fitting into a new place: irish immigrant experiences in shaping a canadian landscape

International Journal of Historical Archaeology, Vol. 8, No. 3, September 2004 ( C© 2004)DOI: 10.1007/s10761-004-1138-x

Fitting into a New Place: Irish ImmigrantExperiences in Shaping a Canadian Landscape

Angele Smith1

Escaping one heritage of British colonialism for another, Irish immigrants toCanada in the nineteenth and early twentieth century helped to shape the imageof Canada and Canadian nationalism. In this paper, I compare the diversity ofIrish immigrant experiences in Canada’s urban and “wilderness” landscapes. TheIrish immigrant experience in major urban centers is well documented. Commu-nity neighborhoods, Church activities and domestic and manual labor constitutejust part of the stories of urban Irish Canadians in cities such as Toronto. Thepopular conception of the Irish as strictly city people is strengthened by the lack ofdiscussion of the Irish immigrant role in “taming” (and ideologically shaping) the“wilderness” of Western Canada. It is argued that this has to do with the colonialimage of the Irish from which British imperialist Canada sought to distinguishitself.

KEY WORDS: Irish immigration; Canada; colonialism; British Columbia.

INTRODUCTION

The Irishman has played so large a part in Canada that his history could not be writtenwithout, to some extent, writing the history of Canada.

—Nicholas Flood Davin, 1877

After completing my doctorate in Massachusetts, I returned home to Canada,not to my original Toronto, but to teach at the University of Northern BritishColumbia. Having come from the rich Irish-American community ofMassachusetts, imagine my surprise and dismay to find no such Irish descendant

1Correspondence should be addressed to Angele Smith, Department of Anthropology, University ofNorthern British Columbia, 3333 University Way, Prince George, British Columbia, Canada, V2N4Z9.

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community in my new home. Of course, there was a Scottish Canadian presence—Scottish explorers into Western Canada are well memorialized, even in such placenames as the Fraser and Mackenzie Rivers (named after two Scottish HudsonBay Company traders and explorers). I decided to do a little background researchto understand the history of Irish settlement into British Columbia. I came upempty: there were no histories of the Irish in the early days of the province (cf.Barman, 1991; Fisher and Johnston, 1993; Griffin, 1999; Koroscil, 2000; Ward andMcDonald, 1981). Surely, historians specializing in the British Columbian pastcould direct me. But I was informed that there has never been any significantnumber of Irish in British Columbia (Swainger, 2003, personal communication).

This made me curious: why were there no Irish in the West of Canada? And:What does this have to do with archaeology, specifically, in a volume devoted toIrish archaeology? Historical archaeology concerns the life experiences of how andwhere peoples of the past lived and attempts to understand those who are often leftout of written histories, in order to reveal a fuller (and more complex) picture of thepast. Incorporating both documentary and archaeological data, historical archae-ology can (re-) visit existing interpretations of the past. This paper challenges twoassumptions about the role of Irish immigrants to Canada in the nineteenth century:(1) that the Irish to Canada were mostly single Catholic males who, as unskilled la-borers, flooded the urban centers of Eastern and Central (Great Lakes) Canada; and(2) that Irish immigrants played no role in Western Canada and therefore no role inshaping the landscape of Canadian identity. I suggest that the constructed culturalidentity of immigrant Irish in Canada influenced and significantly shaped Canadiannational identity at the same time it reinforced an understanding of Irish identity.

It must be acknowledged that the written history of the Irish in Canada isnot extensive and concentrates mainly on the Irish in Eastern and Great LakesCanada (Elliott, 1988; Houston and Smyth, 1990; Mannion, 1974; McGowan,1999; MacKay, 1990; O’Gallagher, 1984; Punch, 1981; Wilson, 1989). Thereare three exceptions, but all are older sources—Kenneth Duncan’s “Irish FamineImmigration and the Social Structure of Canada West” in Canadian Review ofSociology and Anthropology (1965), Margaret Ormsby’s article “Some IrishFigures in Colonial Days” in British Columbia Historical Quarterly (1950) andBruce Proudfoot’s article “Irish Settlers in Alberta” in Ulster Folklife (1970).However, this paper is a call for the critical examination of the history of Irishimmigrant experiences in Canada that challenges the existing historical narrative.I propose that this historical revision take place through the (re-) investigation ofhistorical records, as well as through the survey and excavation of historic sites inBritish Columbia. More than anything this paper aims to provide a glimpse intothe extant historical narratives as background for what ought to develop into richresearch of the historical archaeology of British Columbia.

