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A Perilous Journey:

Nineteenth Century Norwegian Emigrants in Transit Through Canada

Between 1836 and 1850 the majority of Norwegian emigrants bound for the American midwest travelled to ports in the United States either directly from Norway or by way of Liverpool, Le Havre, or Hamburg. It has been estimated that in those years nearly 18,000 emigrants followed these routes, while only 240 landed at Quebec. This pattern changed dramatically between 1851 and 1853 when 7,510 sailed directly from Norwegian ports to Quebec and then made their way to the American midwest by water and rail, thus passing through Canada en route. From 1854 to 1865 Norwegian emigrants travelled almost exclusively by way of Quebec, some 44,100 out of a total of 46,900 taking this route with Chicago or Milwaukee as their goal before they dispersed for the settlements.¹

This change in route was caused by a new international trade development which allowed the shipping companies to lower their fares to America. In the 1850s an emigrant could obtain steerage passage for about $8.00 in the Canadian currency of the day, about the same amount it cost to travel from Hamilton to Windsor on the newly opened Great Western Railway. These lower fares were made possible by a profitable new triangular trade route by which shipowners could send emigrants and ballast to Quebec, take on a cargo of lumber for a British port, and then return to Norway to the original starting point. As the ships were built to carry cargo, the accommodation provided for the passengers was primitive. Shipowners and captains overcrowded the ships, but congestion at the Norwegian ports of departure was still so great that would-be passengers often had to camp near the docks for days or weeks. Travellers had to provide their own food for the journey, while the captain would supply water and firewood. Cooking was usually done on deck in primitive stoves made from barrels. Below deck, the emigrants slept in rows of double-decked bunks, each shared by four or five passengers, arranged along the entire length of the ship. Some improvement in the conditions aboard these ships took place after 1859 when the British government imposed regulations to prevent overcrowding. However, in the 1850s conditions aboard ship were appalling, and disease and death en route to Canada were not unusual. For example, the Emigration Report for the 1857 season indicates that the highest mortality occurred among the Norwegian passengers, with 100 deaths reported among the 6,507 immigrants from Norway (1.53 per cent) who landed at Quebec after a voyage averaging 44 days in length.² Other ships were lost at sea by storm or by fire. Some simply disappeared and were never heard from.

Once the immigrants reached Quebec safely, and passed the quarantine inspection, they were allowed to proceed on their journey up the St. Lawrence waterway to the Great Lakes where they disembarked at Toronto or Hamilton and proceeded upon their way to Chicago or Milwaukee.

At times, they were subjected to such poor treatment that a special railway conference was called in Buffalo in November 1854 to discuss ways of improving conditions affecting the transportation of emigrants. The conference was particularly concerned with the role played by “runners,” dishonest men who gathered at the railway stations waiting to take advantage of bewildered travellers, in particular those who did not speak English and were often confused about the geography of North America. The unwary among these immigrants were sold worthless tickets or valid tickets at exorbitant prices.

Train travel in the area of the Great Lakes was in its earliest stage. Train service by the Great Western from Hamilton through to the border station at Windsor began in January 1854. The majority of its passengers were immigrants planning to pass through to the United States at Detroit. Windsor itself had a population of about 750.

There are tragic reports of train derailments in these early years, many of which involved the loss of lives, some of them Norwegian. In the London Free Press of 8 June 1854 there is a brief report of an inquest into one of the seventeen accidents on the Great Western Railway that year in which a freight car loaded with immigrants and their baggage was hurled to the foot of an embankment, killing five Norwegians. Concerning the freight car, the report states:

This was shattered into a hundred pieces, the frame of which was lying floor upwards at the bottom of the embankment; it was in this car that five of the deceased were at the time of the accident, together with a large quantity of baggage, which belonged to them, and their fellow countrymen who had gone on in a previous train; parts of the car, and its contents had been hurled to considerable distances, and the boxes of these poor people, which contained all their goods, and the little mementos of the home they had left, were lying scattered in all directions. . . .³

When C.J. Brydges, manager of the Great Western, was questioned concerning the presence of immigrants in the freight cars, he stated that it was not unusual in America for immigrants to travel this way, and they usually preferred to travel with their baggage because they would then be close to their food, which they always brought with them in their trunks. They could also take out their bedding at night and sleep upon their baggage. However, the Commissioners concluded their report as follows:

