Irish Canadian - Irish in The Prairies

Irish in The Prairies

While some influential Canadian politicians anticipated that the assisted migrations of Irish settlers would lead to the establishment of a 'New Ireland' on Canada's prairies, or at least raise the profile of the country's potential as a suitable destination for immigrants, neither happened. Sheppard (1990) looks at the efforts in the 1880s of Quaker philanthropist James Hack Tuke as well as those of Thomas Connolly, the Irish emigration agent for the Canadian government. The Irish press continued to warn potential emigrants of the dangers and hardships of life in Canada and encouraged would-be emigrants to settle instead in the United States.

Irish migration to the Prairie Provinces had two distinct components: those who came via eastern Canada or the United States, and those who came directly from Ireland. Many of the Irish-Canadians who came west were fairly well assimilated, in that they spoke English and understood British customs and law, and tended to be regarded as a part of English Canada. However, this picture was complicated by the religious division. Many of the original "English" Canadian settlers in the Red River Colony were fervent Irish Loyalist Protestants, and members of the Orange Order. They clashed with Catholic Metis leader Louis Riel's provisional government during the Red River Resistance, and as a result Thomas Scott was executed, inflaming sectarian tensions in the east. At this time and during the course of the following decades, many of the Catholic Irish were fighting for separate Catholic schools in the west, but sometimes clashed with the Francophone element of the Catholic community during the Manitoba Schools Question. After World War I and the de facto resolution of the religious schools issue, any eastern Irish-Canadians moving west blended in totally with the majority society. The small group of Irish-born who arrived in the second half of the 20th Century tended to be urban professionals, a stark contrast to the agrarian pioneers who had come before.

About 10% of the population of Saskatchewan during 1850–1930 were Irish-born or of Irish origin. Cottrell (1999) examines the social, economic, political, religious, and ideological impact of the Irish diaspora on pioneer society and suggests that both individually and collectively, the Irish were a relatively privileged group. The most visible manifestations of intergenerational Irish ethnicity - the Catholic Church and the Orange Order - served as vehicles for recreating Irish culture on the prairies and as forums for ethnic fusion, which integrated people of Irish origin with settlers of other nationalities. The Irish were thus a vital force for cohesion in an ethnically diverse frontier society, but also a source of major tension with elements that did not share their vision of how the province of Saskatchewan should evolve.