Irish Canadians are traditionally regarded as only having an urban immigrantexperience; they are never represented as involved in “exploring” into the “WildWest.” In this paper, I compare the experiences of Irish immigrants in their urban

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landscape, focusing on nineteenth-century Toronto, with their experiences in the“wild” landscape of British Columbia. In doing so, I explore the supposed lack ofIrish in the Canadian West as a product of the long history of Irish identity: one thatis colonial, and Othered, lacking power, equated with the non-white and feminine.

HISTORY OF IRISH IMMIGRATION INTO CANADA

The traditional view of Irish immigrants to Canada is that they were destituteand sickly Catholics fleeing the Great Famine (1847–1851). It is assumed that, ar-riving en masse to major cities in eastern and central Canada, they rapidly inflatedthe number of unskilled laborers and congregated in ghetto-like communities.While this model cannot be unequivocally dismissed for the Irish Canadian expe-rience, it is more aptly applied to the experience of the Irish in America (Akenson,1985; Deignan, 2003; Doyle, 1981; Gribben, 1999; Laxton, 1997; Meagher, 1986;Mulrooney, 2003; O’Grady, 1973; Shannon, 1989). So what was the experienceof the Irish in nineteenth-century Canada?

Even before the Famine-fueled migration of Irish in the mid-nineteenth cen-tury, there had been many crop failures in Ireland as well as a number of statesponsored emigration programs that sought to remove the Irish tenantry fromtheir lands in order to re-structure agricultural practices from tillage to pastureand dairy farming. Between 1780 and 1845, an estimated one and three-quartermillion Irish people left Ireland of their own accord (Wilson, 1989, p. 3). Many ofthese moved to Britain but after 1815, significantly more left for North America.Of these, roughly twice as many landed in Canada as in the United States. ThusIrish immigration to North America really ought to be divided into two stages:the first half of the century constituted the “Canadian stage,” the second half, the“United States stage.”

The years between 1815 and 1855 were the principal years for Irish immi-gration to Canada, and between 1825 and 1845, 450,000 Irish went to Canada(Conway, 1992, p. 85). On closer examination, these immigrants did not matchthe traditional perception of the immigrant Irish. Most of these migrants alreadyspoke English due to the decline of the Irish language in Ireland. At this early stageof immigration to Canada, most Irish were Protestant and settled, not in the cities,but in rural areas. Those who did arrive in the urban centres were young single fe-males, comprising almost 40% of the total Irish migrant population. These youngwomen worked as servants and maids in the large (mostly Protestant) homes insuch cities as Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax (Wilson, 1989).

The years between 1845 and 1851 marked the height of the Irish Diasporaresulting from the devastation unleashed during the Famine. The Famine yearswitnessed a drastic increase in the number of Irish migrants, and marked a shiftin the type of migrant entering Canada. “In 1847, at the height of the Famine,Irish immigration to Canada peaked, with some 74,000 arrivals in Quebec Cityalone. In contrast to the predominantly Protestant immigration from Ireland for

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most of the century, an estimated 90 percent of the Famine Irish . . . were Catholic”(Conway, 1992, p. 87). Now the stereotype did fit: they were the poor and sicklyCatholics, refugees from the hunger and disease of the Famine in Ireland, unskilledor semi-skilled laborers who crowded into urban areas. These were the poorest ofthe population who came as a way to improve their social and material standings.

Nevertheless these Irish migrants did not constitute a homogenous commu-nity. It is important that we recognize that within the pre-Famine, Famine andpost-Famine Irish immigrant communities there were differences. Ireland hassharp regional variations and this diversity must be acknowledged in any histori-cal account of Irish migrants in Canada. David Wilson (1984, p. 4; compare withKoroscil, 2000) goes as far as to argue that, “Unless one knows, for example, thegeographical origins, the economic position and the social status of the migrants,one cannot judge the relevance of Irish conditions in determining the actions ofthese people once they came to Canada.” While this kind of social informationis not always available, it is imperative to at least acknowledge that differencesin migrant experiences might result from the variation that existed within theIrish immigrant communities. There were variations in the place of their originwithin Ireland, but variation might also be differentiated along the lines of eth-nicity, including Irish, Anglo-Irish or Ulster Irish. Religious and class affiliationfurther contributed to the variation. Each of these differences of course had directinfluence on immigrant experiences and how those experiences helped shape thebuilding of a Canadian national identity.