It is our duty to call attention to the improper use of such means of conveyance when passengers and their baggage are accumulated in the same vehicle. We look upon it as a bad and inhuman practice.⁴

This practice, however, did not stop for some time, and the victims of a tragedy which occurred three weeks later, on 2 July 1854, were also travelling in freight cars. They were Norwegian emigrants en route to the United States who chose to travel by the Quebec route in May and June of 1854. They had reached Hamilton by the end of June. On the last leg of their journey through Canada, Hamilton to Windsor, tragedy struck. By examining official records in both Norway and Canada, it is possible to trace their journey from the fjords of Norway to Windsor, where about 68 died, victims of cholera.⁵

These cholera victims must remain anonymous, for not a single name has survived the years, since no ship’s passsenger lists were kept for such ships from Norway at the time, nor were names listed as emigrants entered Canada. When they died of cholera the terror of this disease was so great that their bodies were hurriedly buried in unmarked graves. As a result it is not possible to identify their former homes in Norway by searching for their names in parish records, where they would have been carefully recorded at the time of departure for America.

The Hamilton station of the Great Western Railway and one of the trains of the early 1850s. Hamilton was the seat of the Railway, which extended from Niagara Falls to Windsor, “passing through the flourishing towns of Hamilton, Dundas, Paris, London, & c., and connecting at Detroit with Mail and Express trains for Chicago, Rock Island, Burlington, St. Paul’s, St. Louis . . .and all points west and southwest.”

It is probable, however, that these emigrants came from villages along the Sognefjord near Bergen, for at that particular time, 1854, many left that area. Having sold all their possessions except for the few necessities which they brought together with food in their baggage, they made their way to the docks in Bergen. There they camped until they could obtain passage on a ship bound for America.

It is evident from an examination of ship arrivals at Quebec that some of the future cholera victims took passage on 7 May on the brig Columbus, a new ship from Larvik, Norway. This brig had been built there the previous year for a group of local businessmen who were eager to take part in the profitable new triangular trade route via Quebec. The Columbus had a weight of about 280 tons [253,394 kgm], and had only one deck. It was not a large ship, and was only 100.7 feet [30.7 metres] in length, 26.2 feet [8 metres] in breadth, and 15.8 feet [4.8 metres] in depth. Onto this single deck crowded 165 passengers determined to obtain passage, for the crowds were growing on the Bergen docks, and the ships left only at the rate of about one each week. Loaded with ballast the Columbus set sail for Quebec with its 165 passengers. Its master was Captain H. Pedersen, a Norwegian.

A week later on 12 May others found passage on the brig Condon, a British ship with a British master, Captain Stranger. It was not at all unusual for such British ships to take part in the transportation of emigrants. When the Condon arrived in Quebec it was reported to have ballast and 502 passengers on board. With such crowding it is obvious that they must have suffered under exceedingly unhealthy conditions.

Late in June the Columbus and the Condon arrived in Canada almost at the same time, and the passengers were landed at Grosse Isle, the quarantine station. There they mixed freely with passengers from other ships as they cleaned their baggage, washed their clothing and bathed themselves before again boarding their ships. Having been pronounced free of disease they were permitted to continue their voyage to Quebec, where the Columbus arrived on June 24, and the Condon, the following day. From Quebec the Norwegians, together with immigrants of many nationalities, continued their journey down the St. Lawrence to Montreal.

Unfortunately they had arrived in the middle of a heat wave, and their suffering from the heat alone must have been intense. In addition, their arrival coincided with an outbreak of cholera, brought to Quebec by passengers of a ship from Liverpool, the Glenmanna, which had had six deaths from cholera on board during its ocean crossing. The captain of the Glenmanna had not reported these deaths to the Quebec authorities, as he was legally bound to do, and had allowed the ship’s passengers to land as usual at Grosse Isle. There they mingled with the passengers from the John Howell, which had lost none aboard during the crossing. Both the Glenmanna and the John Howell proceeded to Quebec city on 17 June, and were pronounced free of disease. Although the passengers remained on board ship, they were allowed to visit the town, and a number of them did so. On 20 June cholera broke out on board the two ships, then it broke out in town. By 22 June, the disease was reported in Montreal, and by the next day, in Hamilton. When the Norwegian emigrants from the Columbus and the Condon followed the same route a few days later a cholera epidemic was well under way in each centre through which they passed.

