Nova Hibernia

[durante]

I find the intended plan for Ontario (originally Upper Canada) fascinating: to replicate England, again, except better than last time they did it in New England. To this end, they even thought the counties should be named the same. From south to north, it even matches the east coast of England (sorta).

One day, however, when I was driving from Waterford (in Norfolk County) to Lucan (in Middlesex County, on this map it's part of Kent County), I was struck by an idea:

There was a New England. And a Nova Scotia. But what about a New Ireland? I know New Brunswick was considered for that, but when it was settled by 15,000 Loyalists from the USA, it seemed like another New England was it's destiny.

So what if Upper Canada was selected to be "New Ireland"? There is some logic to it: it received the fewest number of Loyalist settlers, and as part of Quebec, the Catholic religion was already guaranteed in the area. IOTL, about 6,600 Loyalists settled what became Ontario. There were about 44,000 white Loyalists who came to Canada. According to Liberty's Exiles, about 15% of them were born in Ireland (although 2/3 of this number were Protestant). I ain't no mathemagician but I'm fairly certain 15% of 44,000 is 6,600.

I did some math: the area west of Dundas County on this map (with the top ending at a straight line more or less running between the south end of Georgian bay and the northwest corner of Grenville County) is equal to about 84,500 square kilometres. In otherwords, roughly .1% larger than Ireland.

At the first census after Confederation in 1871, 24.3% of the population of Canada claimed Irish ancestry; this was higher than Scottish or English (but lower than French). 2/3 of the Irish lived in Ontario. Between 1825 and 1845, more than 60% of immigrants to Canada were from Ireland. In terms of total numbers, nearly 800,000 Irish immigrated to Canada between 1825 and 1855. At the end of this period, the total population of Canada was barely over 2.5 million, at the beginning, it was less than 1 million. So it's not hard to attract the settlers.

Rough numbers, looking at a modern map, I calculated the size of the provinces as well =

Munster is 24,675 sq km.
OTL Essex, Kent, Lambton, Elgin, Middlesex, Haldimand-Norfolk, Oxford, Huron, Perth and Brant Counties are 24,055 sq km. (approximately the 'Western' District).

Leinster is 19,801 sq km.
OTL Hamilton, Toronto, Durham, Halton, Niagara, Peel, York, Kawartha, Northumberland, Peterborough and Waterloo counties are 20,305 sq km. (approximately the 'Home' District)

Connacht is 17,711 sq km.
OTL Bruce (a former Gaeltacht), Grey, Wellington, Simcoe, and Dufferin counties are 17,610 sq km. (approximately the northern half of the two aforementioned districts).

Ulster is 22,067 sq km.
OTL Leeds & Grenville, Lennox & Addington, Lanark, Frontenac, Prince Edward, Hastings, and Ottawa counties = 22,991 sq km.

You can't really get an exact 1 for 1 with OTL counties, but by moving a few townships around, you could get a map that vaguely resembles Ireland.

Edit: later in the thread I do go county for county.

Mayo, Carlow, Cavan, Fingal, Malahide, Longford, Monaghan, Bray and many others were townships in Ontario - not to mention the dozens named after Irish settlers.

So approximately, modern Toronto is originally called Dublin instead of York. Probably still changes its name around 1835 as OTL, but I'd expect Toronto neighbours like "Clondalkin", "Dunleary", and "Fingle".

OTL Hamilton can be renamed Wicklow (with Burlington as Bray and Stoney Creek as Arklow), and you could call Hamilton Mountain Glendalough. Niagara would be Wexford; the Grand River would be the Barrow, Windsor would be...Killarney? Chatham as Cork. Sarnia as Limerick? Oshawa is maybe Drogheda and Kingston is Belfast (which I like because there is already a Presbyterian-affiliated Queen's University!).

I also discovered while looking up the historical counties that Upper Canada, OTL, adopted the textbooks of the Irish National Schools in the 1840s. So in many ways I'm just calling it the way it should've been to begin with.

The majority of Irish settlers in Canada were Protestant; although Protestant Irish were less likely to identify as Irish after a generation or two. And because they were quite evenly split between Presbyterian and Anglican, (with considerable numbers of Quakers and Methodists, as well), Catholicism was still the largest denomination.

