Don Chapman and the Lost Canadians: Standing Guard for Citizenship and Belonging

By: Donovan Martin Sr, Editor in Chief

Imagine being born in Canada to Canadian parents and never questioning where you belong. Citizenship, in that context, is not something you apply for or defend. It simply exists. It is assumed to be permanent, something woven into your identity rather than written on a form. In Canadian law, citizenship is the gateway to every other right, meaning its loss strips access not just to identity, but to legal protection, political voice, and basic security.

That was the reality Don Chapman was born into. He was Canadian by birth and by family, and nothing in his early life suggested otherwise. That changed when he was six years old. His father took out citizenship in another country, and under Canadian law at the time, that single act automatically stripped Don Chapman of his Canadian citizenship. There was no hearing, no notice, and no opportunity to challenge the decision. One day he was Canadian, and the next day, legally, he was not. His mother remained Canadian. Don remained connected to Canada. None of that mattered.

The reason was rooted in how the law understood family and status. Under the legal framework that informed this era, citizenship was not treated as an individual right for everyone. Married women, minors, and those explicitly described in statute as “lunatics and idiots” were classified as being under a legal disability. In practical terms, wives and children were treated as legally dependent on the father. Their national status was absorbed into his. Citizenship was derivative rather than personal. If the father’s status changed, so did theirs. This was not a clerical mistake. It was how the law was written and applied.

To understand why such a framework existed, you have to look further back. In 1908, William Lyon Mackenzie King delivered a speech in England expressing his belief that Canada should remain an all-white nation. That worldview did not remain rhetorical. It shaped immigration policy and informed who was considered worthy of belonging. The Immigration Act of 1910 gave the federal government sweeping authority to exclude people based on race, origin, and perceived desirability. At that time, there were no generational limits on citizenship. People born here were British subjects, and belonging flowed from birth and presence, not from future retention rules or bureaucratic conditions.

This history matters because it exposes a myth. The idea that citizenship must expire, be conditional, or be limited by generation is not foundational to Canada. It is a later invention layered onto an already exclusionary framework. The Citizenship Act of 1947 formally created Canadian citizenship for the first time. On January 1 of that year, Mackenzie King declared himself Canada’s first citizen. Yet the law carried forward many of the same assumptions. Citizenship followed the father. Women and children were not treated as independent rights-holders. Minors remained legally categorized as being under a disability. If a father changed nationality, his children could lose theirs regardless of where they lived or how deeply rooted their lives were in Canada.

This was the law that erased Don Chapman’s citizenship when he was six years old.

By the time Don Chapman was old enough to understand what citizenship meant, it had already been taken from him. Like many Lost Canadians, he lived most of his life unaware that anything was wrong. He assumed the country he belonged to recognized him in return. He built a career, became an airline pilot, paid taxes, raised a family, and contributed to the society around him. Nothing about his life suggested he was anything other than Canadian.

Then paperwork collided with reality.

For Lost Canadians, discovery is rarely gentle. Some learn the truth when they apply for a passport. Others when pensions are suddenly interrupted. Some at a border crossing. Some when they are told they cannot travel because they have no country. The phrase “Lost Canadian” sounds administrative, but the consequences are deeply personal, destabilizing, and often permanent.

Chapman refused to accept this as an unfortunate technicality. What began as a personal injustice became a commitment that would define the rest of his life. He soon realized he was far from alone. Lost Canadians include veterans, long-serving civil servants, politicians, and even elected officials, people who served Canada while being denied recognition by it.

Chapman took the issue everywhere it needed to go. Coast to coast to coast, and well beyond Canada’s borders. He met with ministers, senators, members of Parliament, and governors general. He testified before committees. He protested publicly. He pursued the matter through the courts. Over time, he became something rare in Ottawa, an institutional memory of citizenship law that outlasted ministers, mandates, and political cycles.

On April 17, 2009, Don Chapman regained his Canadian citizenship when Bill C-37 came into force. The legislation restored citizenship to many Lost Canadians who had been stripped of their status as children under discriminatory laws, including Chapman himself. It was a long-overdue correction, but it also exposed how long the injustice had been allowed to persist.

Even after that moment, the underlying problem remained unresolved. Citizenship in Canada was still not treated as a right. It continued to exist as a privilege, something granted, interpreted, and withdrawn through statute rather than protected as a fundamental status.

Worse still, the same legislation that restored Chapman’s citizenship introduced a new barrier. For the first time, Canada imposed a first-generation limit on citizenship by descent. A child born abroad to a Canadian parent was recognized as a citizen, but that child could not automatically pass citizenship on to their own children if those children were also born outside Canada. Citizenship now came with an expiration tied not to conduct or connection, but to geography.