The Irish immigrant experience is significant in shaping the Canadian nationalidentity since, taken as a whole, the Irish were the largest group of migrants duringthe nineteenth century. Thus they were the major non-French ethnic group in allof British North America – larger than the English and Scottish populations.2

Scottish immigration did not outnumber the Irish until the 1890s, yet as I willdiscuss later, it is the partnering of the French and Scottish in the great trading andexploring enterprises of the Hudson Bay and Northwest Companies that ultimatelywrote the history of colonial Western Canada and simultaneously, wrote the Irishimmigrant out of that history. Although the history of the urban Irish migrant isnot the complete story, their experiences did indeed help to shape the identity ofthese urban centres in the Canadian landscape.

THE URBAN EXPERIENCE: TORONTO

From the early 1830s, a significant majority of Irish in Canada settled inOntario (Akenson, 1984). While many located in rural areas, the city of Toronto onthe shores of Lake Ontario was a prime site as an urban destination. The common

2Drawing the comparisons between French and Irish immigration experience and charting the tensionsdefining these two building blocks of Canadian identity, is yet another line of enquiry that deservesfurther investigation.


perception is that the Irish migrant to the urban centres was an unskilled malelaborer. However, during the nineteenth century, Irish migrants to Toronto weremost often young, single and female. These young women made up 40% of the totalIrish migrant population in the early part of the century, and this number increasedin the later Famine and post-Famine periods as reduced “marriage prospects, fewemployment opportunities and subordinate social status in the family home meantemigration was welcomed” (Wilson, 1989, p. 5).

Young single females, the early immigrants to the city, worked as domesticsin the wealthy (and largely Protestant) homes of the city. Either living-in or inshared lodgings, these young women were isolated in terms of their gender, class,ethnicity and religion and were targets of discrimination and racism. Marginalizedas they were, it is perhaps not surprising that Irish women’s history is largelyabsent from the records. Sheelagh Conway (1992, p. 85) argues that, “For thepast twenty years we have seen an outpouring of male academic literature on Irishimmigration to Canada. We find page after page reflecting men’s deeds and men’swork but no acknowledgment of the three centuries of Irish women in Canada orof their work.”

This genderized history serves to reinforce my argument that the history ofIrish Canadians is more symbolic than “real;” in other words, it is more a productof colonial ideas about gender, class, religion and Irish identity than a “true”representation of the experiences of those Irish migrants that came to Canada.

In Toronto, the shaping of a Canadian industrial urban identity coincidedwith the influx of Famine and post-Famine Irish immigrants. As Toronto emergedas a commercial and manufacturing centre, droves of Irish laborers filled jobs inthe rapidly industrializing city. Eileen McKeever (1995, p. 31) writes that:

The arrival of the post-Famine Irish coincided with the emergence of Toronto as thecommercial and manufacturing centre of southern Ontario. The rapid industrialization ofthe urban region, coupled with the railway boom of the early 1850s, consolidated Toronto’sposition at the helm of Upper Canadian commerce.

Between 1841 and 1851, the population of the city of Toronto doubled mainly as aresult of Irish immigration, and the number of Irish Catholics immigrating duringthis period tripled. These migrants were mostly from farming backgrounds andthus were ill-equipped for the industrial jobs in Toronto, resulting in the generalstereotype that the majority of Irish immigrants were unskilled. They entered theworkforce at the bottom of the scale, working in the brickyards, along the railroads,and in small industries and later in public works projects such as the Toronto sewersystem (Burr, 1999; Kealey, 1995). In effect, unskilled Irish laborers built the city,its infrastructure and its place in the Canadian landscape, shaping a sense of theCanadian identity.