When they arrived in Montreal near the end of June conditions were so deplorable that the following comment appeared in the Montreal Gazette of Tuesday 4 July 1854:

Health of the City

Emigrants arriving here are not properly cared for, but are left on the wharf all day exposed to the broiling sun, and drinking filthy river or canal water. It is a disgrace to our humanity . . .

On Friday 30 June the Norwegians arrived in Hamilton, planning to board the Great Western Railway to continue their journey by rail to Windsor, then to Detroit. In Hamilton all was in turmoil as the Railway attempted to deal with a great increase in passenger traffic which taxed its facilities to the utmost. It was its first year of full operation of the Niagara Falls-Windsor Line, and construction was still in progress at certain places on the line. Already in the month of June 1854, which was then drawing to a close, the Railway had carried a total of 4891 emigrants, even though the great heat of the summer and the unusual sickness which prevailed through the continent were said to have seriously affected the traffic.⁶ Emigrants were placed in such railway cars as were available, and were sent on their way. A railway official, C.J. Brydges, explained this in the following way:

These buildings, dating fom the 1840s, housed steerage passengers landed at the Quarantine Station on Grosse Isle. There they were required to clean themselves and their belongings after the rigours of the ocean passage, while meantime their ship was cleaned and inspected. After quarantine those free of disease were allowed to rejoin their ship and proceed to Quebec.

View of Detroit from the Great Western Terminus in Windsor, circa 1860. This watercolour by an unknown artist shows the terminus of the first railway to serve Windsor, the Great Western Railway. On 17 January 1854, the first passenger train to come through to Windsor from Niagara Falls arrived at this terminus. Five months later Norwegian immigrants were among the passengers travelling on this newly opened route through Canada West to the western States.

Have not had a sufficient supply of second class cars to accommodate emigrants . . . and have in consequence been compelled to despatch them in freight cars, generally speaking separate from their luggage, but sometimes they have gone together with their luggage.⁷

When the large number of Norwegian emigrants reached Hamilton on Friday, 30 June 1854, and took passage to Detroit in the cars of the Great Western Railway, they were placed in two second-class passenger cars and at least three freight cars, and on Saturday were forwarded towards their destination. On the average at least 50 emigrants were placed in each freight car. The cars were 29 feet long, [8.8 metres] 8 ½ feet [2.6 metres] wide, and about 7 feet [2.1 metres] high, with sliding doors at the sides. When opened these sliding doors left apertures four feet six inches [1.4 metres] wide, the only means of ventilation. These freight cars were made into makeshift “passenger cars” by arranging boards for seats. Twelve such seats were placed in each car. Each seat was intended for five passengers, so that a single box car held a total of 60 passengers.

The first delay came at the Desjardins Canal where the track had been thrown out of line and had been impassable for several days. There the passengers had to disembark, and they and their luggage were placed on other cars. At Paris more difficulties arose, and the immigrants were divided. Only those in the second-class passenger cars were sent on by the day express train. This train, carrying only some of the immigrants reached Rochester, about 20 miles [32 kilometres] from Windsor, by about 9:00 p.m. that evening. There an accident had occurred earlier in the day because the extremely hot summer weather had caused the rails to expand. A gravelling engine had derailed at the switch, obstructing the lines. At this point, the night express travelling from Windsor met the incoming day express carrying the immigrants. The conductors agreed to exchange passengers and “back up,” each returning to Windsor and Chatham, respectively. Although the exchange of the first-class passengers were made, the second-class passengers, including the Norwegian immigrants, were not accepted since the night express did not have any second-class cars to receive them. Instead, the conductor backed the train to a small station named Baptiste Creek, intending to take the entire train back to Chatham. However, finding that wood and water were in low supply because of the delay, at midnight he left the immigrant cars on the siding with instructions that they be attached to the next train going through to Windsor, due to arrive in Baptiste Creek about 5:00 in the morning. He then set out with the other cars for Chatham. The immigrants were left in the abandoned cars in circumstances described in detail in the inquest held the following November:

