Irish Canadians
Irish Canadians are Canadian citizens who have full or partial Irish heritage including descendants who trace their ancestry to immigrants who originated in Ireland. 1.2 million Irish immigrants arrived from 1825 to 1970, and at least half of those in the period from 1831 to 1850. By 1867, they were the second largest ethnic group, and comprised 24% of Canada's population. The 1931 national census counted 1,230,000 Canadians of Irish descent, half of whom lived in Ontario. About one-third were Catholic in 1931 and two-thirds Protestant.
The Irish immigrants were majority Protestant before the Irish famine years of the late 1840s, when far more Catholics than Protestants arrived. Even larger numbers of Catholics headed to the United States; others went to Great Britain and Australia.
Irish Canadians comprise a subgroup of European Canadians. According to the 2021 census, in terms of religion, 2,437,810 of Irish Canadians identified as Christian at the census compared to 1,905,155 identifying as secular or non-religious. 1,228,640 identified as Roman Catholic and 1,190,000 identified as belonging to a Protestant denomination.
History
Early arrival
The first recorded Irish presence in the area of present-day Canada dates from 1536, when Irish fishermen from Cork travelled to Newfoundland.After the permanent settlement in Newfoundland by Irish in the late 18th and early 19th century, overwhelmingly from counties Waterford and Wexford, increased immigration of the Irish elsewhere in Canada began in the decades following the War of 1812 and formed a significant part of The Great Migration of Canada. Between 1825 and 1845, 60% of all immigrants to Canada were Irish; in 1831 alone, some 34,000 arrived in Montreal.
Between 1830 and 1850, 624,000 Irish arrived; in contextual terms, at the end of this period, the population of the provinces of Canada was 2.4 million. Besides Upper Canada, Lower Canada, the Maritime colonies of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, especially Saint John, were arrival points. Not all remained; many out-migrated to the United States or to Western Canada in the decades that followed. Few returned to Ireland.
During the Great Famine of Ireland, Canada received the most destitute Irish Catholics, who left Ireland in grave circumstances. Land estate owners in Ireland would either evict landholder tenants to board on returning empty lumber ships, or in some cases pay their fares. Others left on ships from the overcrowded docks in Liverpool and Cork.
Most of the Irish immigrants who came to Canada and the United States in the nineteenth century and before were Irish speakers, with many knowing no other language on arrival.
Settlement
The great majority of Irish Catholics arrived in Grosse Isle, an island in Quebec in the St. Lawrence River, which housed the immigration reception station. Thousands died or arrived sick and were treated in the hospital in the summer of 1847; in fact, many ships that reached Grosse-Île had lost the bulk of their passengers and crew, and much more died in quarantine on or near the island. From Grosse-Île, most survivors were sent to Quebec City and Montreal, where the existing Irish community grew. The orphaned children were adopted into Quebec families and accordingly became Québécois, both linguistically and culturally. At the same time, ships with the starving also docked at Partridge Island, New Brunswick in similarly desperate circumstances.A large number of the families that survived continued on to settle in Canada West and provided a cheap labour pool and colonization of land in a rapidly expanding economy in the decades after their arrival.
In comparison with the Irish who went to the United States or Britain, many Irish arrivals in Canada settled in rural areas, in addition to the cities.
The Catholic Irish and Protestant Irish were often in conflict from the 1840s. In Ontario, the Irish fought with the French for control of the Catholic Church, with the Irish successful. In that instance, the Irish sided with the Protestants to oppose the demand for French-language Catholic schools.
Thomas D'Arcy McGee, an Irish-Montreal journalist, became a Father of Confederation in 1867. An Irish Republican in his early years, he would moderate his view in later years and become a passionate advocate of Confederation. He was instrumental in enshrining educational rights for Catholics as a minority group in the Canadian Constitution. In 1868, he was assassinated in Ottawa. Historians are not sure who the murderer was, or what his motivations were. One theory is that a Fenian, Patrick James Whelan, was the assassin, attacking McGee for his recent anti-Raid statements. Others argue that Whelan was used as a scapegoat.
After Confederation, Irish Catholics faced more hostility, especially from Protestant Irish in Ontario, which was under the political sway of the already entrenched anti-Catholic Orange Order. The anthem "The Maple Leaf Forever", written and composed by Scottish immigrant and Orangeman Alexander Muir, reflects the pro-British Ulster loyalism outlook typical of the time with its disdainful view of Irish Republicanism. This only amplified with Fenian Raids of the time. As the Irish became more prosperous and newer groups arrived on Canada's shores, tensions subsided through the remainder the latter part of the 19th century.
