Irish Immigration

The Crossing

Desperate emigrants, malnourished and some suffering from typhus, embarked on the journey to North America from a variety of ports : Dublin, Belfast, Londonderry, Cork, Sligo in Ireland, and Liverpool in England. The vessels they boarded were in many cases timber ships that carried wood from the vast forests of Canada to Great Britain. They were not constructed for human cargo, but the owners could profit if minor alterations were made to transport people on the return voyage.

The crossing from Ireland to Canada typically took between six and eight weeks, although voyages of ten to twelves weeks or even longer were not uncommon. Despite laws designed to protect passengers, many ships did not provide enough space, food or clean water for the emigrants. Diseases like typhus and cholera spread rapidly and many died at sea. Up to a third of passengers might have died on the Canadian crossing during the famine years. The ships became known as 'coffin ships' because of the terrible conditions and the high mortality rate among the emigrants.

Arrival

For emigrants on their way to Quebec, the first stop was the quarantine station at Grosse Île. Located 46km downstream from Quebec, the island was used to quarantine migrants for over a century, from 1832 until 1937.

Many migrants from Ireland began to arrive in 1846. It was expected that more Irish would arrive and minor changes were made at Grosse-Île, but the Canadian authorities were unprepared for the mass of people that came in 1847, a year that became known as Black '47. More than 400 ships left Great Britain for Quebec that year and over 90 000 people passed through the quarantine station. The facilities were inadequate, patients were housed in tents and some ships were prevented from disembarking. New buildings were hastily built to house the sick and dying, but the typhus spread to the nurses and doctors, and eventually into Canada. Quebec, Montreal, Kingston and Toronto all experienced typhus outbreaks that year. Over 5,000 Irish migrants are buried at Grosse-Île and another 5,000 were thought to have been buried at sea.

Settlement

After passing through quarantine, the Canadian authorities provided assisted passage to migrants so they could go upriver. They helped pay for transportation up the St. Lawrence to Montreal and then on to destinations in Upper Canada like Kingston, Toronto and Bytown (Ottawa). Many of the migrants continued their journey into the United States, but many also stayed and established themselves in Canada.

Some migrants received land grants and settled in farming communities near to those with whom they shared kinship links. Examples of this type of settlement can be found in the Ottawa Valley, outside of Bytown (Ottawa) on both sites of the Ottawa River where for example Irish migrants settled in Quyon and Mayo, Lower Canada and Fitzroy Harbour, Upper Canada.

Irish migrants also settled in the growing cities of Canada. Quebec, Montreal and Toronto all developed large Irish communities. Urban Irish became labourers in the burgeoning factories, or itinerant workers on the various canal construction projects. This was during the first phase of industrialization that was quickly changing both Lower and Upper Canada at the time. The growing, English-speaking workforce, was a boon for Anglo-Canadian capitalists as the Irish competed for work with French Canadians. Overall, the arrival of tens of thousands of emigrants in the 1840s and 1850s changed the demographic balance of Canada.