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Irish Canadians
_{French: Irlando-Canadiens
Irish: Gael-Cheanadaigh}

Irish Canadians as percent of population by province/territory
Total population
4,627,000[1] 13.4% of the Canadian population (2016)
Regions with significant populations
Ontario	2,095,460
British Columbia	675,135
Alberta	596,750
Quebec	446,215
Nova Scotia	201,655
New Brunswick	135,835
Newfoundland and Labrador	106,225
Languages
English · French · Irish (historically)[citation needed]
Religion
Christianity (Roman Catholicism, Protestantism) Irreligion [citation needed]
Related ethnic groups
Irish, Ulster-Scots, English Canadians, Scottish Canadians, Welsh Canadians, Irish Americans, Scotch-Irish Canadians[citation needed]

Irish Canadians (Irish: Gael-Cheanadaigh) are Canadian citizens who have full or partial Irish heritage including descendants who trace their ancestry to immigrants who originated in Ireland. 1.2 million Irish immigrants arrived from 1825 to 1970, and at least half of those in the period from 1831 to 1850. By 1867, they were the second largest ethnic group (after the French), and comprised 24% of Canada's population. The 1931 national census counted 1,230,000 Canadians of Irish descent, half of whom lived in Ontario. About one-third were Catholic in 1931 and two-thirds Protestant.^[2]

The Irish immigrants were majority Protestant before the Irish famine years of the late 1840s, when far more Catholics than Protestants arrived. Even larger numbers of Catholics headed to the United States; others went to Great Britain and Australia.^[3]

Irish Canadians comprise a subgroup of European Canadians.^[a] According to the 2021 census, in terms of religion, 2,437,810 (55%) of Irish Canadians identified as Christian at the census compared to 1,905,155 identifying as secular or non-religious (43%). 1,228,640 (28%) identified as Roman Catholic and 1,190,000 (27%) identified as belonging to a Protestant denomination.^[6]

Irish Canadian
Population History

Year	Pop.	±%
1871	846,414	—
1881	957,403	+13.1%
1901	988,721	+3.3%
1911	1,074,738	+8.7%
1921	1,107,803	+3.1%
1931	1,230,808	+11.1%
1941	1,267,702	+3.0%
1951	1,439,635	+13.6%
1961	1,753,351	+21.8%
1971	1,581,730	−9.8%
1981	1,151,955	−27.2%
1986	3,622,290	+214.4%
1991	3,783,355	+4.4%
1996	3,767,610	−0.4%
2001	3,822,660	+1.5%
2006	4,354,155	+13.9%
2011	4,544,870	+4.4%
2016	4,627,000	+1.8%
Source: Statistics Canada [7]: 17 [8]: 3 [9]: 20 [10]: 20 [11]: 112 [12]: 45 [13]: 60 [14][15][5][4][1] Note1: 1981 Canadian census did not include multiple ethnic origin responses, thus population is an undercount. Note2: 1996–present census populations are undercounts, due to the creation of the "Canadian" ethnic origin category.

The first recorded Irish presence in the area of present-day Canada dates from 1536, when Irish fishermen from Cork traveled to Newfoundland.^{[citation needed]}

After the permanent settlement in Newfoundland by Irish in the late 18th and early 19th century, overwhelmingly from Waterford and Wexford, increased immigration of the Irish elsewhere in Canada began in the decades following the War of 1812 and formed a significant part of The Great Migration of Canada. Between 1825 and 1845, 60% of all immigrants to Canada were Irish; in 1831 alone, some 34,000 arrived in Montreal.^{[citation needed]}

Between 1830 and 1850, 624,000 Irish arrived; in contextual terms, at the end of this period, the population of the provinces of Canada was 2.4 million. Besides Upper Canada (Ontario), Lower Canada (Quebec), the Maritime colonies of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, especially Saint John, were arrival points. Not all remained; many out-migrated to the United States or to Western Canada in the decades that followed. Few returned to Ireland.