Would more Irish stay/settle in Ontario if it was designed as an Irish colony (even if it is one that would've been designed as with the Anglo-Irish in mind).

Discuss.

(PS: I did, for a laugh, try to come up with an approximate 1-for-1 county-for-county map, but it doesn't exactly work. You'd have to move some townships around. But if anyone is interested, I have done this work already).

Final thought: Peter Robinson assisted the migration of around 2500 working-class Irish from Bandon in County Cork to what is now Peterborough in the 1820s. I'd imagine that ITTL, the are settled in Cork county (Kent county). So maybe Chatham becomes Peterborough? Maybe it's Ballypeter?

 

[Hugh Third of Five]

If you want to add to the set, I think New Wales was considered as a possible name for Labrador.

Note that during the famine, although settling in Canada and Australia was preferable to starving to death in Ireland, the USA was the favorite destination because it wasn't part of the Empire, and a lot of Irish people, especially Catholics and Irish-speakers, who came to Canada crossed the border at the first opportunity. If you want a lot of those people, it might help it the ARW has a different outcome. Averting the famine would of course keep them from the USA but that would be because they were staying in Ireland. On the other hand if the ARW ends in either a British victory or a political compromise, there's no reason for Irish Catholics (or Irish speakers) to prefer the USA over Ontario/Upper Canada/Nova Hibernia. Alternatively you could just attract a lot of Irish unionists, but I would think Catholics and/or Irish speakers would be more likely to retain a sense of Irish identity. On the other hand a lot of the ethnic Scots Irish (ie descendants of Ulster Prods) in the USA retained an Irish-American identity so perhaps they could be a template for an Irish-Canadian identity.

 

[DanMcCollum]

If you want to add to the set, I think New Wales was considered as a possible name for Labrador.

Note that during the famine, although settling in Canada and Australia was preferable to starving to death in Ireland, the USA was the favorite destination because it wasn't part of the Empire, and a lot of Irish people, especially Catholics and Irish-speakers, who came to Canada crossed the border at the first opportunity. If you want a lot of those people, it might help it the ARW has a different outcome. Averting the famine would of course keep them from the USA but that would be because they were staying in Ireland. On the other hand if the ARW ends in either a British victory or a political compromise, there's no reason for Irish Catholics (or Irish speakers) to prefer the USA over Ontario/Upper Canada/Nova Hibernia. Alternatively you could just attract a lot of Irish unionists, but I would think Catholics and/or Irish speakers would be more likely to retain a sense of Irish identity. On the other hand a lot of the ethnic Scots Irish (ie descendants of Ulster Prods) in the USA retained an Irish-American identity so perhaps they could be a template for an Irish-Canadian identity.

That was part of it - though it was honestly also a matter of pure economics. Irish poured into the ports of Boston and New York because the shipping lines landed in those ports earlier - making it so that passage was cheaper. And when you're starving, and barely able to afford passage anyway (or, can't afford it, and are relying on others to pay your way) you usually get off at the cheapest port. It's also one of the reasons you saw concentrations of Irish in Eastcoast cities, rather than moving further inland initially - despite the surpriisngly vibrant story of the Irish prefering urban dwellings due to being traumatized by the famine, it was instead a matter of simple economics. Having spent what funds they had, and being forced to take bottom rung work, they simply didn't have the resources to get land out West (not to say that none did, of course. But the numbers were few - and efforts, such as the Irish Catholic Colonization Society which tried to establish rural Irish communities in Minnesota, Nebraska and a few other locations, met with only middling success).

If you want to see Irish settlement in 'New Ireland' I'd suggest an earlier colonization society being formed with the expressed purpose of oving them there and then making sure it's well funded. If you can get an earlier wave of settlement, and give them enough time to create the neccesary social fabric, it should be possible for it to become a much more prime destination for poor, rural Irish Catholics.

 

[durante]

If you want to add to the set, I think New Wales was considered as a possible name for Labrador.