This period of Irish immigration was at the height of the Famine Diaspora.Fever ships arriving on Canadian shores were rife with disease such as choleraand typhus, and many died each day. At Grosse Ile, a quarantine site near Quebec

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City, mass graves were dug to hold the scores of immigrants that had succumbedto these diseases. The number of dead was likely as high as 25,000 but at thetime a significantly lower number was officially reported to save embarrassingthe British government in Canada (O’Gallagher, 1984). While this is a tragic andshameful event in Canadian history, the experiences of many of the survivors whomoved on to various Canadian cities were equally tragic.

Many of those who survived and moved on to various Canadian cities endedup in fever sheds erected for the sick and dying (Archives of Ontario, 1847–1848). Fear and discrimination was widespread as panic overwhelmed Toronto,and Irish immigrants were often met with resentment and violence from a popu-lation largely of English descent. While never on the same scale as in the UnitedStates (Griffin, 1981), Irish Torontonians who escaped the fever sheds fled toneighborhood ghettoes such as Cabbagetown (Coopersmith, 1998; Rust-D’Eye,1993) and later the area known as the Ward (Johnson, 1992). Nicholson (1985, p.47) writes that in these neighborhoods, “they were despised as human vermin, as‘obsolete people’ fit only for absorption or extinction.” In Constance Backhouse’sPetticoats and Prejudice: Women and Law in Nineteenth-Century Canada, she(1991, p. 229) writes that if Irish immigrant women lost their jobs, they wouldlikely find themselves on the streets or in jail.

. . . perilously poor and suffering from marked social dislocation, the Famine Irish foundthemselves prosecuted by the police roughly twice as often as their numbers within the totalpopulation would warrant. For crimes such as vagrancy, drunkenness, and prostitution, Irishwomen represented upwards of 90 per cent of the female prisoners in some jurisdictions.

However, discrimination and marginalization was not the only response to thepoor and destitute Irish in Canada. Catholic male and female religious orders,themselves filled by many Irish Canadians (Clarke, 1993; McGowan and Clarke,1993; McKeever, 1995), sought to manage the medical and social hardships ofthe Irish in Toronto. Consequently, they were also fundamental in constructinga social services infrastructure still present in the city today. In fact, Catholicwomen’s religious orders played a key role in establishing Canadian educationand health care systems. In particular, three orders founded in the mid-1800swere critical for the formation of these charitable institutions: the Loretto Sisters(Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary), the Sisters of St. Joseph, and the Sisters ofMercy (in Newfoundland.)

In addition to their work in the fever sheds, and later their work with the sickfrom the cholera and diphtheria epidemics, the Sisters of St. Joseph opened theSacred Heart Orphanage in Toronto and were commissioned to establish a generalteaching hospital—St. Michael’s Hospital—where they continue to train nursestoday. At the same time, a school system was established by the Loretto Sisters toeducate “Young Ladies.” While intended initially for Catholic girls, soon leadingProtestant families were enrolling their daughters as well. As one of the earliest


education systems in Canada, these schools became the basis of the current schoolboards (Conway, 1992).

It is perhaps because of the significant, and yet very different, roles played byboth the poor Catholic male laborers and the female Catholic religious orders thatthe history of the Irish in Canada is traditionally deemed to be Catholic, despite thefact that the Protestant Irish comprised 60% of the total Irish migrant population(McGowan, 1999). Moreover, McKeever (1995, p. 33) writes that while “In theUnited States, a burgeoning Irish Catholic population was beginning to cultivateIrish nationalist ideology, Irish Catholics in Canada however, tended to embracea more British or Canadian outlook.”

Toronto’s political authority was in the hands of Protestant Orangemen whosought to distance themselves from the poor Irish Catholics and gain acceptancefrom their English and Scottish neighbors. Wilson (1989, p. 16) writes that innineteenth-century Canada, “Orangeism contributed to the English Canadian im-perialist vision of a strong Canada playing an active and dynamic role in the BritishEmpire, and Orangemen called for Canadian unity under one flag, one language,and one school system.” The Orange Order, as both a political and social insti-tution in prospering Toronto, served to help define a strong sense of Canadianidentity that incorporated a philosophy defending Protestantism and the Britishconstitutional monarchy (Houston & Smyth, 1990, p. 180). The Orange Orderspread well beyond Irish Protestants, becoming an old boys’club “where Canada’swhite male Protestant elite cemented economic, ideological, political-religiousand familial ties . . . The Union Jack and the Christian Bible were key symbols ofthe link between colonialism and Protestantism as Britain expanded its empire notonly in Ireland but throughout the world” (Wilson, 1989, p. 90).

