1600-1800: First Arrivals of the Gaels

Image Citation: Doyle, Danny. 2015. Míle Míle i gCéin: The Irish Language in Canada. Borealis Press: Ottawa. adapted from “The Emigrant’s Farewell” by Henry Doyle, 1868.

1. Máire Ní Dhubhgáin, Cró Bheithe, Co. Dhún na nGall. “The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1055, Page 347” by Dúchas © National Folklore Collection, UCD is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.

2. Mac Síomóin, Tomás. 2020. The Gael Becomes Irish. Independently Published: Dublin.

3. “Irishness is inextricably linked to the Irish language. If the Irish could be forced or cajoled to abandon their language, adopting English in its place, they would automatically adopt the superior (according to [Edmund Spencer]) world-view enshrined by that language, including the definition of their own greatly inferior place and nature within that world-view. Accordingly, the then English cultural policy in Ireland had to be directed towards extirpation of the then universally spoken Irish language and the simultaneous promotion of English. But the consciousness of being the descendants of colonised subjects seldom occurs in the thinking of present-day linguistically colonised Irish citizens and their overseas cousins.“ Mac Síomóin, Tomás. 2020. The Gael Becomes Irish. Independently Published: Dublin. 14.

4. The settlement of Newfoundland, despite the island’s early importance, was hampered by competing Spanish, English, and French claims over the island, naval raiding, and the British view of the island as an industry rather than a colony. When settlement of Newfoundland finally begun after the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, 90% of the population of the Avalon Peninsula came from within 60 miles of the port of Waterford, and settled within 100 miles of St. John’s. English authorities often complained about the numbers of Catholic Irish who overwintered and “seldom return for Ireland,” and Governor George Rodney warned the Colonial Office in 1749 that the Irish Catholics of Newfoundland were not to be trusted.

5. Most Irish fishermen spoke Irish, many only speaking Irish. Lawrence Coughlan was a priest in Newfoundland. In 1767, he wrote that in the settlement of Conception Bay “many of [the Irish] come to hear me preach in the Irish Tongue.” In 1769, he wrote that in Carbonear, another settlement, “Many of the Papists come to [Church] and many more would come (As I spake the Irish Tongue) but numbers of them go to Ireland annually where they go to confession. Their priest, finding they go to Church when in [Newfoundland], puts them under heavy penance thus they told me when I asked some of them why they did not come to [Church].” (Foster, F.G. 1979. Irish in Avalon. Newfoundland Quarterly 74.4.17-22.)

6. Forced transportees are separate from indentured servants, as they did not have a say in whether they were to be transported from their lands or the duration of their indenture. Forced transportees as also quite different from chattel slavery used against Africans, as the transportees’ status as property was not heritable to their descendants, as with African slaves. 1,400 Irish were forcibly transported to the New World in the 1780s. One convict ship, the Duke of Leinster, carried 102 men and boys and 12 women. They were carted to the Dublin waterfront and brought aboard in irons under military guard, though several jumped overboard rather than submit. Chained in couples during the month-long journey, the Duke of Leinster arrived at Newfoundland in 1789. Short on supplies and riddled with fever, the ship deserted its transportees in the fishing villages of Bay Bulls and Petty Harbour where “The hungry victims lived for three days in a state of warfare, quarrelling about their food: the strongest beat the weak, and over a cask of rank butter, or beef, there was for a time as severe fighting as if a kingdom had been at stake.” The year previous, 1788, the barque Providence had also forcibly deserted its cargo of 126 Irish transportees on the shore of Cape Breton at Main-a-Dieu in 1788, with seven there dying of exposure before they could be rescued by local fishermen. Forced transportation of Irish political prisoners continued up to the Victorian period, but after the Duke of Leinster incident the destination moved from the New World to Australia.

7. 1768 also marked the founding of the Charitable Irish Society of Halifax. Court cases show that Irish translators were often required in Newfoundland, such as a case in Fermuse in 1752. There are also accounts of Irish speaking servants in Ferryland, and the necessity of having Irish speaking priests in areas including St.Mary’s and Trepassey. Irish-speaking priests were also needed to quell mutinies in Harbour Grace. (Kirwan, William J. (1993). ‘The planting of Anglo-Irish in Newfoundland’ in Focus on Canada, Sandra Clark (ed.). John Benjamin's Publishing Company.)

8. The Irish accounted for one or both spouses in at least 130 of the 2,500 marriages in New France from the late 1600's. (John O"Farrell. The Irish In Quebec (in The Untold Story: The Irish in Canada, Vol. 1; Robert O'Driscoll & Lorna Reynolds, editors, Toronto: Celtic Arts of Canada, 1988). Edmund O'Callaghan noted that France’s Irish Brigade was stationed in Kingston, Ontario and on the frontier of Lake Champlain from 1755 to 1760, fighting the British during the Nine-Years’ War. At the surrender of Montreal, no Irish were noted among the surrendered soldiers sent to France, and it seems that the Irish Brigade had instead integrated with the French population of Montreal.

9. Alexander McKee, son of an Irish father and a Shawnee mother, and his son Thomas McKee, became early advocates for Indigenous land rights. Although there are numerous instances of respectful interactions, like all European settlers the Irish benefited from the dispossession of the First Peoples in Canada.

   All other cited references, numbers, or quotations as from: Ó Dubhghaill, Dónall (Doyle, Danny). 2019. Míle Míle i gCéin: The Irish Language in Canada. 2nd Ed. Boralis Press: Ottawa.