In the years between 1815, when vast industrial changes began to disrupt the old life-styles in Europe, and Canadian Confederation in 1867, when immigration of that era passed its peak, more than 150,000 immigrants from Ireland flooded into Saint John, New Brunswick. Those who came in the earlier period were largely tradesmen, and many stayed in Saint John, becoming the backbone of its builders. But when the Great Famine raged between 1845 and 1852, huge waves of refugees arrived at these shores. It is estimated that between 1845 and 1847, some 30,000 arrived, more people than were living in the city at the time. In 1847, dubbed "Black 47", one of the worst years of the Famine, some 16,000 immigrants, most of them from Ireland, arrived at Partridge Island, the immigration and quarantine station at the mouth of Saint John Harbour. From 1840 to 1860 sectarian violence was rampant in Saint John resulting in some of the worst urban riots in Canadian history.
Demography
Population
Religion
Protestantism and Catholicism
Tensions between the Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics were widespread in Canada in the 19th century, with many episodes of violence and anger, especially in Atlantic Canada and Ontario.In New Brunswick, from 1840 to the 1860s sectarian violence was rampant in Saint John resulting in some of the worst urban riots in Canadian history. The city was shaped by Irish ghettos at York Point, and suppression of poor, Irish-speaking peoples rights lead to decades of turmoil. The division would continue to shape Saint John in years to come.
The Orange Order, with its two main tenets, anti-Catholicism and loyalty to Britain, flourished in Ontario. Largely coincident with Protestant Irish settlement, its role pervaded the political, social and community as well as religious lives of its followers. Spatially, Orange lodges were founded as Irish Protestant settlement spread north and west from its original focus on the Lake Ontario plain. Although the number of active members, and thus their influence, may have been overestimated, the Orange influence was considerable and comparable to the Catholic influence in Quebec.
In Montreal in 1853, the Orange Order organized speeches by the fiercely anti-Catholic and anti-Irish former priest Alessandro Gavazzi, resulting in a violent confrontation between the Irish and the Scots. St. Patrick's Day processions in Toronto were often disrupted by tensions, that boiled over to the extent that the parade was cancelled permanently by the mayor in 1878 and not re-instituted until 110 years later in 1988. The Jubilee Riots of 1875 jarred Toronto in a time when sectarian tensions ran at their highest. Irish Catholics in Toronto were an embattled minority among a Protestant population that included a large Irish Protestant contingent strongly committed to the Orange Order.
Geographical distribution
The graph excludes those who have only some Irish ancestry. Historian and journalist Louis-Guy Lemieux claims that about 40% of Quebecers have Irish ancestry on at least one side of their family tree. Shunned by Protestant English-speakers, it was not uncommon for Catholic Irish to settle among and intermarry with the Catholic French-speakers. Considering that many other Canadians throughout Canada likewise have Irish roots, in addition to those who may simply identify as Canadian, the total number of Canadians with some Irish ancestry extrapolated would include a significant proportion of the Canadian population.Quebec
Irish established communities in both urban and rural Quebec. Irish immigrants arrived in large numbers in Montreal during the 1840s and were hired as labourers to build the Victoria Bridge, living in a tent city at the foot of the bridge. Here, workers unearthed a mass grave of 6,000 Irish immigrants who had died at nearby Windmill Point in the typhus outbreak of 1847–48. The Irish Commemorative Stone or "Black Rock", as it is commonly known, was erected by bridge workers to commemorate the tragedy.The Irish would go on to settle permanently in the close-knit working-class neighbourhoods of Pointe-Saint-Charles, Verdun, Saint-Henri, Griffintown and Goose Village, Montreal. With the help of Quebec's Catholic Church, they would establish their own churches, schools, and hospitals. St. Patrick's Basilica was founded in 1847 and served Montreal's English-speaking Catholics for over a century. Loyola College was founded by the Jesuits to serve Montreal's mostly Irish English-speaking Catholic community in 1896. Saint Mary's Hospital was founded in the 1920s and continues to serve Montreal's present-day English-speaking population.
The St. Patrick's Day Parade in Montreal is one of the oldest in North America, dating back to 1824.
File:Montreal Shamrocks Club 1899.png|thumb|right|190px|Montreal Shamrocks with 1899 Stanley Cup
Image:StPatQueens.jpg|right|thumb| Saint Patrick's Day Parade in Montreal
The Irish would also settle in large numbers in Quebec City and establish communities in rural Quebec, particularly in Pontiac, Gatineau and Papineau where there was an active timber industry. However, most would move on to larger North American cities.
Today, many Québécois have some Irish ancestry. Examples from political leaders include Laurence Cannon, Claude Ryan, the former Premiers Daniel Johnson and Jean Charest, Georges Dor, and former Prime Ministers Louis St. Laurent and Brian Mulroney. The Irish constitute the second largest ethnic group in the province after French Canadians.