Toronto, dubbed the “Belfast of Canada” where the Orange Order symbolizedpower and privilege, not surprisingly was the site of political and religious tensionsthat culminated in clashes and even riots between different Irish factions. Riotsaround the 12th of July (the commemoration of the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland)were common in Toronto, as Orangemen paraded through the main streets. TheUS-based (and unsuccessful) Irish Fenian invasion of Canada in 1866 fueledOrange violence against Irish Catholics in the city and in the Jubilee Riots of1875, Irish Catholics were attacked by an “Orange mob” in the streets of Toronto(Cottrell, 1992, 1993; Way 1991).

Despite the lack of official authority and political prowess, and despite theirfewer numbers (60% of Irish were Protestant), it is the Irish Catholic urban malethat symbolized the Irish Canadian experience. However, a critical analysis of Irishmigrant experience in Toronto illustrates that the identity of the Irish communityin Canada is much more heterogeneous. This identity becomes even more complexwhen examining the supposed absence of Irish in Western Canada. It has beensuggested that migrant men (including the Irish) were fundamental to Canadiannation-building through the development of Canada’s economic infrastructure,especiallyx with respect to its coast-to-coast railway system and the development

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of its prime resources. To support this claim, there is evidence that Irish migrant la-borers in the Ottawa area were hired to dig the Rideau Canal in the early 1830s, andthat they fought with French Canadians for jobs in the timber industry (NationalArchives of Canada, C1200). And yet the Irish immigrant is seemingly absentwhen it comes to the history of “taming” the “wilderness” of Western Canada.

BUILDING A NATION: THE “WILDERNESS”OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

Much of the early history of Western Canada is the story of two compet-ing trading companies—the Hudson Bay Company and the North West Company(Bumsted, 1999; Ray, 1990; Town, 1999; Williams, 1983). In 1821 these two com-panies merged under the name Hudson Bay Company (the HBC). Both companieswere operated out of urban centres in eastern and central (the Great Lakes region)Canada. Most significantly, Montreal was key to the operation of the companies.Hence it is not surprising that the history of these trading companies centerslargely on the French Canadian guides and trappers, the coureur de bois, whoexplored further and further west in search of new trading partners to maintainthe fur trade. By the early part of the nineteenth century, however, the directorsand as many as 75% of the HBC men were Scottish immigrants to Canada orwere first generation Scots from Canada or the United States. Some of the keyHBC explorers and traders that sought to expand the company territory westwardin search of an overland trade route to the Pacific are also key figures in BritishColumbian history such as Simon Fraser, Sir Alexander Mackenzie and DavidThompson (Newman, 1985). These men not only opened up new overland routesthrough the rough landscape which set the course for future explorations towardsthe railroad building, but they also established trading partners with the local FirstNations groups. This of course, has its own tragic narrative as epidemics of smallpox and other white man’s diseases decimated the Native populations (cf. Duff,1997; Fisher, 1992; Muckle, 1998; Ray and Freeman, 1978).

In 1856 the Gold Rush had reached its zenith in California only to be replacedby new reports of gold found in the interior of British Columbia (Patenaude, 1998;Place, 1970). All along the Fraser River and into the north of the province, migrantlaborers flocked to try their hand at mining and panning for gold. This period wasone of enormous expansion and towns grew up almost overnight. Barkerville, inthe Cariboo region of interior British Columbia, is one example of a boom-timemining town. Within a matter of a few short years at the height of the GoldRush, Barkerville was the largest city west of Chicago and north of San Francisco(Elliott, 1978; Harris, 1984; Hong, 1978; Ramsey, 1987; Wright, 1993). In thecity of Victoria, two hundred buildings were constructed in six months (Leacock,1941, p. 173). In one season alone 25,000 miners landed in the province, bought


supplies and went into the “wilderness” to make their fortune. While many ofthese hopefuls came overland from eastern Canada, more traveled from the UnitedStates. Missing from any history of this time is the presence of Irish immigrants.Historians of British Columbia, suggest that perhaps the Irish, Scots and Englishwere by this time “blended;” that their individual cultural or ethnic identities hadbecome indistinguishable (Swainger, 2003, personal communication). Perhaps thisis because many who came already had their identity “naturalized” in the UnitedStates, or because it had become easier to “pass” for English. However, I arguethat the real answer lies in the fact that British Columbia, more than elsewhere inCanada, consciously constructed itself as a white (vs. First Nation and later vs.Asian) identity and as a masculine society.

