By JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., Ph.D., Litt.D., Sc.D.
When Wolfe captured Quebec and Canada came under British rule, some
of the best known of his officers and several of his men were Irish.
After the Peace was signed many of them settled in Canada, not a few
of them marrying French wives, and as a consequence there are
numerous Irish, Scotch, and English names among the French speaking
inhabitants of Lower Canada. Two of Wolfe's officers, Colonel Guy
Carleton, born at Strabane in the county Tyrone, and General Richard
Montgomery, born only seven miles away at Convoy, in the same county,
were destined to play an important role in the future history of
Canada. Montgomery was in command of the Revolutionary Army from the
Colonies, when it attempted to take Quebec, and Carleton, who had
been a trusted friend of General Wolfe, was in command of the
Canadian forces. The two men were the lives of their respective
commands, and with the death of Montgomery Carleton's victory was
assured. Carleton was made Governor-in-Chief of Canada, and during
the trying years of the early British rule of New France and the
American Revolution, his tact did more than anything else to save
Canada for the British. Bibaud, the French historian, says, "the man
to whom the administration of the government was entrusted had known
how to make the Canadians love him, and this contributed not a little
to retain at least within the bounds of neutrality those among them
who might have been able, or who believed themselves able, to
ameliorate their lot by making common cause with the insurgent
colonies." Shortly after being made governor, Carleton went to
England and secured the passage of the Quebec Act through the English
parliament, which gave the Canadian French assurance that they were
to be ruled without oppression by the British Government.
Subsequently, in 1786, Carleton, as Lord Dorchester, became the first
governor-general of Canada, being given jurisdiction over Nova Scotia
and New Brunswick as well as Upper and Lower Canada, and to him more
than to any other is due the early loyalty to the British crown in
the Dominion.
After the army the next important source of Irish population in
Canada were the loyalists who after the Revolution removed from the
United States to the British Dominions in America. There were
probably many thousands of them, more than enough to make up for the
French who left Canada for France when the territory passed over to
England. Among the Irish loyalists who went to Canada was the Rev.
John Stuart, who had become very well known as a missionary in the
Mohawk Valley before the Revolution, and who, though born a
Presbyterian, was destined to win the title of the "Father of the
Church of England in Upper Canada." When the first Canadian
parliament met in December 1792, Edward O'Hara was returned for
Gaspé, in Lower Canada, and D'Arcy McGee could boast that
henceforward Lower Canada was never without an Irish representative
in its legislative councils.
When the question of settling Upper Canada with British colonists
came up, Colonel Talbot, a county Dublin man, was the most important
factor. He obtained a large grant of land near what is now London and
attracted settlers into what was at that time a wilderness. The tract
settled under his superintendence now comprises twenty-nine townships
in the most prosperous part of Canada.
The maritime Provinces had been under British rule before the fall of
Quebec and contained a large element of Irish population. In
Newfoundland in 1753 out of a total population of some thirteen
thousand, Davin says that there were nearly five thousand Catholics,
chiefly Irish. In 1784 a great new stimulus to Irish immigration to
Newfoundland was given by Father O'Connell, who in 1796 was made
Catholic bishop of the island. Newfoundland, for its verdure, the
absence of reptiles, and its Irish inhabitants, was called at this
time "Transatlantic Ireland", and Bonnycastle says that more than one
half of the population was Irish.
In 1749 Governor Cornwallis brought some 4,000 disbanded soldiers to
Nova Scotia and founded Halifax. Ten years later it was described as
divided into Halifax proper, Irishtown or the southern, and Dutchtown
or the northern, suburbs. The inhabitants numbered 3,000, one-third
of whom were Irish. They were among the most prominent men of the
city and province. In the Privy Council for 1789 were Thomas Corcoran
and Charles Morris. Morris was president of the Irish Society and
Matthew Cahill the sheriff of Halifax in that year. A large number of
Irish from the north of Ireland settled in Nova Scotia in 1763,
calling their settlement Londonderry. They provided a fortunate
refuge for the large numbers of Irish Presbyterians who were expelled
from New England by the intolerant Puritans the following year. They
also welcomed many loyalists who came from New York and the New
England States after the acknowledgment of the independence of the
American Colonies by Great Britain. Between the more eastern settlers
around Halifax and those in the interior, the greater part of the
population of Nova Scotia was probably Irish in origin.