During the Great Famine of Ireland (1845–52), Canada received the most destitute Irish Catholics, who left Ireland in grave circumstances. Land estate owners in Ireland would either evict landholder tenants to board on returning empty lumber ships, or in some cases pay their fares. Others left on ships from the overcrowded docks in Liverpool and Cork.^[16]

Most of the Irish immigrants who came to Canada and the United States in the nineteenth century and before were Irish speakers, with many knowing no other language on arrival.^[17]

The great majority of Irish Catholics arrived in Grosse Isle, an island in Quebec in the St. Lawrence River, which housed the immigration reception station. Thousands died or arrived sick and were treated in the hospital (equipped for less than one hundred patients) in the summer of 1847; in fact, many ships that reached Grosse-Île had lost the bulk of their passengers and crew, and much more died in quarantine on or near the island. From Grosse-Île, most survivors were sent to Quebec City and Montreal, where the existing Irish community grew. The orphaned children were adopted into Quebec families and accordingly became Québécois, both linguistically and culturally. At the same time, ships with the starving also docked at Partridge Island, New Brunswick in similarly desperate circumstances.

A large number of the families that survived continued on to settle in Canada West (now Ontario) and provided a cheap labor pool and colonization of land in a rapidly expanding economy in the decades after their arrival.^[18]

In comparison with the Irish who went to the United States or Britain, many Irish arrivals in Canada settled in rural areas, in addition to the cities.^[19]

The Catholic Irish and Protestant (Orange) Irish were often in conflict from the 1840s.^[20] In Ontario, the Irish fought with the French for control of the Catholic Church, with the Irish successful. In that instance, the Irish sided with the Protestants to oppose the demand for French-language Catholic schools.^[21]

Thomas D'Arcy McGee, an Irish-Montreal journalist, became a Father of Confederation in 1867. An Irish Republican in his early years, he would moderate his view in later years and become a passionate advocate of Confederation. He was instrumental in enshrining educational rights for Catholics as a minority group in the Canadian Constitution. In 1868, he was assassinated in Ottawa. Historians are not sure who the murderer was, or what his motivations were. One theory is that a Fenian, Patrick James Whelan, was the assassin, attacking McGee for his recent anti-Raid statements. Others argue that Whelan was used as a scapegoat.^[22]

After Confederation, Irish Catholics faced more hostility, especially from Protestant Irish in Ontario, which was under the political sway of the already entrenched anti-Catholic Orange Order. The anthem "The Maple Leaf Forever", written and composed by Scottish immigrant and Orangeman Alexander Muir, reflects the pro-British Ulster loyalism outlook typical of the time with its disdainful view of Irish Republicanism. This only amplified with Fenian Raids of the time. As the Irish became more prosperous and newer groups arrived on Canada's shores, tensions subsided through the remainder the latter part of the 19th century.

In the years between 1815, when vast industrial changes began to disrupt the old life-styles in Europe, and Canadian Confederation in 1867, when immigration of that era passed its peak, more than 150,000 immigrants from Ireland flooded into Saint John, New Brunswick. Those who came in the earlier period were largely tradesmen, and many stayed in Saint John, becoming the backbone of its builders. But when the Great Famine raged between 1845 and 1852, huge waves of refugees arrived at these shores. It is estimated that between 1845 and 1847, some 30,000 arrived, more people than were living in the city at the time. In 1847, dubbed "Black 47", one of the worst years of the Famine, some 16,000 immigrants, most of them from Ireland, arrived at Partridge Island, the immigration and quarantine station at the mouth of Saint John Harbour. From 1840 to 1860 sectarian violence was rampant in Saint John resulting in some of the worst urban riots in Canadian history.^[23]

Irish Canadian Population History
1871–2016

Year	Population	% of total population
1871 [7]: 17	846,414	24.282%
1881 [7]: 17	957,403	22.137%
1901 [8]: 3	988,721	18.407%
1911 [8]: 3	1,074,738	14.913%
1921 [8]: 3	1,107,803	12.606%
1931 [8]: 3	1,230,808	11.861%
1941 [8]: 3	1,267,702	11.017%
1951 [8]: 3	1,439,635	10.276%
1961 [8]: 3	1,753,351	9.614%
1971 [9]: 20	1,581,730	7.334%
1981 [10]: 20	1,151,955	4.783%
1986 [11]: 112 [12]: 45	3,622,290	14.476%
1991 [13]: 60	3,783,355	14.016%
1996 [14]	3,767,610	13.207%
2001 [15]	3,822,660	12.897%
2006 [5]	4,354,155	13.937%
2011 [4]	4,544,870	13.834%
2016 [1]	4,627,000	13.427%