Note that during the famine, although settling in Canada and Australia was preferable to starving to death in Ireland, the USA was the favorite destination because it wasn't part of the Empire, and a lot of Irish people, especially Catholics and Irish-speakers, who came to Canada crossed the border at the first opportunity. If you want a lot of those people, it might help it the ARW has a different outcome. Averting the famine would of course keep them from the USA but that would be because they were staying in Ireland. On the other hand if the ARW ends in either a British victory or a political compromise, there's no reason for Irish Catholics (or Irish speakers) to prefer the USA over Ontario/Upper Canada/Nova Hibernia. Alternatively you could just attract a lot of Irish unionists, but I would think Catholics and/or Irish speakers would be more likely to retain a sense of Irish identity. On the other hand a lot of the ethnic Scots Irish (ie descendants of Ulster Prods) in the USA retained an Irish-American identity so perhaps they could be a template for an Irish-Canadian identity.

Well Nova Hibernia is certainly the better name, isn't it? Also thank you for New Wales! I was not aware of this. Too bad about the location I'm sure the Welsh would like something a bit more farmable. Maybe Prince Edward Island is Prince of Wales Island? But I digress.

That was part of it - though it was honestly also a matter of pure economics. Irish poured into the ports of Boston and New York because the shipping lines landed in those ports earlier - making it so that passage was cheaper. And when you're starving, and barely able to afford passage anyway (or, can't afford it, and are relying on others to pay your way) you usually get off at the cheapest port. It's also one of the reasons you saw concentrations of Irish in Eastcoast cities, rather than moving further inland initially - despite the surpriisngly vibrant story of the Irish prefering urban dwellings due to being traumatized by the famine, it was instead a matter of simple economics. Having spent what funds they had, and being forced to take bottom rung work, they simply didn't have the resources to get land out West (not to say that none did, of course. But the numbers were few - and efforts, such as the Irish Catholic Colonization Society which tried to establish rural Irish communities in Minnesota, Nebraska and a few other locations, met with only middling success).

If you want to see Irish settlement in 'New Ireland' I'd suggest an earlier colonization society being formed with the expressed purpose of oving them there and then making sure it's well funded. If you can get an earlier wave of settlement, and give them enough time to create the neccesary social fabric, it should be possible for it to become a much more prime destination for poor, rural Irish Catholics.

Thank you both for your input! The challenge is certainly to keep the Irish who do arrive in Canada - the numbers were enormous.

There may be *small* increases associated with the naming, and being settled by Irish originally as well - but you've both pointed out the true problems:

the USA was a much preferred destination, even for those who originally came to Canada.

I've been reading that in the early stages Canada was a fairly popular destination - but that the horrific experiences of the Irish in 1847-1848 at Grosse Isle and other locations (where thousands of Irish died aboard coffin ships while waiting weeks in the harbour to disembark) soured the Irish (especially Catholic and Irish speakers, who disproportionately went to Québec) on Canada as a destination. The drop off in Irish immigration from the 1845-1849 period to the 1855-59 period in Canada is staggering! 230,000 arrived 1845-49. Only 18,000 arrived 1855-59!
Its unclear but it *seems* this is net migration.

@DanMcCollum, an earlier Irish Benevolent Society pushing for immigration seems like a great bet; they could be both an advocate for Irish-Canadians AND and assisted migration network, both bringing more Irish to Canada, helping them settle, and advocating for them to avoid the worst disasters of Grosse Isle (potentially).

Also likely that Catholic education is in a better and more developed state pre-famine with a larger and earlier Irish immigration.

As another neat connection, University of Toronto was originally an Anglican institution named Trinity College.

So...on the *eve* of the famine...

We have British colony named Nova Hibernia, where the Irish are the founding settlement group and largest in absolute numbers if not outright majority - using the exact Irish National School system including the same textbooks - with separate Queen's (Presbyterian, Belfast OTL Kingston), Trinity (Anglican, Toronto aka Dublin), and St Michael's (Catholic, also likely in Toronto to start) Colleges..(I'm thinking ITTL that St Michael's in Toronto becomes the British Empire's first Catholic university, rather than St Mary's in Halifax).

The right to a Catholic education is guaranteed (only place in the British empire), with (at the time of the famine), the only Catholic university in the Empire...

I think what we need to send it over the top is a couple of famous instances of discrimination of Grosse-Isle style tragedy in Boston or New York.