A white identity and masculine society was to a great extent produced byand a product of the historic completion of the trans-Canada railway throughthe rugged western terrain. Many of the unsuccessful Gold Rush miners foundemployment in industries such as lumber, fishing and canning, but most turnedto work on the railroad. Railroad work was grueling and often dangerous, andit is these very characteristics that helped to forge a sense of western and, morebroadly, Canadian identity. In 1885, Canadian Pacific Railway director DonaldSmith drove in the “Last Spike” at Craigellachie in Eagle Pass in eastern BritishColumbia (Stevens, 1973; Mackay and Perry, 1994). Finishing the railroad wasitself an act of conquering—conquering the harshness of nature, and conqueringthe full expanse of the Canadian landscape from sea to sea. It was a conquest fora white, Anglo and male national identity. Western Canada as a white society was“premised on powerful and overlapping critiques of both First Nations and settlersociety” (Perry, 2001, p. 194), where “white” was not a matter of race alone butof class and most significantly, was about power, dominance and control. Perry(2001, p. 197) argues that “Whiteness was constructed, problematic, and fragile,an identity that was simultaneously created and destabilized by the backwoodsexperience. In First Nations territories and among a plural settler community,people both learned to be white and had their whiteness threatened. Whitenesswas at once powerful and precarious.”

An acknowledgment of this white, Anglo and male identity is critical forunderstanding the Irish experience in Canada and for explaining the supposed ab-sence of Irish in the West. It is commonly held that the Canadian Pacific railroadthat connected the country and therefore forged the national character of Canadaitself was built almost exclusively on the backs of the Chinese migrant. Immigra-tion out of China from the mid-nineteenth century had increased at a remarkablerate, adding to the labor force in the burgeoning western Canadian province (Conet al., 1982; Li, 1998; McCay, 1986; Roy, 1989; Ward, 1990). The use of theChinese on the railroad as cheap (near slave) labor is well documented, In fact,it is so well documented that it has helped to hide the numbers of Irish migrantlaborers that also made up part of the unskilled work force.

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Upon closer examination, the numbers of Irish migrant laborers employedin the railroad industry were quite high. For example, investigation of the censusreturns of 1881 for the town of Hope (Canada Census, 1881) in the south mainlandarea of the province indicates that approximately 24% of the population was of Irishdescent. While most of these (almost 65%) were born in Ireland, another 20% wereborn in the United States of Irish parents. The remainder of people claiming Irishheritage were born elsewhere in Canada of Irish parents. The occupations listedin the census included many different kinds of work, including everything fromclerk, millwright, cabinet-maker, hotel and saloonkeeper to dentist, accountant,and engineer. Others were recorded as tinsmiths, blacksmiths, lumbermen, minersand traders. But the occupation best represented was rail labor. Over 55% of theIrish migrants in the census listed their employment as railway work. This fact isin direct contrast to the commonly-told narrative of the “winning of the west,” theconquering of the Canadian landscape, and the forging of the Canadian identity.

IRISH IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCES IN SHAPINGA CANADIAN LANDSCAPE

I suggest that the reason these narratives are different is because the imag-ining of the Canadian landscape and the shaping of the Canadian identity duringthe nineteenth century served to reinforce existing ideas about Irish identity atthe same time it reified Canadian nation-building as imperial and colonial. Post-colonial scholars have argued that colonialism is racialized – it is concerned withconstructing whiteness and control – and that it is genderized – operationalized bymale bodies (Barker et al., 1994; Blunt and Rose, 1994; Chatterjee, 1993; John,1996; Mongia, 1996; McClintock, et al., 1997; Schwarz and Ray, 2000). Oftenit is soldiers who shape the colonial experience, but in Western Canada it is themasculinized society of fur traders, gold miners and rail workers who, in shapingthe landscape, shaped Canadian identity. That the Irish were not regarded as partof this landscape-, nation- and identity-building, is more a product of the colonialsense of Irish identity than it is a real absence of Irish in the west of Canada.Indeed Irish identity itself was so shaped by colonial and diasporic experience thatit was also a product of racialized and genderized history. In other words, the Irishas colonial subjects were not “white enough” or “male enough” to be understoodas the forgers of Canadian colonial history in the west.

