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CHAPTER 6 Canada

By 1867, 20 per cent of Canada’s population – some 174,000 people – had Irish roots. In 2001, this figure had risen to 3,822,665 people, some 13 per cent of the total population. Brian Mulroney (b. 1939), Prime Minister of Canada (1984–93), for example, was the son of Benedict Mulroney who migrated from Bagenalstown, Co. Carlow.

Civil Registration

Civil Registration started in the Canadian provinces as follows: Nova Scotia, 1864 (but excluded births and deaths between 1876 and 1908); Ontario, 1869; British Columbia, 1872; Saskatchewan, 1878; Manitoba, 1882; New Brunswick, 1888; Newfoundland, 1891; Alberta, 1897; Prince Edward Island, 1906; Yukon and Northwest Territories, 1896; and Quebec, 1926.

Records are with the provincial Registrars General and, Quebec excepted, access is usually only by application – see www.cyndislist.com under each province. Some records have been transferred to Provincial Archives, however, such as the 19th- and early 20th-century ones for Ontario, and some earlier ones for British Columbia and Alberta. www.ancestry.com now has some Ontario and British Columbia Civil Registration online.

Censuses

Early censuses include one for Nova Scotia from 1770, and of heads of household for Ontario (1842, 1848 and 1850) and Quebec (1825, 1831 and 1842). Canada has had full censuses every ten years from 1851, though those for 1851 and 1861 are mainly concerned only with Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland, the lands further west not yet having been colonised. The whole of Canada, such as it was, is covered by censuses from 1871 onwards and those up to 1901 are available for searching. The 1881 census is at www.familysearch.org and 1901 is online at www.collectionscanada.ca/02/020122_e.html and www.automatedgenealogy.com/census/cache/NationalSummary.jsp.

Directories

Those for Montreal date from 1819, with many for the cities from the mid-19th century. They are fairly inclusive in terms of householders,

Colonisation of Canada

Canada was colonised from the 17th century, by the British in Newfoundland and the French in Quebec. In 1670, the British founded the Hudson’s Bay Company, to promote trade and colonisation. British control spread, especially due to the Seven Years War between England and France. The capture of Quebec, achieved by General James Wolfe (see p. 54) at the cost of his own life, led to British control of all Canada.

The Irish came in most numbers in the 18th and 19th centuries – as free settlers (as opposed to convicts). From about 1807, merchants shipping timber to Britain for the navy realised they could make money carrying settlers the other way, so did much to encourage migration. In 1825, the government commissioned Peter Robinson to bring 2,000 new settlers from Ireland to Peterborough, Ontario, where they were given land, a cow, and implements including kettles and three bushels of seed potato. Colonisation of Canada continued throughout the 19th century and in some senses it is still ongoing.

Migration between Canada and America has been constant and researching Irish roots in one country often involves looking in the other as well. Because the passage to Canada was cheaper than to America, many Irish, especially Famine migrants, went there and then tramped south. They were seldom welcomed, for they often carried diseases acquired in Ireland or on the voyage. In fact, quarantine stations had operated at Grosse Isle at the mouth of the St Lawrence River from 1832, but they were far too small for the Famine years. With ships queuing right down the St Lawrence, the system collapsed and fever-ridden Irish refugees flooded into Quebec, Montreal and St John’s.

Records of US-Canada border crossings between 1895 and 1956 are now on www.ancestry.com.

however humble, sometimes listing occupations as well as addresses.

Religious registers

Copies of many of Canada’s surviving church registers, of all denominations including Catholics and Presbyterians, are on microfilm at the National Archives of Canada. The earliest are from 1620 in Quebec, but many started much more recently, when settlements (with churches) were founded in the wilderness. In New Brunswick, marriages were also reported to county clerks, and records up to 1888 are at the Provincial Archives. Marriages often name both sets of parents. All Prince Edward Island baptisms 1777–1906 are indexed and online to 1886 at www.gov.pe.ca/cca/index.

