The Irish experience in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Saint John, New Brunswick, and St. John's, Newfoundland : a comparative analysis

Abstract

Many historians of the Irish experience in Canada have argued that the Irish migrants in British North America originated primarily from Ulster, settled overwhelmingly in rural regions where they became pioneering farmers, and arrived well before the Great Irish Famine (1845 and 1850). This widely accepted view of the Irish migrant in British North America does not, however, account for the variety of Irish experiences across the country. As a corrective, this thesis examines and compares the Pre-Famine urban Irish experiences of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Saint John, New Brunswick, and St. John's, Newfoundland between 1750 and 1850, and uses the comparative analysis method in order to highlight the variations in Irish experiences within the Atlantic Region of Canada. Through the comparative approach, this study demonstrates how the Irish experience in these three Atlantic Canadian cities was conditioned by three broad factors: the source area of Irish migration; the nature of the host communities in which they settled; and the time in which they arrived to their new host environment.