From 1845 to 1855, famine ships brought 2 million Irish emigrants to ports in Boston, New York and Canada. To the Irish-American members of the Fenian Brotherhood, which sought to end 700 years of colonial rule by England in Ireland, Canada was a natural target. Although many immigrants were "late Loyalists" with many English settlers. 1815–1850:Greatest immigration was from Scotland and Ireland to Atlantic colonies. Sharks were said to follow them because so many bodies were thrown overboard. 1830s: The great Irish immigration took place, especially to New Brunswick. In many respects, the Irish were Canada's first major cohort of overseas immigrants after the English and French. Fifty-seven percent of those counted claimed British origins. Irish immigrants, both male and female, were drawn with … Irish often were portrayed as racially different from the wider population of Caucasians and those of Anglo-Saxon heritage, writes historian Noel Ignatiev in his 1995 book "How the Irish Became White." By the 1840s Canada had a population of about two million and with large number of immigrants coming in, Canada was growing, changing and uniting. An Irish […] Between 1851 and 1864 about a dozen Irish lawyers and doctors were advertising in each issue of one newspaper alone. There's proof of this discrimination in cartoons and advertisements that were published during the mid- to late-1800s. If pre-famine immigration to Canada was a small, but steady, trickle then the ravages of the Great Irish Hunger resulted in a deluge of human movement that hasn’t been seen in Ireland since. ‘Why should Irish immigrants be treated better than others?’ Talk of a new visa deal between Ireland and US gives many hope, but some readers have reservations Fri, Nov 9, 2018, 13:40 After the year 1818, an influx of Protestant Irish began in Upper Canada. But the famine ships carried their own dangers. “The Irish had suffered profound injustice in the U.K. at the hands of the British, widely seen as ‘white negroes.’ The potato famine that created starvation conditions that cost the lives of millions of Irish and forced the out-migration of millions of surviving ones, was less a natural disaster and more a complex set of social conditions created by British landowners … Canada alone had over 300,000 Irish people migrate in a five year period. About half the immigrants mostly Protestants from the north of Ireland — kept right on to Upper Canada. Some Canadian Immigration Statistics. With the influx of immigrants, Canada’s population significantly increased, and Canada grew as a nation. Advertisements in Montreal newspapers indicate that the Irish were prominent in the wholesale and retail trade. Although the Irish generally spoke English, they did not mirror the social, cultural or religious values of Anglo-Canadians. Why? Irish Immigration Pre-Confederation British North America became home to thousands of people fleeing poverty or oppression in their homelands with hopes to build a better life. The famine, caused by a blighted potato crop (Ireland’s main food source at the time), lasted from 1846 to 1852 and devastated the country and her people. They were fleeing the starvation and disease caused by the potato crop failure. A few thousand came each year. Canada’s 1901 census put our population at 5,371,315. 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