It was a very hot and sultry night. Two or three of the emigrants could speak a little English, and inquired when the train would come for them; also whether food could be procured, and when. Many of them, although warned not to wander lest they should miss the train, did wander away to procure food. . . . The country around Baptiste Creek Station is a marsh, which will not support the weight of human beings. The only roads are the railroad track and a plank pathway to Mason’s. The only water to be had to drink at the Station was swamp water or creek water.⁸

Within the cars the Norwegian emigrants tried to sleep in spite of the extreme heat, and the crowded conditions. The trainman who was left in charge of them reported at the inquest:

The emigrants were lying on the floor so closely packed together that witness could hardly get through. Thinks there were altogether about one hundred and fifty of them. Did not repeat his visit to the car. Did not consider it his duty to make any further enquiry about them. Did not think that they could understand him. Cannot say how many children there were in the car, but there were many.

One died in the night, and was buried in the morning. Two men in the morning were taken out of the cars, and laid on some planks under the shed; they appeared to be very sick. One, who spoke a little English, told witness that they had the cramps or the cholera. Witness did not approach them nor give them assistance; there was nothing that could be done for them.⁹

Driven by thirst some of the Norwegians drank the swamp water. Their food supplies, stored in their trunks, were not with them but in cars which had been returned to Chatham. As the morning passed with no sign of rescue, in spite of instructions not to do so, some Norwegians set out in search of food. A farmer living some kilometres from Baptiste Creek gave the following report at the inquest:

Remembers the occasion of certain Norwegian emigrants having been left in car on the railway track at Baptiste Creek. It occurred early in July, on a Sunday. The weather was very hot. Some of the French people living about there called in the morning to say that foreigners were in car on the track, and that they had sickness among them. Did not go down to the Creek to see, having a large and young family of his own, and not choosing to run risk of infection. Several of the people - the passengers in the cars — they were foreigners — believes them to have been Dutch or Norwegians — came to this deponent’s house seeking for food or milk. They spoke just enough English to make their wants understood. They demanded “pred,” “pred.” Furnished them with all they had. They appeared to be ravenous, eating voraciously. This was about nine o’clock in the morning of Sunday. Some of them eat the food up at once; others went down with it to the car, deponent supposes, to their families. They could have had no other water while at the Creek than swamp water or creek water, which deponent considers to be most unwholesome drink.¹⁰

The immigrant railway cars were finally taken into Windsor by the train which arrived in Baptiste Creek on Sunday afternoon. An eyewitness described its arrival in Windsor as follows:

I recollect the arrival of a train of cars from the east on Sunday, the second day of July last; it was the only train of cars that arrived at Windsor on that day; it consisted of nine freight cars and two second-class passenger cars, and two or three first-class passengers. They arrived at the Windsor Station at about half-past four in the afternoon. Six of the freight cars contained Norwegian emigrants; another of the freight cars contained emigrants and baggage; the two second-class cars also contained emigrants; the two other freight cars contained baggage. . . . There were about 600 passengers in all arrived by this train . . . There was one person dead in the first of the freight cars containing emigrants in the train when it reached Windsor, and there were thirty-three of the emigrants fell upon the platform of the Station just after they got out of the cars, having been attacked with cholera.¹¹

Dr Alfred E. Dewson, the only physician in the village of Windsor, was called to the Station House to attend the sick. He described the experience as follows:

On repairing to the Station House I found three or more cars standing there; I cannot say precisely how many cars, but the passengers had been disembarked and were scattered about; they were about 200 in number; they were all foreigners; emigrants; Norwegians, as I was told; I could not understand their language nor could they make themselves understood; my attention was first drawn to body of a man lying dead in one of the freight cars; he had died of cholera; I was informed that he had died that day on his way down from Baptiste Creek from whence I was told those emigrants had been brought; I forthwith gave all the attention in my power to the remainder of the emigrants; I found several of them sick in various stages of cholera. . . .