It was in the Maritime Provinces that the first step in political
emancipation for Catholics under British rule was made. In 1821
Lawrence Cavanaugh, a Roman Catholic, was returned to the Assembly of
the Province for Cape Breton. He would not subscribe to the
declaration on Transubstantiation in the oath of office tendered him,
and as a consequence was refused admittance to the Assembly. But he
was elected again and again, and six years afterwards Judge
Haliburton, better known by his _nom de plume_ of "Sam Slick", in an
able speech, seconded the motion to dispense with the declaration,
and Cavanaugh was permitted to take the oath without the declaration.
The War of 1812 brought over from Ireland a number of Irish soldiers
serving in the British army, many of whom after the war settled down
and became inhabitants of the country. They were allotted farm lands
and added much to Canada's prosperity. A type of their descendants
was Sir William Hingston, whose father was at this time a lieutenant
adjutant in the Royal 100th Regiment, "the Dublins." Sir William's
father died when his son was a mere boy, but the lad supported his
mother, worked his way through the medical school, saved enough money
to give himself two years in Europe, and became a great surgeon. He
was elected three times mayor of Montreal, serving one term with
great prestige under the most trying circumstances. He afterwards
became a senator of the Dominion and was knighted by Queen Victoria.
Prince Edward Island was settled mainly by the Scotch and French, and
yet many Irish names are to be found among its old families. It was
ceded to Great Britain in 1763, and the first Governor appointed was
Captain Walter Patterson, whose niece, Elizabeth Patterson, was
married to Jerome Bonaparte in Baltimore in 1803. Captain Patterson
was so ardent an Irishman that through his influence he had an act
passed by the Assembly changing the name of the island to New
Ireland, but the home Government refused to countenance the change.
At this time the island was known as St. John's, and the name Prince
Edward was given to it in honor of the Duke of Kent in 1789. One of
the most popular governors of the island was Sir Dominick Daly,
knighted while in office. He was a member of a well known Galway
family, and first came to America as secretary to one of the
governors. He afterwards became provincial secretary for Lower
Canada.
Canada suffered from the aftermath of the revolutions which took
place in Europe during the early part of the nineteenth century. The
year 1837 saw two revolutions, one in Upper, the other in Lower,
Canada, though neither of them amounted to more than a flash in the
pan. As might be expected, there were not a few Irish among the
disaffected spirits who fostered these revolutions. Their experience
at home led them to know how little oppressed people were likely to
obtain from the British Government except by a demonstration of
force. There were serious abuses, especially "the Family Compact",
the lack of anything approaching constitutional guarantees in
government, and political disabilities on the score of religion.
However, most of the Irish in Canada were ranged on the side of the
government. Sir Richard Bonnycastle, writing in 1846, said "The
Catholic Irish who have been long settled in the country are by no
means the worst subjects in this transatlantic realm, as I can
personally testify, having had the command of large bodies of them
during the border troubles of 1837-8. They are all loyal and true."
Above all Bonnycastle pledged himself for the loyalty of the Irish
Catholic priesthood.
One of the Irishmen who came into prominence in the rebellions of
1837 was Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, the editor of the _Vindicator_,
the newspaper by means of which Papineau succeeded in arousing much
feeling among the people of Lower Canada and fomented the Revdlution.
O'Callaghan escaped to the United States and settled at Albany, where
he became the historian of New York State. To him, more than to any
other, we owe the preservation of the historical materials out of
which the early history of the State can be constructed. Rare volumes
of the Jesuit Relations, to the value of which for historical
purposes he had called special attention, were secured from his
library for the Canadian library at Ottawa.
Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, when the population of
Ireland reached its highest point of over 8,000,000, the pressure on
the people caused them to emigrate in large numbers, and then the
famine came to drive out great crowds of those who survived. In
proportion to its population Canada received a great many more of
these Irish emigrants than did the United States. Unfortunately the
conditions on board the emigrant sailing vessels in those days cost
many lives. They were often becalmed and took months to cross the
ocean. My grandmother coming in the thirties was ninety-three days in
crossing, landing at Quebec after seven weeks on half rations, part
of the time living on nothing but oatmeal and water. Ship fever, the
dreaded typhus, broke out on her vessel as on so many others, and
more than half the passengers perished. Many, many thousands of the
Irish emigrants thus died on ship-board or shortly after landing. In
1912, the Ancient Order of Hibernians erected near Quebec a monument
to the victims. In spite of the untoward conditions, emigration
continued unabated, and in 1875, in the population of Ontario,
Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, it was calculated that the
Irish numbered 846,414 as compared with 706,369 English and 549,946
Scotch (Hatton, quoted by Davin in _The Irishman In Canada_).
