The Irish Adjustment in Montreal

THE IRISH ADJUSTMENT IN MONTREAL HEREthere isa willtoemigrate, thewayhas always, until very recently, been found. During 1847 about 80,000 Irish embarked from Liverpool and from eighteen Irish portsI for the Provinceof Canada. These "huddled masses"were driven from Ireland by famine, rather than attracted to North America; they were less anxious to "breathe free" than to eat three times a day. Montreal, like Quebec, was a city where many immigrant Irish had dropped off on their way to Upper Canada and the United States. Early baptismal registers of Montreal record a "Makarty," a "Milony," and an "Obrain" whoseprovenanceis thus gallicizedbut not obscured. In his Confessions of ConCregan, the Irish Gil Blas, Charles Lever describes the Franco-Irish underworld of QuebecCity in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, where his former countrymenspokea languagebearing little resemblanceto French and none to English. About the middle of the century the developmentof the population of Irish nativity in Lower Canada was as follows: CENSUS NATIVES OF IRELAND Lower Canada City of Montreal 1844 43,982 9,595 1851-2 51,499 11,736 1860-1 50,192 14,179 1870-1 35,828 10,590 There were in Montreal observers who noticed with discontent the drain on the Irish population of Lower Canada through reemigration , and the consequentdepletion of the labour supply. In August of 1847 the editor of the Montreal Witness drafted a highly pragmatic balance-sheetof immigration in the columnsof hisnewspaper. He calculatedthat 60,000 immigrants had arrived that seasonin the St. Lawrence,but that probably no more than one-quarter of them were men from sixteento sixty years of age, and of theseone-third weredead or sick. Of the remaining 10,000 "at least one half, including Germans, have found their way to the U.S.," leaving a paltry 5,000 labourers for the whole of Canada. The immigrants,he complained,"are all hurried past to 1Great Britain, Colonial Land and Emigration Commission,8th Report, 1848, App. no. 1, [901], H. C. 1847-8,xxvi. 39 40 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW Toronto and Hamilton," in spite of shortagesof labour en route, both on the lake shoreand in the back townships. "It will only be," he observedelsewhere,"after they have got all that they can get, that they will crossover to the U.S."; and "the great mass of the emigrantsappearedwell and hearty, earnestlyseekingfor free passages, and bent upongoingwestward assoonaspossible. "2 The Montreal Witnesshad little liking for most Irish immigrants exceptas a potential labour force, and not much liking for them even in that capacity. It must not, however, be supposedthat only the lessvolatile and enterprisingimmigrantsmade their homesin Montreal in the generation preceding the famine. The specific attraction of Montreal for the 1847 Irish, apart from its function asa steppingstoneto a morepromisingland, lay in the successful establishment, sincethe beginningof the century, of an Irish community in the city. This afforded an important foothold to the immigrants. They enteredthe city, not asaninitial migration,but asnewcomers to a groupalready,onthe whole,well thought of; and, aspart of a continuingmigration, they would be able to look forward in their turn to a succession of humbler Irish backsupon which to climb in the painful socialprogression from the river bank to the lowest slopesof Mount Royal. In 1832, when the city of Montreal promulgatedits coat of arms, the shamrocktook its placein the design along with the rose and the thistle. The distinguished families of McCord and Workman, both originating in County Antrim, werevery wellestablishedin Montreal before1847. When the Montreal City and District SavingsBank openedits doorsin 1846, about a quarter of its fifty-nine directors, and five of its fifteen managingdirectorswere Irish, both Catholic and Protestant.3 Here wasa well-knit groupof Irish in oneof the seatsof powerin Montreal at a time when their countrymen numbered, perhaps, no morethan a quarter of the population. These bankers are possiblythe most striking instanceof an Irish contribution to the city's contemporarymanagerialstratum. We do not find Irish names in control of the mills 'and factories which werespringingup alongthe Lachine Canal in the eighteenforties and fifties; "Mr. Nell Doherty, Manufactory of Tobacco Pipes"ismoretypical ofhiskind. Advertisementsin the Montreal pressshowthat Irishmenwere prominentin wholesaleand retail 2MontrealWitness,May 24, June 14, Aug. 9, 1847...