My impression is that there were no cases of cholera out of the second-class cars; those persons who fell upon the platform, after the arrival of the cars, came out of the freight cars. The freight cars are twenty-nine feet by eight feet and a half inside measure. I am quite satisfied that the emigrants who died of cholera were all, or nearly all, among those that were detained at Baptiste Creek.¹²

Dr. Dewson, with the permission of the railway authorities, took all of the sick Norwegians to a storehouse belonging to the Great Western Railway, where he provided them with food and blankets. The weather at the time was intensely hot.

The following morning, Monday 3 July, a farmer from Amherstburg came to Windsor and found a distressing scene at the Station House. At the inquest he described it as follows:

On arriving, was informed that a large number of Emigrants, foreigners, supposed to be Norwegians, had arrived in Windsor, by a train of the Great Western Railway Company, on the preceding evening, and that many of them were sick of the cholera. He immediately offered his assistance to attend upon the sick, and continued to attend upon them during the whole month of July. At this time there were about sixty persons lying sick, some about the Railway Depot, and others who had been conveyed to Troy [Moy]. To the best of my estimation fifty, at least, died of Cholera or of its effects. Heard that about six hundred Emigrants had been brought to Windsor, and this led him to inquire into the manner and means of conveyance provided for them. Found that a great portion of the said Emigrants had been conveyed to Windsor in freight cars temporarily fitted for their reception. . . .

From the enquiries made personally, as well as from the evidence produced before the Inquest, understood that on an average at least fifty Emigrants had been placed in each car.

On Monday, 3 July nine of the Norwegians died and were buried immediately. Others became ill. For about 11 days the cholera continued to spread among the emigrants. The station master later estimated that of those who arrived on the train on 2 July at least 57 adults died as well as a number of children.

At the inquest the Reeve of Windsor, Samuel McDonell, gave evidence of the treatment of the sick immigrants by the villagers of Windsor. An excerpt from his evidence follows:

As chairman of the Board of Health, I had several communications with different officers of the Great Western Railway Company, on the subject of providing for the sick and the burial of the dead; and it was arranged between Mr. David D. Chapman, on behalf of the Company, and the Board of Health, that the Board of Health should be allowed to use a storehouse of the Company, at Moy, about a mile north of Windsor on the Detroit River, as a Cholera Hospital, until the 11th of August last, and the Company were to defray the expense of providing coffins for the burial of the emigrants who might die from cholera, and that all emigrants should be left at Moy, and transported across the river from that point to Detroit. These arrangements were adhered to by the Company until the 11th of August last, when they ceased, and the Company refused to bury the dead or to renew these arrangements at all. The expense occasioned to the Municipality of Windsor by the necessity imposed upon it of providing for those afflicted with cholera was £125, besides private subscriptions and gratuitous services rendered by the humane of the village.¹³

At the inquest the station master spoke of the difficulty he had in handling the situation, an overwhelming one for a village with only 750 inhabitants, one doctor, and no hospital facilities. He said:

I was among the cholera patients night and day during the continuance of the malady, and had frequently to superintend the burial of the dead; the men under me refusing to perform the service without my sharing in the danger. I received great assistance from Dr. Alfred K. Dewson, of Windsor, Doctor Hewitt, of Detroit, and several other medical men from Detroit, who volunteered their professional services. And Mr. Isaac Askew, of Windsor, was most indefatigable in his attention to the sick, being constantly with them night and day, and rendered them every assistance he possibly could — having been unable, from his unremitting attention, to take off his clothes from the Monday to the Thursday after the cholera first broke out — and he still continued his exertions until the cholera disappeared. Mr. John McEwen also aided us until he himself was taken ill with the cholera; Mrs. McEwen also paid great attention to the females who were attacked by the disease, and behaved in an exceedingly humane and courageous manner. J.W. Blackadder also rendered us very material assistance, and some few others aided us in a lesser degree but there was a general panic, and it was impossible to get nurses and nearly so to find persons to bury the dead.

In August the epidemic gradually came to a halt, but it was not soon forgotten. It was decided to hold an inquest to consider the role which the Great Western Railway had played in the deaths of so many emigrants. On 25-28 November 1854 the inquest was held in London, Ontario, with evidence on oath from the witnesses quoted above as well as that of several others. There was no doubt that Dr. Alfred Dewson believed that the Great Western was at fault. He said:

They might have landed from shipboard with the disease lurking about them, as Emigrant ships are often very dirty. The car in which the death took place was not the usual car for the accommodation of passengers, it was a freight car. The Emigrants were not physically so strong as the usual class of Emigrants; they were particularly dirty and filthy in their habits and persons. It would be imprudent to put such a class of people in great numbers in a car.

