as many as 50,000 of Lebanese-Canadians were in Lebanon during the summer of 2006, with about half this number permanently residing there.[2] During 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict the large number of Canadians led rise to a major effort to evacuate them from the war zone. It also led some pundits to accuse some of those holding Canadian citizenship of being Canadians of convenience. [edit] Prominent Canadians of Lebanese descent
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