To explore and better understand the complexities of colonial identities of theIrish in terms of race, gender and class, both inside Ireland (cf. Orser, 2004) andas immigrants to Canada, a re-examination of historical documentary evidence isrequired. The aim of this revision would highlight some key figures in the history ofBritish Columbia as Irish. For example, searching the British Columbia ArchivalUnion List (BCAUL, record no. A/E/M13) revealed that John Foster McCreight,born 1827 in Ireland, was called to the Irish Bar in 1852 and after emigrating first


to Australia and then to British Columbia, became treasurer of the Law Society ofBritish Columbia from 1874 to 1880. At this time he was also appointed as servingjudge in the Gold Rush town of Barkerville, British Columbia. Another BCAULentry (record no. AAAA0040) revealed that Peter O’Reilly, who was raised inIreland and served in the Irish Revenue Police, came to British Columbia in 1859and was appointed Stipendiary Magistrate for the Langley and Hope districts, aswell as High Sheriff of British Columbia until 1898.

Investigation of the archival documents for Irish women immigrants to BritishColumbia is more difficult, as they are often only classified with the records oftheir husbands or fathers (Gerson, 2001). However there are some few exceptions,such as Catherine Schubert (nee O’Hare) born in Ireland in 1835. She was thefirst (documented) woman to enter British Columbia overland from eastern Canadaduring the Gold Rush period. The “Overlanders,” as they came to be known, hold aspecial place in British Columbian history for their daring journey over the Rockiesto the interior Cariboo region in 1862. Catherine O’Hare Schubert, who gave birthen route, supported her family while her husband unsuccessfully prospected forgold in Quesnel, near Barkerville and remained a part of the community until herdeath in 1918 (http://collections.gc.ca).

Archaeological exploration is also required to properly challenge and revisethe existing history of Irish immigrants in Canada. Historical archaeology is still inits infancy in Canada, although some work has been undertaken. Burley, Hamilton,and Fladmark’s (1996) exploration of the Upper Peace River fur trade post from1794–1823 is one such example and ought to serve as a model for future historicalarchaeology research. While this work focuses on an earlier period, it providesan excellent model for combining documentary investigation with archaeologicalresearch to produce a richer picture of the early history of British Columbia. Ex-ploring prospecting sites of the Gold Rush period or the associated mining towns,such as Barkerville, would shed light on the heterogeneity of the community, in-cluding the Irish, and including both men and women. Similarly, investigating thework camps of the Canadian Pacific Railway in such places as the town of Hope insouthern British Columbia, using models as provided by the work camp researchundertaken by Thad Van Bueren (2003), Randall McGuire and Paul Reckner(2003), and Donald Hardesty (2003), will explore existing colonial histories ofIrish laborers and further challenge their misrepresentation in Canadian history.

The narrative of the Irish in Canada is a reinforcement of colonial ideologythat is both racialized and genderized. The misrepresentation of Irish immigrantsto Canada as urban, unskilled Catholics (in cities such as Toronto), who had no partin the forging of the Canadian national landscape and identity (no place in WesternCanada), is a colonial narrative that serves to reinforce imperial histories of bothIrish and Canadian identities. The narrative, or more precisely the lack of narrative,of Irish migrants in Western Canada further reinforces this colonial history. Whatthe Irish immigrant experience does present is the story of an emergent Canadian

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nation and Canadian identity. As archaeologists thinking about Ireland and the Irishin historic contexts, we must recognize that how we understand historic processesis as much a part of the colonial enterprise we are attempting to examine. Thearchaeology of Irish immigrant experiences is an open field and by exploringhow Irish migrants “fit into new places,” we can explore the complexities andintersections of colonial identities.

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