Westward Cork Migration by Sail 1815-1860 by John Sutton

PART II EMIGRANT PERSPECTIVE

and many proceeded onward to Lake Ontario. “Although some elected to disembark at small lake ports such as Cobourg, Port Hope and Whitby, some 38,500 elected to land at Toronto, the former provincial capital, and the largest town in the province. Despite its growing prominence as a commercial hub, Toronto had a population of 20,000 people who lived in wood frame, stone, and brick buildings along mainly dirt thoroughfares……” (McGowan, 2012). In 1847, 1,124 Irish emigrants, of whom 20% were Protestant, died from disease after arriving in Toronto from Montreal. (McGowan, 2023). A monument to that sorry event stands in Ireland Park on the shore of Lake Ontario. Immigration from Ireland transformed Toronto from an anglophone Protestant city to one of pluralities by 1860, with comparable numbers of Catholics and Anglicans, followed by smaller numbers of Presbyterians and Methodists. The mostly Irish Catholics leant purpose to the Orange Order, whose lodges expressed their Protestant authority and xenophobia (Belshaw, 2020, 10.3). St John, NB. Population in 1861 - 27,317 : Loyalists migrated from the US after the 1783 Treaty of Paris and dominated politics in the newly established City of St John for much of the first half of the 19 th century, excluding non-loyalists from practicing a trade and from voting. Population size in the early 1800s is nebulous (many city records were lost in fires), but by 1850, the Irish Catholic community constituted Saint John's largest ethnic group. “In the census of 1851, over half the heads of households in the city registered themselves as natives of Ireland. By 1871, 55 per cent of Saint John's residents were Irish natives or children of Irish-born fathers. However, the city was split with tensions between Irish Catholics and Unionist Protestants. From the 1840s onward, Sectarian riots were rampant in the city with many poor, Irish-speaking immigrants clustered at York Point.” (W inder, 2000). The influx of 30,000 emigrants during 1846 and 1847 doubled the City’s residents (Wiki). However, by 1851 St John, had a population of just 31,000, and was the third largest city in British North America, after Montreal and Quebec City. Bishop Thomas Connolly b.1814 (Cork) arrived in the city in 1852 and promptly initiated construction of the magnificent Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, asserting for Irish Catholics their rightful presence in the St John community. The first mass was celebrated on Xmas day in 1855 with 3,000 in attendance. The spire was not completed until 1871. Mitchel cited work by Peter Toner, who concluded from the 1851 Census that Irish from east Ulster settled Charlotte County (around St Andrews), while the west Ulster Irish (43%) settled the St John Valley, the Cork Irish (19%) St John itself, and southeast Irish settled Miramichi NB (Mitchel, 2021). Many southeast Irish became settled in Newfoundland’s St John’s in the early 1800s, and some were documented as “two-boaters” who voyaged to Miramichi NB, possibly after taking advantage of cheap fares to St John’s. New Brunswick was particularly successful in the timber trade, having the biggest forests in the Colonies and the most accessible, thanks to the extensive Miramichi and St John River systems. The 1824-25 years were very profitable and St Andrews, St John, and Miramichi commanded comparable shares of the market until the Great Miramichi Fire of October 1825 destroyed much of the North Shore Forest. St John subsequently dominated trade, and the Calendar of Shipping in this work documents many Cork ships over the years voyaging to St John NB with emigrants and returning to Cork with timber. Wavering Irish St John population statistics are consistent with many of the Irish becoming “two boaters” - voyaging on to greener earthly pastures in the USA. Halifax, NS. Population in 1861 - 25,026 : Many Irish who moved to Halifax in the early 1800s were “two boaters” from Newfoundland when fishing was a more seasonal endeavor.

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