Irish Emigration and Canadian Settlement


Book Description

In mid-nineteenth-century Canada, the Irish outnumbered the English and Scots two to one. Yet they have been much less studied than their US counterparts, even though their experience was very different. Irish settlers arrived earlier in Canada, formed a larger proportion of the founding communities, and were largely rural-based; more than half were Protestant. The Famine provided only a rather late part of the Irish emigration to Canada, which took place principally between 1816 and 1855. The authors evaluate both emigration and settlement and present as well revealing personal documents about intense, often painful experiences of the settlers. Part I explores the geographical links – particularly the phenomenon of chain migration – that shaped decisions to leave Ireland. Part II examines patterns of settlement in the new land. Part III, with biographies of immigrants and collections of letters written home, chronicles personal and social life in the new land and the abiding interest in family and friends in Canada and back in Ireland. The documents illustrate links and patterns revealed in the earlier analysis of emigration and settlement; they also offer an additional, intimate perspective on a key phase in the cultural history of Canada and Ireland.




Atlantic Canada's Irish Immigrants


Book Description

Challenging the commonplace view that the Irish immigration saga was primarily driven by dire events in Ireland, Lucille Campey’s groundbreaking work redraws the picture of early Irish settlement in Atlantic Canada. Extensively documented, and drawing on all known passenger lists of the period, the book is essential reading.




Irish Migrants in the Canadas


Book Description

"This new, expanded edition of Irish Migrants in the Canadas traces the genealogies, movements, landholding strategies, and economic lives of 775 families of Irish immigrants who came to Canada between 1815 and 1855. This study has important implications for our understanding of nineteenth-century society in Ireland, Canada, and the United States."--Jacket.







Peter Robinson's Settlers


Book Description




Exiles and Islanders


Book Description

The first comprehensive account of the Irish settlers of Prince Edward Island.







The Irish in Canada


Book Description




Irish in Ontario, 1st Edition


Book Description

Hailed as one of the most important books on social sciences of the last fifty years by the Social Sciences Federation of Canada. Akenson argues that, despite the popular conception of the Irish as a city people, those who settled in Ontario were primarily rural and small-town dwellers. Though it is often claimed that the experience of the Irish in their homeland precluded their successful settlement on the frontier in North America, Akenson's research proves that the Irish migrants to Ontario not only chose to live chiefly in the hinterlands, but that they did so with marked success. Akenson also suggests that by using Ontario as an "historical laboratory" it is possible to make valid assessments of the real differences between Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics, characteristics which he contends are much more precisely measurable in the neutral environment of central Canada than in the turbulent Irish homeland. While Akenson is careful not to over-generalize his findings, he contends that the case of Ontario seriously calls into question conventional beliefs about the cultural limitations of the Irish Catholics not only in Canada but throughout North America.




Ireland's New Worlds


Book Description

In the century between the Napoleonic Wars and the Irish Civil War, more than seven million Irish men and women left their homeland to begin new lives abroad. While the majority settled in the United States, Irish emigrants dispersed across the globe, many of them finding their way to another “New World,” Australia. Ireland’s New Worlds is the first book to compare Irish immigrants in the United States and Australia. In a profound challenge to the national histories that frame most accounts of the Irish diaspora, Malcolm Campbell highlights the ways that economic, social, and cultural conditions shaped distinct experiences for Irish immigrants in each country, and sometimes in different parts of the same country. From differences in the level of hostility that Irish immigrants faced to the contrasting economies of the United States and Australia, Campbell finds that there was much more to the experiences of Irish immigrants than their essential “Irishness.” America’s Irish, for example, were primarily drawn into the population of unskilled laborers congregating in cities, while Australia’s Irish, like their fellow colonialists, were more likely to engage in farming. Campbell shows how local conditions intersected with immigrants’ Irish backgrounds and traditions to create surprisingly varied experiences in Ireland’s new worlds. Outstanding Book, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Best Books for Special Interests, selected by the Public Library Association “Well conceived and thoroughly researched . . . . This clearly written, thought-provoking work fulfills the considerable ambitions of comparative migration studies.”—Choice