The Irish Famine of 1845, now 180 years in the past, is having a moment. The Champlain Society recently posted a "Finding" -- a document and commentary -- focussed on a cache of previously neglected records of Toronto area immigrant agents who were claiming government subsidies for their services to "indigent immigrants" in 1845 and subsequent years. Laura J. Smith, who wrote the Finding and provides an image of one of them (above), has catalogued 1500 heads of households representing about 5000 immigrants who were aided under this subsidy program -- a notable record, since relatively few Irish Famine migrants have their names recorded. That 5000 people landed at Toronto and Cobourg alone suggests the impact of the Irish influx upon Upper Canada. In 1847, some 90,000 Irish came to British North America.
Smith notes the chance that led her to these LAC documents, though she had long suspected their existence and had searched for something like them. Also by coincidence, the Dictionary of Canadian Biography has just published its entry on the Quebec novelist Laure Conan (Félicité Angers), who was born (at La Malbaie) in the Irish famine year of 1845. The biography of her mentions in passing another indication of the impact of the Irish famine migration on Canadian society:
During her three years with the Ursulines, from 4 Oct. 1859 to 1 July 1862, Félicité was already attracting attention because of her literary talents. There were so many Irish Catholic girls at the convent that she lived in a naturally bilingual environment. (italics added)
My wife's Irish forebears came to Upper Canada in the early 1830s and were already well settled before the Famine migration. My own Irish great-grandfather and great grandmother were born in the depths of rural east Galway in 1839 and 1843 respectively -- and somehow both survived the Famine and lived to ripe old ages in the 20th century. Lots of Irish yet to come....