Tensions between the Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics were widespread in Canada in the 19th century, with many episodes of violence and anger, especially in Atlantic Canada and Ontario.^[24][25]

In New Brunswick, from 1840 to the 1860s sectarian violence was rampant in Saint John resulting in some of the worst urban riots in Canadian history. The city was shaped by Irish ghettos at York Point, and suppression of poor, Irish-speaking peoples rights lead to decades of turmoil. The division would continue to shape Saint John in years to come.^[23]

The Orange Order, with its two main tenets, anti-Catholicism and loyalty to Britain, flourished in Ontario. Largely coincident with Protestant Irish settlement, its role pervaded the political, social and community as well as religious lives of its followers. Spatially, Orange lodges were founded as Irish Protestant settlement spread north and west from its original focus on the Lake Ontario plain. Although the number of active members, and thus their influence, may have been overestimated, the Orange influence was considerable and comparable to the Catholic influence in Quebec.^[26]

In Montreal in 1853, the Orange Order organized speeches by the fiercely anti-Catholic and anti-Irish former priest Alessandro Gavazzi, resulting in a violent confrontation between the Irish and the Scots. St. Patrick's Day processions in Toronto were often disrupted by tensions, that boiled over to the extent that the parade was cancelled permanently by the mayor in 1878 and not re-instituted until 110 years later in 1988. The Jubilee Riots of 1875 jarred Toronto in a time when sectarian tensions ran at their highest.^[27] Irish Catholics in Toronto were an embattled minority among a Protestant population that included a large Irish Protestant contingent strongly committed to the Orange Order.^[28]

Irish Canadians by province and territory (2001–2016)

Province/Territory	2016[1]		2011[4]		2006[5]		2001[15]
	Pop.	%	Pop.	%	Pop.	%	Pop.	%
Ontario	2,095,465	15.82%	2,069,110	16.35%	1,988,940	16.53%	1,761,280	15.61%
British Columbia	675,130	14.8%	643,470	14.88%	618,120	15.17%	562,895	14.55%
Alberta	596,750	15%	565,120	15.84%	539,160	16.56%	461,065	15.68%
Quebec	446,210	5.6%	428,570	5.54%	406,085	5.46%	291,545	4.09%
Manitoba	156,145	12.59%	155,455	13.24%	151,915	13.4%	143,950	13.04%
Saskatchewan	155,725	14.55%	156,655	15.53%	145,475	15.25%	139,205	14.45%
Nova Scotia	195,865	21.56%	201,655	22.25%	195,365	21.63%	178,585	19.9%
New Brunswick	147,245	20.15%	159,195	21.63%	150,705	20.94%	135,835	18.87%
Newfoundland and Labrador	106,220	20.74%	110,370	21.76%	107,390	21.45%	100,260	19.73%
Prince Edward Island	38,505	27.57%	41,715	30.37%	39,170	29.19%	37,170	27.87%
Northwest Territories	5,060	12.3%	4,845	11.88%	4,860	11.84%	4,470	12.05%
Yukon	6,930	19.74%	7,315	21.95%	5,735	18.99%	5,455	19.12%
Nunavut	1,740	4.89%	1,385	4.37%	1,220	4.16%	950	3.56%
Canada	4,627,000	13.43%	4,544,870	13.83%	4,354,155	13.94%	3,822,660	12.9%

The graph excludes those who have only some Irish ancestry. Historian and journalist Louis-Guy Lemieux claims that about 40% of Quebecers have Irish ancestry on at least one side of their family tree.^[29] Shunned by Protestant English-speakers, it was not uncommon for Catholic Irish to settle among and intermarry with the Catholic French-speakers. Considering that many other Canadians throughout Canada likewise have Irish roots, in addition to those who may simply identify as Canadian, the total number of Canadians with some Irish ancestry extrapolated would include a significant proportion of the Canadian population.

