Westward Cork Migration by Sail 1815-1860 by John Sutton

PART II EMIGRANT PERSPECTIVE

CHAPTER 5 THE AFTERMATH British North America, with populations of only 1 million in 1830 and 2 million in 1847, much smaller than the USA, was presented with a greater challenge in assimilating the large emigrant volume between 1815 and the Famine years. CHAPTER 5A. THE AFTERMATH IN BNA Varied sources have suggested that about 450,000 Irish emigrated to BNA between 1815 and 1845, followed by a further 300,000 during the Famine years of 1846-55 – a territory that had boasted only 430,394 residents in 1806, 1,052,588 in 1830, and 2,289,095 in 1850. Most authorities agree that about two-thirds of the Irish that arrived in BNA were Protestant prior to 1845 and were, in that earlier period, able to purchase good farmland under favorable conditions – particularly in Upper Canada (Ontario) and New Brunswick. Religion, particularly Catholicism, was a defining concern in those times for the BNA Protestant establishment (as in the US), which yearned solidarity and loyalty with respect to Crown and Country, and certainly not to a Pope. Hence two-thirds of the Irish to that date achieved at least a lukewarm acceptance from the Anglophile ruling class. Their alliance with native-born Protestants was not entirely secure, and many sought the brotherhood in the Orange Order – viewed more as a benevolent society in the early century, before being threatened from without (McGowan 2015). The time leading up to the Great Famine saw major deterioration in the physical condition and capabilities of the large Irish emigrant population entering Canada - nutritionally deprived, debilitated, destitute, poorly skilled, and prone to disease. The host population was justly fearful of sickness and death from imported epidemic outbreaks. The main risk was cholera, of which the Canadas experienced epidemics in 1832, 1834, 1849, 1851, and 1854. Each began in Quebec City, where immigrant ships first put into port, and made way upriver and into the Great Lakes. The worst year - 1832 - witnessed the deaths of 2,000 (12.5%) of Montreal’s roughly 32,000 residents from cholera (Belshaw, 2020, 10.2). Beyond health threats to the native population was the financial concern of supporting Famine era emigrants, trapped in decrepitude until safely integrated into communities. Many were repelled by differences in Irish socio-economic status, behavior, language (Irish) and religion, and were angered at Britain’s dumping of emigrants on their doorstep and frequently abusive of those emigrants. The religious divide was significant in the 19 th century, a period of Evangelic Revivalism and conflict between Christian sects, and notable anti-Catholicism. Many Irish Protestants, a step or two up on the ladder of respectability and not wishing to be tarred with the same brush, became major critics of their Catholic counterparts, rallying under the Orange banner in denigration of the less fortunate and newly arrived Irish emigrants. Open physical confrontations between the Protestant and Catholic Irish in BNA became common in cities and towns during the 1840s and 1850s and many new Orange Lodges were established. According to one source, “more than one-third of the Orange Lodges that existed in the 19 th century were established during the 1850s, when approximately 550 were formed”. “Given the population of British North America at the time, it is likely that there wasn’t a town with more than 1,000 people in it that didn’t include an Orange Lodge and other societies as well” (Belshaw, 2020, 10.10).

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