The new Chairman of the Board of Health of Windsor who had meantime replaced Samuel McDonell in this position, read a letter at the inquest in which he protested, on behalf of the people of Windsor:

. . . against the reckless conduct shewn by the employees, of the Company, at Hamilton, in cooping up within close freight cars at this hot season of the year emigrants lately landed from shipboard. From the verdict of the Jurors on the Coroner’s Inquest, held on the bodies of some of these poor unfortunates (with which we believe you have already been furnished), you will perceive that blame is attached to the Company through their employees for forwarding them to this point in such ill-ventilated cars, and we will venture to say scarcely adapted for the conveyance of cattle, much less of human beings.

In fact all the employees here did their duty on the trying occasion faithfully and well, but if these scenes are to be repeated as it is even now whispered that there are more emigrants on their way to the West, we don’t know how diseased they may be, we venture to say that their patience will be completely exhausted, as even now difficulty being found in procuring men to put the bodies of these victims of cholera into their coffins and graves.¹⁴

The final report of the inquest stated that:

The jury further add, that they are of opinion that though the deceased emigrants might have been affected with cholera before they arrived at Hamilton, yet their deaths were accelerated by the manner in which they were conveyed by the Great Western Railway Company, being placed in unventilated cars in too great numbers, and without sufficient comforts for this season of the year, and, also, from detention on the way from Hamilton to Windsor.¹⁵

Seemingly these deplorable conditions on the Canadian railroads were scarcely noted in the newspapers of the day. For example, the cholera deaths at Windsor were not reported in the Detroit, Chatham, or London newspapers nor seemingly in any other paper in Canada or Norway other than one Montreal newspaper which noted the incident briefly, copying the report from a Sarnia paper which is no longer extant.

In Windsor, where so many Norwegian immigrants died, their names unknown, the passage of time blurred the details of the tragedy. Soon it was remembered as the occasion on which certain “German cholera victims” were given relief by a number of heroic Windsor citizens who nursed them at great personal risk. One of them, Mrs. Margaret McEwen, was later awarded a gold watch by the Great Western Railway for her humanitarian work in nursing the sick “Germans,” and in adopting two children who were orphaned and left behind in Windsor. The burial of the Norwegians took place quickly without benefit of clergy, and their resting place is unknown. Presumably it was on railway property at Moy.

The “whisper” about more Norwegian emigrants being on the way was quite accurate for in 1854 some 5,663 arrived in Quebec, and many of these people travelled through to Detroit by way of Windsor. Cholera continued to rage for three months, the epidemic continuing until September 1854 and killing nearly 3,600 victims in Canada that year. No doubt there were other Norwegian victims who were not able to pass the strict medical examination by Detroit medical officers which preceded their entry into the United States. It may be seen that some of the travellers who left their villages along the Sognefjord in the 1850s, never to be heard from again, met a tragic fate in Canada, dying in transit of disease or by accident. It was indeed a perilous journey.

Sadie Sinclair looking at an old photograph of her parents and herself, then a baby, taken about 1905. Both her father, John Sinclair, and her mother, Margaret Ann Sinclair (née Sinclair), were born in the Shetland Island. They both belonged to a large branch of the family, the Sinclairs or St. Clairs of Houss, descended from Einar the Earl, brother of Rolf, and their warlike predecessors, the ancient Scandinavian Jarls of Orkney. The Orkney and Shetland Islands passed from Norway to Scotland in 1469, but the people of the islands continued to speak the Norse language for centuries. It was last spoken as a living language about the end of the eighteenth century, yet its influence remains in the speech of the islanders. Sadie Sinclair prizes her copy of the book Lowrie, Being a Humorous Account in the Dialect of Incidents in the Life of a Shetland Crofter, by Joseph Gray. John Sinclair emigrated to Canada in 1922. In 1923 Sadie Sinclair emigrated, living first in London, Ontario, then moving in 1928 to Windsor. In both cities she was employed in business, working for the London Life Insurance Company for over 40 years.