irish_potato_famine_bridget_odonnel
An 1849 depiction of Wikicommons: “Bridget O’Donnell and her two children during the famine.”

by Christopher Kelly-Bisson

Hardly anyone talks about the green elephant in the room — the one shadowing long-standing historical celebrations such as the Ottawa and Montréal St. Patrick’s Day parades. That is, no one talks about the horrors of how settlers treated Irish migrants to North America.

This conversation needs to happen if us Irish-Canadians are to realize the lesson learned by our ancestors: that, because our ancestors suffered from brutal injustices as migrants, Irish-Canadians and many other hyphenated Canadians ought to develop a staunch commitment towards migrant justice, and that this commitment ought to be the basis of our governments’ policy and behaviour.

Many Irish came to Canada in the wake of the Gorta Mór (or the Great Famine of 1845-52). This famine was not simply an act of nature but a protracted instrument of colonization and racism pressed upon Ireland by the United Kingdom. There was, in fact, plenty of food being produced for export at the time, yet access to food supplies was largely restricted to landed gentry. So many Indigenous Gaelic and other working-class Irish suffered, fell ill, and were starved and/or displaced that it ought to be remembered as a genocidal act.

Seeking relief from starvation, many Irish fled to coastal ports to find food, employment, or escape. Escape was an expensive affair; many found their way to Liverpool and other industrial centres in the UK to work in atrocious factory conditions for virtually no pay. Others found their way on to lumber ships returning to Canada for their next shipment of wood. Most Irish-Canadians’ ancestors came to Canada on ships such as these — ships that were designed to transport timber, not human beings, and so provided passengers with inhumane, even deadly conditions for their trans-Atlantic passage. Merchants made a living off of this suffering, charging exorbitant fees to starving Irish families desperate for escape.

These ships, cramped vessels packed full of sick and starving refugees, harboured infectious disease and came to be known as “coffin ships.” Typhus and cholera killed 70 per cent of all those infected, and deaths were counted as high as 136 of 275 passengers in the case of the merchant ship Avon — a mortality rate of nearly 50 per cent.

So many Irish migrants arrived sick that the Canadian government enforced a quarantine period for all new arrivals. Quarantine took place on Grosse Île, a small island several kilometres off the coast of Québec City. The government provided no resources to treat and care for  Irish migrants. Virtually all aid for the ill, malnourished and starving came from the Catholic Church.

Incompetence and xenophobic racism saw migrants trapped in these quarantine camps, which were soon overrun. Over 100,000 Irish refugees passed through Grosse Île and 5,000 refugees perished there.

Unprepared for this flood of migration, Montréal forced Irish refugees to settle in a narrow, swampy strip by the shore called Griffintown. Several typhus pandemics coursed through the poorly constructed shacks and yearly spring flooding turned the shanty town into a frozen lake. English Protestants and French Catholics persistently harassed the migrant communities out of racism and fear of disease. This bred sectarian violence in the streets of Montréal.

Working conditions were equally inhumane. Many found work in the construction of canals both in Montréal and here in Ottawa. Work conditions were dangerous and trying. Irish trade unions formed and fought for better working conditions, but many lives were lost.

Irish-Canadians today are a perplexing group to me. Now we are fully integrated into settler society, but only a century ago we were considered a sub-European, sub-human race. Our integration has afforded us all of the privileges that permit us to forget the historical abuses inflicted upon our ancestors. This ignorance has ironically resulted in the advocacy by many Irish-Canadians for the same sorts of xenophobic policies that our ancestors experienced in attempting to flee colonial occupation and integrate in a new country.

For example, though Irish names fill the roll call of both the Conservative and Liberal parties – and many of their supporters – in the development of Bill C-51. This bill that targets people of colour as suspects of terrorism is precisely the same sort of policy wielded against Irish immigrants amid scares of a Fenian uprising in the 1860s.

Irish-Canadians responded similarly when, in 2010, 500 Tamil refugees fleeing ethnic cleansing in Sri Lanka packed into the MV Sea Sun for 12 weeks. Upon their arrival in British Columbia, they were held in detention — some for as long as two years. Then-Immigration Minister Jason Kenney (an Irish-Canadian himself!) justified this response in the name of stopping human trafficking. Yet this is precisely the same way that Kenney’s ancestors came to Canada.

The political hypocrisy of many Irish-Canadians is baffling but not surprising. High school history classes portray the famine as a trick of nature, implying that famine refugees popped up like fair-weather leprechauns. It certainly doesn’t help that Irish culture is a pastiche of folk and commercial tropes — glasses of Guinness and gaudy St. Patrick’s Day parades that might be considered offensive if demographic in question were Indigenous or  Roma Canadians.

The truth about the historical treatment of Irish refugees is almost completely ignored, and as a result Irish-Canadians are complicit in the colonialisms of the present day. They perpetuate the same conditions that led to their ancestors’ own ethnic cleansing and ghettoization.

For this reason I implore Irish-Canadians to learn their families’ histories and meditate long upon the violent nature of their ancestors’ suffering. I then invite Irish-Canadians to adopt St. Patrick’s Day as an opportunity to make a stand for migrant justice, and to oppose xenophobic and racist behaviour and legislation exhibited by “our” own government.

This article first appeared in the Leveller Vol.7, No.6 (Spring 2015).