Advocates warned immediately what this would produce. They were ignored. A new generation of Lost Canadians was created almost overnight.

In December 2023, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice struck down the first-generation limit on citizenship by descent as unconstitutional. The decision came in a case brought forward by Bjorkquist, a Canadian citizen born abroad whose children were denied citizenship solely because of where they were born, despite their family’s clear and longstanding connection to Canada. The case became a test of whether citizenship law could continue to draw arbitrary lines between Canadians based on geography rather than rights.

In the Bjorkquist ruling, the court did more than invalidate a single provision of the Citizenship Act. It laid bare how citizenship policy in Canada had drifted away from constitutional principles and into administrative habit. The decision made clear that equality under the law cannot coexist with a system that denies citizenship based on circumstances beyond an individual’s control.

The court found that the first-generation limit created unequal classes of Canadians. It punished people for being born outside Canada, even when their parents were Canadian, and even when those parents had deep and sustained ties to the country. The judge emphasized that citizenship, once granted, cannot be treated as conditional in ways that violate equality rights, and that administrative convenience cannot justify discrimination embedded in law.

What made the ruling especially damning was what it revealed about how citizenship is administered. In paragraph 265 of the Bjorkquist decision, the court referenced evidence showing error rates at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada approaching fifty percent in certain citizenship determinations. That figure was not presented as a statistical anomaly. It was cited as proof of systemic dysfunction. A system responsible for determining who belongs to a country cannot function with error rates that high without causing widespread harm.

The ruling detailed how inconsistent interpretation, outdated policy manuals, and unclear guidance had turned citizenship decisions into a lottery. Applicants with nearly identical facts were receiving different outcomes depending on who processed their file. Families were left in limbo for years. Some were denied citizenship outright, others were forced into repeated applications, and many were pushed into costly litigation simply to have the law applied correctly.

IRCC is not a well-functioning department struggling with workload. It is a system in disarray. Immigration and citizenship files routinely take years to process, with some cases stretching close to a decade. Operational guidance, internal manuals, and decision-making frameworks often lag years behind legislative change, leaving front-line officers to rely on outdated interpretations while families wait without status, certainty, or recourse.

The federal government responded to the Bjorkquist ruling with Bill C-3, which came into force on December 15, 2025. The legislation removed the automatic first-generation cutoff for many people affected by outdated rules and restored citizenship to those who would have been citizens but for discriminatory provisions. Going forward, a Canadian parent born abroad can pass citizenship to a child born abroad if they can demonstrate a substantial connection to Canada, generally defined as three years of physical presence in the country prior to the child’s birth.

On paper, this appeared to resolve the issue. In practice, it exposed the same recurring failure. Passing a bill is not the same as fixing a system. Once legislation receives Royal Assent, the real work begins. Parliamentary offices, Senate committees, and ministerial staff must translate law into clear operational instructions. Without that step, departments default to caution and delay. Old interpretations remain in use. Files continue to be processed as though nothing has changed.

Canada has shown that it can act decisively when it chooses to. When Newfoundland joined Confederation, the agreement was explicit. All Newfoundlanders were deemed Canadian citizens retroactive to their date of birth or domicile. There were no generational limits. No conditional tests. No ambiguity. That decision established a clear precedent that citizenship can be recognized collectively, retroactively, and without caveats when political will exists.

That precedent raises an unavoidable question. If Canada could act with clarity and fairness then, why do remnants of the 1947 framework still stand now. Why are some Canadians still required to fight for recognition that others received automatically.

This is why Don Chapman continues to call for a permanent, independent citizenship ombudsman. Not as a symbolic gesture, but as a functional necessity. An ombudsman with authority would ensure that when laws change, they are implemented as intended. That outdated wording is amended quickly. That departments are given clear direction. That Parliament’s intent is not lost inside administrative inertia.

Chapman and his team have helped thousands navigate this system. Many reach out in disbelief. One person once asked him, only half joking, how an airline pilot was supposed to help. Chapman repeats the story with quiet humour. Then he helps anyway.

His message remains consistent. Governments exist to improve the lives of their people, not to trap them in outdated law and bureaucratic paralysis. Passing legislation is not success. Implementation is.

Canada teaches peace, order, and good government. It teaches equality. It teaches belonging. These words are sung, taught, and repeated with pride.

We stand on guard for thee.

The question is whether our laws and institutions are finally prepared to do the same.