Delaying the (I believe, inevitable) swing to overwhelming American immigration by even a few decades would be transformational.

(Remembering that Upper Canada's population was maybe 600,000 in 1845 and they received 230,000 immigrants in the next few years...it was probably 1849 or 1850 that Ontario passed Quebec in population, due to Irish immigration).

And historically the Irish, both Catholic and Protestant, who went to Canada were more likely to receive land then those who went to the USA. This is mostly because the government of Upper Canada began providing free land in the 1850s...

If the free land is given away earlier, I think all the elements are in place!

 

[durante]

My brother in law attended a Catholic university in the Buffalo area for his Masters'. He told me one of the Profs there mentioned that Buffalo was the originally desired location for the University of Notre Dame, this location being closer to the major Irish communities and the Ivy League schools. (I've never been able to corroborate this rumour)

If this were true, my initial assumption is that the UND wouldnt be as large, but might be more Irish? Could be wrong on both counts though

 

[DanMcCollum]

My brother in law attended a Catholic university in the Buffalo area for his Masters'. He told me one of the Profs there mentioned that Buffalo was the originally desired location for the University of Notre Dame, this location being closer to the major Irish communities and the Ivy League schools. (I've never been able to corroborate this rumour)

If this were true, my initial assumption is that the UND wouldnt be as large, but might be more Irish? Could be wrong on both counts though

UND actually was pretty heavily Irish from the very beginning. Although the Congregation of the Holy Cross, which adminsters the University, was founded as a French order - they drew heavily upon Irish members when it came to Notre Dame (Four of the original eight brothers were Irish and a look at the list of Presidents of the University will show that, after Sorin, they were predominantly Irish and Irish-American.) and this was also reflected in the student body. In fact, it was a rather raucus St. Paddy's Day celebration which saw the dismissal of Patrick Colovin as President during the 1870s (Sorin had some rather ... conflicted feelings towards the Irish and even after he left the Presidency, he had a large amount of power overthe University as head of the CHC), and lead to protests by the students who felt that the former-president was a martyr for his people.

As for Buffalo, I doubt this was meant to be the original site of Notre Dame. UND was founded by Sorin after being invited in to establsh a school within the diocese of Vincennes and given land by the bishop - and that land had originally been purchased from the local Potawatami tribe in the 1830s by Fr. Stephan Badin.

This doesn't mean that Buffalo was never considered as a site for a Catholic University - Catholic education was HUGE during this period and was viewed as a neccesity in establishing the framework and fabric of the American Church - but I don't think that it had been much in the running to be the site of Notre Dame.

 

[durante]

UND actually was pretty heavily Irish from the very beginning. Although the Congregation of the Holy Cross, which adminsters the University, was founded as a French order - they drew heavily upon Irish members when it came to Notre Dame (Four of the original eight brothers were Irish and a look at the list of Presidents of the University will show that, after Sorin, they were predominantly Irish and Irish-American.) and this was also reflected in the student body. In fact, it was a rather raucus St. Paddy's Day celebration which saw the dismissal of Patrick Colovin as President during the 1870s (Sorin had some rather ... conflicted feelings towards the Irish and even after he left the Presidency, he had a large amount of power overthe University as head of the CHC), and lead to protests by the students who felt that the former-president was a martyr for his people.

As for Buffalo, I doubt this was meant to be the original site of Notre Dame. UND was founded by Sorin after being invited in to establsh a school within the diocese of Vincennes and given land by the bishop - and that land had originally been purchased from the local Potawatami tribe in the 1830s by Fr. Stephan Badin.

This doesn't mean that Buffalo was never considered as a site for a Catholic University - Catholic education was HUGE during this period and was viewed as a neccesity in establishing the framework and fabric of the American Church - but I don't think that it had been much in the running to be the site of Notre Dame.

Ah that settles it then. I did actually mean that it would remain more Irish to the present day; but given that I have been digging for years into this without any shred of evidence, and your explanation regarding the Diocese of Vincennes makes perfect sense, I suspect this is just another one of those rumours.