Newspapers

There are good collections at the National Archives and provincial archives and libraries, many of which have collections of clippings of genealogical interest, such as the Alberta Provincial Archives’ ‘old timers’ clippings 1956–9, relating to people who had settled there

How Irish was Captain Wolfe?

Although born in Kent, England, James Wolfe (1727–59), the great British general who was killed whilst successfully capturing Quebec from the French, had Irish roots. His father was General Edward Wolfe (1685–1759), whose brother Captain Walter retired to Dublin, and whose sister Margaret married George Goldsmith, a cousin of the writer Oliver Goldsmith. John Ferrar’s History of Limerick (1787) makes Edward a grandson of Captain George Wolfe of Limerick, a Royalist who fled to England, but the genealogist and herald Sir Anthony Wagner argued that this was not so, and that Edward’s father was actually an earlier Edward Wolfe, an army officer of Dublin. When James II came there, Wolfe was thrown out for being a Protestant, but later rejoined under William III. Records at the Deeds Registry, Dublin, show

‘that in 1686 Edward Wolfe of the City of Dublin, later a Major, had a lease of a moiety of the lands of Kilmurry and Kilmekanoge in the half barony of Rathdowne, County Wicklow, for the lives of himself, his wife Margaret and his son Edward and that on his death at some date before 1715 his son Walter Wolfe was substituted for him in the Lease, while in 1715, his daughter Margaret Goldsmith and her son George were also added to it.’

Wagner thought it most likely that this senior Edward was the son of an earlier Edward. A petition in the Cromwellian State Papers by Jane, widow of Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Wolfe, states that the latter accompanied Cromwell to Ireland in 1649, but died six months later at Youghal, Co. Cork, leaving her with six small children. So much for the earlier link to Limerick, though as Edward MacLysaght (see p. 155) points out the Irish Wolfes were all ultimately of Cambro-Norman origin anyway.

before 1905. Some material is online (see www.cyndislist.com).

Biographical dictionaries

The main one is the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (University of Toronto Press/OUP, 1966–91)

Wills

These are divided between provincial probate registries and local county or judicial district offices: details are on www.cyndislist.com and in Baxter’s guide (see ‘Further Reading’ on p. 55).

Naturalisations

As Ireland was part of the British Empire, no naturalisation was needed.

Land grants

There are many petitions and grants of land in the Canadian National and particularly the Provincial Archives, as described by Baxter. Those for Quebec and Ontario date from the 17th and 18th centuries respectively. B.D. Merriman, Genealogy in Ontario, Searching the Records (Ontario Genealogy Society, 3rd edn, 1996) is particularly useful for Irish settlement there.

Shipping lists

The main collections of ships’ passenger lists are at the National Archives of Canada. They date, patchily, from 1745, and are complete from 1865 for Quebec and Halifax. Usually, you need to know the port and rough date of arrival. The lists may not tell you much more, though it’s helpful to see with whom your ancestors arrived, as they seldom left home alone. Some provincial archives have records of organised parties of immigrants, such as Peter Robinson’s (see p. 53). www.irishorigins.com has a growing database of British and Irish arrivals in Canada for 1890.

Hudson’s Bay Company

The Provincial Archives of Manitoba contain the records of the Hudson’s Bay Company, founded in 1670, and copies are available on film elsewhere, including TNA. Wills of employees date from 1717 and ships’ logs from 1751, but few personnel records exist before 1770. Thereafter they can be extremely useful.

Empire Loyalists

There were undoubtedly people with Irish roots amongst the 70,000 Empire Loyalists who settled in Canada from America after Britain lost the American Revolutionary War in 1784. They made claims (now at the National Archives of Canada’s audit office) for loss of land. The United Empire Loyalists’ Library is an excellent starting point for research. For the most part, however, the Irish in America were very happy not to support the British Crown!