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| 19. IRISH TOWN |
| Canada
was settled by immigrants. They have played a critical role in the
defining and shaping of the country which exists today. A brief
discussion of early immigration, and the ethnic and cultural questions
it raised, allows for a better understanding of 1837 Toronto. Initially over half the population of York came from the British Isles, with the largest group being the Irish(1). In 1831 over 15 471 British immigrants landed in York creating political, sanitary and cultural chaos(2). Who were the Irish arriving at York? They were drawn from two distinct communities that were divided economically, culturally and rooted in religious conflict. The Protestants were concentrated in the northeast of Ireland, in urban centres of commerce and textile manufacturing(3). The Catholics came from the south and west, and existed mainly by subsistence agriculture(4). As discussed in Houston and Prentice’s 1988 Schooling and Scholars in Nineteenth-Century Ontario, the Irish cultural complexity was reproduced in Upper Canada. The urban poor, who waited by the port for news of land or wage work, included both Protestant and Catholic Irish immigrants. Some settled in concentrated rural townships like the Irish Catholics of Emily Township near Peterborough. Also at this time, Catholicism in Upper Canada came almost to be defined as Irish above all else. In the 1830s some areas of York, which had become distinctly Irish in flavour, were dubbed “Irish Towns”. There were several of these towns over the decades of the nineteenth century, with one situated south of Newgate (now Adelaide) and east of the church plot(5). The Irish Towns were a cultural manifestation of ethnic and economic solidarity in early Upper Canada. |
Notes
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