There are, however, three Catholic liberal arts schools in the Buffalo area which couldve merged into one larger one. But I'm not sure if that really does anything. In fact, if I think about it, a prominent Catholic university in Buffalo might actually draw away some of Ontario's Catholics

 

[durante]

https://www.jstor.org/stable/25021459

Well this was an interesting and relevant read! (Archbishop Lynch and New Ireland: An Unfulfilled Dream for Canada's Northwest).

Details the efforts made 1873-1887 to establish a farming colony for Irish and Scottish Catholics it what is now Manitoba.

The key figure was Irish-born Archbishop Joseph Lynch of Ontario, who took over as Archbishop in 1860 from a French-Canadian (approximately representing the take-over of the Catholic Church hierarchy in Ontario).

Archbishop Lynch was opposed to Irish immigration (although he stated many times that he approved of rural immigration, but was concerned that so many Irish Catholics settled in those vice filled cities- and some of the Irish Catholic women even married Protestants.)

So he began actively discouraging Irish immigration from 1860.

In 1873, the Archbishop of Quebec, Taschereau, visited England and Ireland. While there, he devised a plan to assist Catholic migrants from the slums of English cities to Ontario.

He expressed this to Lynch, who explained his objections.

Taschereau had erstwhile been trying to encourage French-Canadian immigration to Manitoba without much success. So he married the two plans together, and eventually Lynch agreed to head the operation, (apparently partly because it involved a trip to Ireland).

So Lynch headed to Ireland and the UK to pitch the idea to the local gentry while Governor-General Lorne worked the locals.

Lynch found a surprisingly receptive gentry class in Ireland who were willing to commit funds for assisted migration to remove the poorest of their tenants.

The British government apparently "pledged" £100,000 to get the scheme off the ground, enthusiastic as they were to empty their slums.

But the timing was real bad. Almost simultaneously, the Phoenix Park murders took place (where two MPs, IIRC, were murdered in Dublin in a political attack), which set off a wave an anti-Irish sentiment in Britain. That alone may have helped the situation...but the Canadian parliament, at nearly the same time, passed a bill calling for Home Rule for Ireland.

Britain resented her colony getting uppity and telling her what to do; Britain also seemed to realize the potential for fostering an anti-British group within Canada by encouraging too many Irish Catholics to live together.

The British backed out; although the Canadian government replaced the initial pledge. The Manitoba legislature passed laws which were identical to the later homestead act: Irish immigrants would have the right to buy 160 acres for £5, and first right of refusal on the adjacent 160 acres. Men would have jobs on the CPR. Women would grow potatoes.

The federal government even passed legislation offering Irish immigrants free rail transport from Québec or Halifax to anywhere in Canada. Gladstone's 1881 Land Act included an emigration clause. Lynch attempted to argue that an assisted migration society was necessary to make this work. But Gladstone was busy and cancelled their meeting.

Who knows what that meeting could have changed, as Lynch appears to have been right: without the support and funding from Britain, far too many Irish could not afford the passage to Quebec or Halifax, and the dream died.

 

[DanMcCollum]

I'd suggest looking into Archbishop John Ireland of Minneapolis' Irish Colonization society and plan, for a related movement that also run into problems. If you look at them both, you might be able to check out if they had common flaws and if there were ways to get around them. One of the problems about looking at such issues in geographically isolated manner, is you lose sight of transnational character of movements (both in the political sense as well as the ... well, actually movement of people) - a problem I'm running into in my own recent research into the Irish Catholic Temperance movement.

As an aside - one of the reasons that the British government would be worried about the prairie being used as a place to nurture Irish radicalism is that this is in the wake of the Fenian invasions of Canada. During this same time, the British officials in Canada often tried to lodge complaints against prominent Irish American leaders in Montana, Iowa and other Western states because they feared another invasion was being planned - so the thought that in the case of another Irish-American push into the Canadian West could be helped by fellow travelers on the Canadian side would have been pretty frightening.