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Irish established communities in both urban and rural Quebec. Irish immigrants arrived in large numbers in Montreal during the 1840s and were hired as labourers to build the Victoria Bridge, living in a tent city at the foot of the bridge. Here, workers unearthed a mass grave of 6,000 Irish immigrants who had died at nearby Windmill Point in the typhus outbreak of 1847–48. The Irish Commemorative Stone or "Black Rock", as it is commonly known, was erected by bridge workers to commemorate the tragedy.^{[citation needed]}

The Irish would go on to settle permanently in the close-knit working-class neighbourhoods of Pointe-Saint-Charles, Verdun, Saint-Henri, Griffintown and Goose Village, Montreal. With the help of Quebec's Catholic Church, they would establish their own churches, schools, and hospitals. St. Patrick's Basilica was founded in 1847 and served Montreal's English-speaking Catholics for over a century. Loyola College was founded by the Jesuits to serve Montreal's mostly Irish English-speaking Catholic community in 1896. Saint Mary's Hospital was founded in the 1920s and continues to serve Montreal's present-day English-speaking population.^{[citation needed]}

The St. Patrick's Day Parade in Montreal is one of the oldest in North America, dating back to 1824.

The Irish would also settle in large numbers in Quebec City and establish communities in rural Quebec, particularly in Pontiac, Gatineau and Papineau where there was an active timber industry. However, most would move on to larger North American cities.^{[citation needed]}

Today, many Québécois have some Irish ancestry. Examples from political leaders include Laurence Cannon, Claude Ryan, the former Premiers Daniel Johnson and Jean Charest, Georges Dor (born Georges-Henri Dore), and former Prime Ministers Louis St. Laurent and Brian Mulroney. The Irish constitute the second largest ethnic group in the province after French Canadians.

From the times of early European settlement in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Irish had been coming to Ontario, in small numbers and in the service of New France, as missionaries, soldiers, geographers and fur trappers. After the creation of British North America in 1763, Protestant Irish, both Irish Anglicans and Ulster-Scottish Presbyterians, had been migrating over the decades to Upper Canada, some as United Empire Loyalists or directly from Ulster.^[30]

In the years after the War of 1812, increasing numbers of Irish, a growing proportion of them Catholic, were venturing to Canada to obtain work on projects such as canals, roads, early railroads and in the lumber industry. The labourers were known as ‘navvies’ and built much of the early infrastructure in the province. Settlement schemes offering cheap (or free) land brought over farming families, with many being from Munster (particularly counties Tipperary and Cork).^[31] Peter Robinson organized land settlements of Catholic tenant farmers in the 1820s to areas of rural Eastern Ontario, which helped establish Peterborough as a regional centre.

The Irish were instrumental in the building of the Rideau Canal and subsequent settlement along its route. Alongside French-Canadians, thousands of Irish laboured in difficult conditions and terrain. Hundreds, if not thousands, died from malaria.^[32]

The Great Irish Hunger 1845–1849, had a large impact on Ontario. At its peak in the summer of 1847, boatloads of sick migrants arrived in desperate circumstances on steamers from Quebec to Bytown (soon to be Ottawa), and to ports of call on Lake Ontario, chief amongst them Kingston and Toronto, in addition to many other smaller communities across southern Ontario. Quarantine facilities were hastily constructed to accommodate them. Nurses, doctors, priests, nuns, compatriots, some politicians and ordinary citizens aided them. Thousands died in Ontario that summer alone, mostly from typhus.

How permanent a settlement was depended on circumstances. A case in point is Irish immigration to North Hastings County, Canada West, which happened after 1846. Most of the immigrants were attracted to North Hastings by free land grants beginning in 1856. Three Irish settlements were established in North Hastings: Umfraville, Doyle's Corner, and O'Brien Settlement. The Irish were primarily Roman Catholic. Crop failures in 1867 halted the road program near the Irish settlements, and departing settlers afterward outnumbered new arrivals. By 1870, only the successful settlers, most of whom were farmers who raised grazing animals, remained.^[33]

In the 1840s the major challenge for the Catholic Church was keeping the loyalty of the very poor Catholic arrivals during marches. The fear was that Protestants might use their material needs as a wedge for evangelicalization. In response the Church built a network of charitable institutions such as hospitals, schools, boarding homes, and orphanages, to meet the need and keep people inside the faith.^[34] The Catholic church was less successful in dealing with tensions between its French and the Irish clergy; eventually the Irish took control.^[35][36]

Toronto had similar numbers of both Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics. Riots or conflicts repeatedly broke out from 1858 to 1878, such as during the annual St. Patrick's Day parade or during various religious processions, which culminated in the Jubilee Riots of 1875.^[27] These tensions had increased following the organized but failed Fenian Raids at points along the American border, which arose suspicions by Protestants of Catholics' sympathies toward the Fenian cause. The Irish population essentially defined the Catholic population in Toronto until 1890, when German and French Catholics were welcomed to the city by the Irish, but the Irish were still 90% of the Catholic population. However, various powerful initiatives such as the foundation of St. Michael's College in 1852 (where Marshall McLuhan held the chair of English until his death in 1980), three hospitals, and the most significant charitable organizations in the city (the Society of St. Vincent de Paul) and House of Providence created by Irish Catholic groups strengthened the Irish identity, transforming the Irish presence in the city into one of influence and power.