It had become clear that Canada would prosper more if united than in
separate provinces jealous of each other. The first move in this
direction came from the Maritime Provinces, where the Irish element
was so much stronger than elsewhere, and when a conference of the
leading statesmen of these Provinces was appointed to be held at
Charlottetown, P.E.I., September 1864, representatives of Upper and
Lower Canada asked to be allowed to be present to bring forward a
plan for a Federation of all the British Provinces in North America.
The British North America Act was passed, and received the royal
assent, the queen appointing July 1, 1867 as the formal beginning of
the Dominion of Canada.
Among the men who were most prominent in bringing about federation
and who came to be known as the Fathers of Confederation were several
distinguished Irishmen. Thomas D'Arcy McGee was the best known and
probably did more than any other Canadian to make the idea of
confederation popular by his writings and speeches. He had come to
Canada as a stranger, edited a newspaper in Montreal, and was elected
to the Assembly after a brief residence, in spite of the opposition
cries of "Irish adventurer" and "stranger from abroad," was
subsequently elected four times by acclamation, and was Minister of
Agriculture and Education and Canadian Commissioner to the Paris
Exposition of 1867. His letters to the Earl of Mayo, pleading for the
betterment of conditions in Ireland, were quoted by Gladstone during
the Home Rule movement as "a prophetic voice from the dead coming
from beyond the Atlantic."
Another of the Fathers of Confederation was the Honorable Edward
Whalen, born in the county Mayo, who as a young man went to Prince
Edward Island, where he gained great influence as a popular
journalist. He was an orator as well as an editor, and came to have
the confidence of the people of the island, and hence was able to do
very much for federation. A third of the Fathers of Confederation
from the Maritime Provinces was the Honorable, afterwards Sir, Edward
Kenny, who, when the first Cabinet of the New Dominion was formed,
was offered and accepted one of the portfolios in recognition of the
influence which he had wielded for Canadian union.
At all times in the history of Canada the Catholic hierarchy has been
looked up to as thoroughly conservative factors for the progress and
development of the country. After the Irish immigration most of the
higher ecclesiastics were Irish by birth or descent, and they all
exerted a deep influence not only on their own people but on their
city and province. One of the Fathers of Confederation was Archbishop
Connolly, of Halifax, of whom the most distinguished Presbyterian
clergyman of the Lower Provinces said the day after his death: "I
feel that I have not only lost a friend, but as if Canada had lost a
patriot; in all his big-hearted Irish fashion he was ever at heart,
in mind, and deed, a true Canadian." Among his colleagues of the
hierarchy were such men as his predecessor Archbishop Walsh,
Archbishop Lynch, the first Metropolitan of Upper Canada when Toronto
was erected into an archbishopric, Bishop Hogan of Kingston,
Archbishop Hannan of Halifax, Archbishop Walsh of Toronto, and
Archbishop O'Brien of Halifax, all of whom were esteemed as faithful
Canadians working for the benefit of their own people more
especially, but always with the larger view of good for the whole
commonwealth of Canada.
The Irish continued to furnish great representative men to Canada.
The first governor, Guy Carleton, was Irish, and his subsequent
governor-generalship as Lord Dorchester did much to make Canada loyal
to Great Britain. During the difficult times of the Civil War in the
United States, Lord Monck, a Tipperary man, was the tactful
governor-general, "like other Irish Governors singularly successful
in winning golden opinions" (Davin). Probably the most popular and
influential of Canada's governors-general was Lord Dufferin, another
Irishman. Some of the most distinguished of Canadian jurists,
editors, and politicians have been Irishmen, and Irishmen have been
among her great merchants, contractors, and professional men. In our
own time Sir William Hingston among the physicians, Sir Charles
Fitzpatrick among the jurists, and Sir Thomas George Shaughnessy
among the administrative financiers are fine types of Irish
character.