The Irish in Canada Podcast

Over the last three seasons, we've explored just how much Irish immigrants and their descendants have shaped Canada over the past 250 years, in so many ways.  In this concluding episode to the podcast, Jane looks back at some of her favourite moments from the show, wonders why certain bloodthirsty tales are eternally popular, takes a stand on cancel culture, and gives James FitzGibbon one last shout-out.

Ah, Emily Murphy... where do we begin?!  Maybe with the salient fact that this first female magistrate in the British Empire and driving force behind the Persons' Case of 1929 was also the grand-daughter of Ogle Gowan, the founder and Grand Master of the Orange Order in Canada.  In terms of having an Irish pedigree, she definitely had one, though how many of her fans knew that her great-grandfather was the leader of Co. Wexford's notorious Black Mob after the 1798 Irish Rising?  Emily Gowan Ferguson Murphy was a lightning rod for controversy during her lifetime, and she remains so to this day.  But, why?  How does her story fit within the larger conversation in the 2020s regarding who should be remembered in Canadian history?

Nellie McClung was a provocative woman, stirring up controversies and column inches in her own lifetime and in all the years since she died.  Arguably Canada’s most famous first-wave feminist, her efforts guaranteed that Manitoba’s women won the provincial vote in 1916, a first in Canada.  She was also one of The Famous Five, the group of activists who won the right for Canadian women to be considered as legal ‘persons’ under the law.  On the other hand, Nellie is also the first woman we’ve featured on this podcast to have been literally burned in effigy—and many of her opinions from the 1910s and 1920s are roundly criticized today.  Controversial?  Chances are, Nellie ‘Shanty Irish’ McClung wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Considering everything she did in her life – as a teacher, an author, a political activist, an archivist, private secretary to the premier of Alberta, and a journalist – we should be much more familiar with the name of Katherine Hughes.  Most people, however, are unaware of everything she achieved and helped to create in the first decades of the twentieth century, in part because of some of the controversies surrounding her, the most notable of which was her strident and vocal support for Irish republicanism.  In the first of three episodes about controversial Irish Canadian women, we’re going to discuss the life and times of Katherine Hughes, and why, until recently, she has remained fairly forgotten in the history of Irish Canada.

So far, we’ve talked about famous and infamous people in Irish Canadian history.  But, what about those who weren’t so extraordinary?  What was it like to be one of them?  Today, we’re following one Irish family from Co. Limerick to Canada as they lived through times of war, eviction, violence, and change.  Join us as we explore the history of the Dulmage family, Irish immigrants and their Canadian descendants who aren't necessarily in the history books, but whose experiences were full of drama, tragedy, and upheaval.

Who was the most important Irish person in Canadian history?  Or perhaps the most frustrating?  In today’s episode, Jane makes a case for Sir Guy Carleton as a serious contender for both titles.  Born to an Ulster Protestant military family, Carleton was perhaps an unlikely defender of Catholicism and French-Canadian civil rights, but his unyielding support for the Quebec Act of 1774 laid a blueprint for modern Canadian identity that still can be felt 250 years later.  And just wait until you hear about his love life! 

In the summer of 1847, over 100,000 refugees from the Great Irish Famine poured into Canada, making their way up the St Lawrence River to Grosse Île, Québec, Montréal, and Toronto.  Others arrived at Partridge Island, the quarantine station just outside the harbour of Saint John, New Brunswick.  This is the story of two Irish Canadians — one in Toronto, and the other in Saint John — who tried to help as best they could, with tragic results.

When the Brock Monument exploded at Queenston Heights on 17 April 1840, the colonial authorities quickly decided upon the identity of the guilty culprit: the notorious Irishman, Benjamin Lett.  A follower of William Lyon Mackenzie, Ben Lett unleashed a campaign of terror and violence in the years following the failed 1837 Upper Canadian Rebellion.  To some, he was a Robin Hood figure, “the Rob Roy of Upper Canada” who continually evaded capture; to others, he was a dangerous rebel who needed to be stopped.

To end our second season, Jane is revealing some of her exclusive research from the Gender, Migration & Madness Project: the mystery surrounding the death of Mary Boyd.  Mary was an Irish Quebecer who found work as a young maid in a Toronto doctor’s household in 1868.  But the circumstances surrounding her suicide only a few months later caused a major scandal in the city about sex, virginity, pregnancy, medical experimentation, mental illness, and the immense power men had over women’s bodies.NB – This episode contains graphic discussions of mental illness, sexual assault, and suicide.  Listener discretion is advised.

Few people in Canadian history have created more division than Louis Riel.  At the time of his death in 1885, he had been found guilty of high treason, but even the jury who condemned him agreed that something else in Riel’s past was why he was killed: the execution of Thomas Scott.  Who was Thomas Scott?  Why was he executed in Winnipeg during the Red River Resistance, and why did Riel feel fifteen years later that he was going to be hanged because of an Irishman? NB – This episode contains explicit language