From 1840 to 1860 sectarian violence was rampant in Saint John, New Brunswick resulting in some of the worst urban riots in Canadian history. Orange Order parades ended in rioting with Catholics, many Irish-speaking, fighting against increased marginalization trapped in Irish ghettos at York Point and North End areas such as Portland Point. Nativist Protestants had secured their dominance over the city's political systems at the peak of the famine, which saw the New Brunswick city's demographics completely changed with waves of immigration. In three years alone, 1844 to 1847, 30,000 Irish came to Partridge Island, a quarantine station in the city's harbour. ^[23]

An economic boom and growth in the years after their arrival allowed many Irish men to obtain steady employment on the rapidly expanding railroad network, settlements developed or expanded along or close to the Grand Trunk Railroad corridor often in rural areas, allowing many to farm the relatively cheap, arable land of southern Ontario. Employment opportunities in the cities, in Toronto but elsewhere, occupations included construction, liquor processing (see Distillery District), Great Lakes shipping, and manufacturing. Women generally entered into domestic service. In more remote areas, employment centred around the Ottawa Valley timber trade which eventually extending into Northern Ontario along with railroad building and mining. There was a strong Irish rural presence in Ontario in comparison to their brethren in the northern US, but they were also numerous in the towns and cities. Later generations of these poorer immigrants were among those who rose to prominence in unions, business, judiciary, the arts and politics.^{[citation needed]}

Redclift (2003) concluded that many of the one million migrants, mainly of British and Irish origin, who arrived in Canada in the mid-19th century benefited from the availability of land and absence of social barriers to mobility. This enabled them to think and feel like citizens of the new country in a way denied them back in the old country.^[37]

Akenson (1984) argued that the Canadian experience of Irish immigrants is not comparable to the American one. He contended that the numerical dominance of Protestants within the national group and the rural basis of the Irish community negated the formation of urban ghettos and allowed for a relative ease in social mobility. In comparison, the American Irish in the Northeast and Midwest were dominantly Catholic, urban dwelling, and ghettoized. There was however, the existence of Irish-centric ghettos in Toronto (Corktown, Cabbagetown, Trinity Niagara, the Ward) at the fringes of urban development, at least for the first few decades after the famine and in the case of Trefann Court, a holdout against public housing and urban renewal, up to the 1970s. This was also the case in other Canadian cities with significant Irish Catholic populations such as Montreal, Ottawa and Saint John.^[38]

Likewise the new labour historians believe that the rise of the Knights of Labor caused the Orange and Catholic Irish in Toronto to resolve their generational hatred and set about to form a common working-class culture. This theory presumes that Irish-Catholic culture was of little value, to be rejected with such ease. Nicolson (1985) argues that neither theory is valid. He says that in the ghettos of Toronto the fusion of an Irish peasant culture with traditional Catholism produced a new, urban, ethno-religious vehicle – Irish Tridentine Catholism. This culture spread from the city to the hinterland and, by means of metropolitan linkage, throughout Ontario. Privatism created a closed Irish society, and, while Irish Catholics cooperated in labour organizations for the sake of their families' future, they never shared in the development of a new working-class culture with their old Orange enemies.^[39]

McGowan argues that between 1890 and 1920, the city's Catholics experienced major social, ideological, and economic changes that allowed them to integrate into Toronto society and shake off their second-class status. The Irish Catholics (in contrast to the French) strongly supported Canada's role in the First World War. They broke out of the ghetto and lived in all of Toronto's neighbourhoods. Starting as unskilled labourers, they used high levels of education to move up and were well represented among the lower middle class. Most dramatically, they intermarried with Protestants at an unprecedented rate.^[40]

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