 

[DanMcCollum]

OH! One last thing. You may also want to look into "The Irish in Ontario: A Study in Rural History" by Donald Harman Akenson which is a classic in the field of the Irish-Canadians, and rural Irish. I'd also suggest Colin Barr and Hillary M. Carey's "Religion and Greater Ireland" which is a collection of essays about the role of religion throughout the Irish diaspora, and has a few essays relating to Canada (and, yes, Barr is my current advisor - so I'm totally giving him a shoutout )

 

[173rd LRRP]

The South Coast of Newfoundland was settled by Irish

 

[durante]

I'd suggest looking into Archbishop John Ireland of Minneapolis' Irish Colonization society and plan, for a related movement that also run into problems. If you look at them both, you might be able to check out if they had common flaws and if there were ways to get around them. One of the problems about looking at such issues in geographically isolated manner, is you lose sight of transnational character of movements (both in the political sense as well as the ... well, actually movement of people) - a problem I'm running into in my own recent research into the Irish Catholic Temperance movement.

As an aside - one of the reasons that the British government would be worried about the prairie being used as a place to nurture Irish radicalism is that this is in the wake of the Fenian invasions of Canada. During this same time, the British officials in Canada often tried to lodge complaints against prominent Irish American leaders in Montana, Iowa and other Western states because they feared another invasion was being planned - so the thought that in the case of another Irish-American push into the Canadian West could be helped by fellow travelers on the Canadian side would have been pretty frightening.

OH! One last thing. You may also want to look into "The Irish in Ontario: A Study in Rural History" by Donald Harman Akenson which is a classic in the field of the Irish-Canadians, and rural Irish. I'd also suggest Colin Barr and Hillary M. Carey's "Religion and Greater Ireland" which is a collection of essays about the role of religion throughout the Irish diaspora, and has a few essays relating to Canada (and, yes, Barr is my current advisor - so I'm totally giving him a shoutout )

Thanks for both of these! The Article I linked actually mentioned that Lynch was inspired by the movement in Minnesota, so it's much appreciated.

I will also check out both the other recommends! Cheers. Or should I say Slaínte!

 

[Simreeve]

But the timing was real bad. Almost simultaneously, the Phoenix Park murders took place (where two MPs, IIRC, were murdered in Dublin in a political attack),

The 'Chief Secretary for Ireland' (UK government minister, who could sit in the Cabinet, and effectively head of the island's administration although nominally subordinate to the Lord Lieutenant; in this case, also brother to another Minister, who responded to the killing by splitting the Liberal Party to form an anti-'Home Rule' branch whose political successors are the various Ulster Unionist parties) and his 'Permanent Under-Secretary' (the senior "career" civil servant).

 

[PolishMagnet]

Interesting. As a resident of Arklow, I heartily oppose any TTL amalgamation into Wicklow.

How would Irish Canada be affected by European immigration?

 

[durante]

OH! One last thing. You may also want to look into "The Irish in Ontario: A Study in Rural History" by Donald Harman Akenson which is a classic in the field of the Irish-Canadians, and rural Irish. I'd also suggest Colin Barr and Hillary M. Carey's "Religion and Greater Ireland" which is a collection of essays about the role of religion throughout the Irish diaspora, and has a few essays relating to Canada (and, yes, Barr is my current advisor - so I'm totally giving him a shoutout )

So just started into The Irish in Ontario on my lunch break. I'm already a fan of the author:

"...I am proud of how this was done, because I did not have a cent in computer research money or any research assistants…

I arrived at two conclusions that were directly counter to the accepted wisdom of the time: (1) most Irish migrants to Ontario and most person of Irish ethnicity were Protestants and (2) both Catholics and Protestants were mostly a rural people. Those points are easily stated, but they turned the literature upside down. Here I must emphasize that the database on which these conclusions were founded was not a sample, but the entire population of Ontario, as defined in various governmental enumerations. This is necessary because some quantitatively untrained historians have somehow managed to infer that these conclusions were based on a sample, and a very small and non-random one at that. No: the entire population. Later, very sophisticated studies of the census…confirmed my basic conclusions."

Not all heroes wear capes.

 

[rfmcdonald]

My chief issue with the idea is that this New Ireland would be located in a debatable frontier next to the US. How stable would this be?

 

[durante]

My chief issue with the idea is that this New Ireland would be located in a debatable frontier next to the US. How stable would this be?

Well I suppose its inherently unstable.

Life in Nova Hibernia would have to be good enough to draw the Irish and have them stay; but not too good for them to assimilate OR come to dominate the Province and demand independence...

