Ontario and Quebec's Irish Pioneers by Lucille H. Campey

Author:Lucille H. Campey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2018-08-06T16:00:00+00:00

Some of these newcomers were urban dwellers. Having previously settled in Quebec City, Patrick and Margaret McDonagh from County Limerick relocated to the town of London in 1832, where they ran a grocery store. The Reverend Benjamin Cronyn, an Anglican minister who hailed from County Longford, appeared soon after this with his wife, Margaret, and two children and began ministering to a congregation of about 1,200 who were located in the town and surrounding area.65

Having come to live in Westminster Township at this time, Nathaniel Carrothers, from County Fermanagh, could later boast about his 187-acre farm to his brother:

This is a fine country for a man to live in; an industrious man that cannot make out a good living here need not go to the gold mines of California or Australia. There never was a better time for emigration here, wages of all kinds is good; mechanics get from a dollar to one and a half [dollars] a day; they are giving a dollar a day to all the labourers on the great western railroad which is making [its way] through this part of the country, it runs through London. London has become a large and fine place since we came to this country; there is a great many fine churches and merchant shops and wholesale warehouses all of brick; the land in this part of the country is very good and I can raise as many potatoes as I wish without any dung.66

Nathaniel scolded his brother for not having “plucked up courage and come to America a few years ago and got a good farm in this part of the country before the land got dear, you would have no cause to rue it and I am sure your children would ever bless the day that they came to Canada. I never was sorry for coming, but ever shall be [sorry] that I spent so many days in Ireland.”67

The town of London, founded in 1826, also attracted many Irish. By 1842, people of Irish ancestry represented just over one third of the town’s entire population. Over the next decade, when the famine struck in Ireland, Irish immigrant numbers rose more than ever, with 1,500 Irish-born arriving during this period. And yet, despite having a relatively large Irish component to its population, the town of London never acquired a Corktown or anything similar. This was because its Irish residents were scattered across the town rather than being concentrated in a particular area as had been the case in Toronto and Hamilton.

Irish immigrants were also prominent in Lambton County on the southwest extremity of Upper Canada, particularly after oil mania gripped the area. With the discovery of the first petroleum wells in 1858, land speculators had a field day in Enniskillen Township, causing its population to grow rapidly.68 The first oil well was brought into production in 1860 and shortly afterward Petrolia became Canada’s major oil-producing centre. The first “gusher” in the area was owned by Irish-born Hugh Nixon Shaw who went on to run a general store in Cooksville.

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