It’s complicated and revealing: colonial Ireland and the making of Canada

The revelation for me in reading Fifty Irish Lives is that the Irish in Canada were a product of colonialism. The distinction is profound. Immigration is a spontaneous, voluntary movement of people from one country to another. Britain’s colonization of Ireland generated a three-centuries long outpouring of people. Immigration was more outcome than cause.

A series of statues in Dublin, titled 'Famine' by Norma Smurfit. The Great Irish Famine of 1845-1851 was a product of imperial rule in Ireland. It provoked a massive exodus of native Irish. In 1847, more than 106,000 fled to Canada, 20 per cent of whom died en route. They were refugees, not immigrants. Photograph courtesy of Flickr/William Murphy

Opinion

BY EAMONN MCKEE

March 2, 2023

Fifty Irish Lives in Canada is a project to compile short biographies of people born in Ireland, now deceased, who made an impact in Canada or who lived lives emblematic of the immigrant experience. We have published preliminary biographies online in celeb...

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