Unfortunately I think it might be easier to make the situation in the USA worse. A stronger Know Nothing Party? A ban on Catholic education? I really bad incident?

Also apparently the RCMP was based on the RIC.

 

[durante]

Catching up on the Academic literature almost feels like reading a hidden history.

Akenson's argument (and one echoed by seemingly everyone who studies the issue) is that Ontario - particularly rural Ontario, and particularly before the 1950s - may have been more ethnically Irish than anywhere else in North America (and by extension one of the most Irish places outside Ireland).

However, Ontario's Irish seem to have become "invisible" - sort of.

It is widely accepted that those who describe themselves as simply "American" on the US census are disproportionately, if not mostly, "Scots-Irish" (in Ontario, more commonly called "Ulster").

It's less appreciated that this is almost certainly the case in Ontario as well. (Among those who declare their ancestry as simply "Canadian").

Akenson argues that both the Catholic and Protestant communities of early Ontario, and both the rural and urban settings, were so thoroughly Irish, that assimilation happened into Irishness and not from it - which had the effect of weakening the ethnic identity, particularly of the Protestants (with some notable exception to the Presbyterians). This could explain why everyone in the province, regardless of religion or ethnicity, eats fish and chips on Good Friday?

I feel like naming all the cities and counties after places in Ireland couldn't hurt foster that identity more. But there were plenty of institutions around which also could have served as a touchstone for cultural identity.

I think that St Michael's affiliating with the University of Toronto in 1883 probably also went someway toward assimilation. It was probably beneficial, as U of T is an outstanding university; but one can't help but wonder how things could've played out differently:

In 1869, the Province of Ontario dis-established the Anglican Church (because of course they did it in 1869. Ireland did it earlier that year, and we're just a bunch of copycats).

As part of their disestablishment of religion, they reduced government support for denominational colleges, to encourage them to affiliate with secular institutions.

This led to a wave a mergers and moves as College scene rationalized itself. IOTL, St Michael's affiliated with U of T in 1883. Victoria University was formed by the merger of two Methodist Colleges in Central Ontario, before affiliating with U of T in 1890 and moving to Toronto in 1892. Queen's would be affiliated with the Presbyterian Church until 1912.

McMaster University was formed in 1887 by the merger of two Baptist Colleges. It began classes in Toronto in 1890. By 1892, it was the only university or college in Toronto that wasn't affiliated with U of T.

It ran into space issues in Toronto, and was under some pressure to affiliate, so to preserve its separate identity and also move to a more suburban and purpose-built setting, McMaster moved to Hamilton in 1930 (and eventually became a nondenominational institution in 1957). Its location is between the Royal Botanical Gardens and Dundurn Castle, the former seat of Allan Macnab.

Macnab is an interesting character. Nominally an Anglican, his stately home on Burlington Bay still stands, owned and operated as a Park and Museum by the City of Hamilton. His final wife was a devout Catholic who had convinced him to build St Mary's Church on his land. When he died in 1862, his deathbed conversion to Catholicism shocked the intensely sectarian Province. His estate was contested and bounced around a few hands until acquired by the city in the 1880s.

Simply put, I'm imagine a scenario with more Irish immigration or at least more Irish Catholic immigration means St Michael's is stronger and McMaster is weaker financially; sectarianism may also be increased.

So instead of St Michael's affiliating to U of T and McMaster moving to Hamilton, the reverse takes place - perhaps Macnab leaves his estate to the school, and St Michael's, which was heavily identified with the Irish Catholic community, retains a separate identity and serves as the touchstone for Irish, Celtic and Catholic culture in Canada. A St FX West, if you will.

I am also interested in seeing if we cant have the Irish Christian Brothers involved in the school; which would see them essentially taking over the running of Catholic schools in Ontario until the modern era.

 

[Hugh Third of Five]

Also apparently the RCMP was based on the RIC.

That's kind of ironic, given that their reputations are pretty much polar opposites.

 

[durante]

That's kind of ironic, given that their reputations are pretty much polar opposites.

True...although...my grandad was a Catholic from Belfast, and when I read this...I had a better understanding of how indigenous Canadians feel...