Hi Q

I'm not sure how many went to Canada but there were 400,000 German PoWs in the UK at the end of WW2. At that point Britain was in a very poor state and there were nothing like enough workers in agriculture. The German PoWs worked on the land during and just after the war (all but 24,000 were repatriated in 1947) and made up about 25% of the agricultural work force at that time.

Unlike British PoWs in Germany, there was nowhere for them to run to, so they weren't generally locked up. There was also a shortage of young men, so they were allowed to go to the village dances and met most of the local girls. One of the 24,000 men who stayed married a local girl, one of my mother's good friends, and they and my parents became lifelong friends. His name was Ewald, so most people called him Eddie, but my dad always called him "Evil" (about how it's pronounced in German, especially with a Cambridgeshire accent). Despite my dad having been in the British army during (and after) WW2, they always liked and respected each other. It may be why my dad always said goodnight to me in German when I was small.

:-)