Irish Nationalism in Canada 9780773576391

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Using the Grand Turk for Ireland: Ottoman Images and the Irish Vindicator
2 The Fanatic Heart of the North
3 Was Patrick James Whelan a Fenian and Did He Assassinate Thomas D’Arcy McGee?
4 Clerical Containment of Diasporic Irish Nationalism: A Canadian Example from the Parnell Era
5 Between King, Kaiser, and Canada: Irish Catholics in Canada and the Great War, 1914–1918
6 Canadian Catholic Press Reaction to the Irish Crisis, 1916–1921
7 From Terry Finnegan to Terry Fenian: The Truncated Literary Career of James McCarroll
8 Irish Canadians and the National Question in Canada
9 Stepping Back and Looking Around
Notes
Contributors
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Y

Citation preview

irish nationalism in canada

mcgill-queen’s studies in ethnic history series one: donald harman akenson, editor 1 Irish Migrants in the Canadas A New Approach Bruce S. Elliott (Second edition, 2004)

9 The People of Glengarry Highlanders in Transition, 1745–1820 Marianne McLean

2 Critical Years in Immigration Canada and Australia Compared Freda Hawkins (Second edition, 1991)

10 Vancouver’s Chinatown Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875–1980 Kay J. Anderson

3 Italians in Toronto Development of a National Identity, 1875–1935 John E. Zucchi 4 Linguistics and Poetics of Latvian Folk Songs Essays in Honour of the Sesquicentennial of the Birth of Kr. Barons Vaira Vikis-Freibergs 5 Johan Schroder’s Travels in Canada, 1863 Orm Overland 6 Class, Ethnicity, and Social Inequality Christopher McAll 7 The Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict The Maori, the British, and the New Zealand Wars James Belich 8 White Canada Forever Popular Attitudes and Public Policy toward Orientals in British Columbia W. Peter Ward (Third edition, 2002)

11 Best Left as Indians Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840–1973 Ken Coates 12 Such Hardworking People Italian Immigrants in Postwar Toronto Franca Iacovetta 13 The Little Slaves of the Harp Italian Child Street Musicians in Nineteenth-Century Paris, London, and New York John E. Zucchi 14 The Light of Nature and the Law of God Antislavery in Ontario, 1833–1877 Allen P. Stouffer 15 Drum Songs Glimpses of Dene History Kerry Abel 16 Louis Rosenberg Canada’s Jews (Reprint of 1939 original) Edited by Morton Weinfeld 17 A New Lease on Life Landlords, Tenants, and Immigrants in Ireland and Canada Catharine Anne Wilson

18 In Search of Paradise The Odyssey of an Italian Family Susan Gabori

22 Cultural Power, Resistance, and Pluralism Colonial Guyana, 1838–1900 Brian L. Moore

19 Ethnicity in the Mainstream Three Studies of English Canadian Culture in Ontario Pauline Greenhill

23 Search Out the Land The Jews and the Growth of Equality in British Colonial America, 1740–1867 Sheldon J. Godfrey and Judith C. Godfrey

20 Patriots and Proletarians The Politicization of Hungarian Immigrants in Canada, 1923–1939 Carmela Patrias 21 The Four Quarters of the Night The Life-Journey of an Emigrant Sikh Tara Singh Bains and Hugh Johnston

24 The Development of Elites in Acadian New Brunswick, 1861–1881 Sheila M. Andrew 25 Journey to Vaja Reconstructing the World of a Hungarian-Jewish Family Elaine Kalman Naves

mcgill-queen’s studies in ethnic history series two: john zucchi, editor 1 Inside Ethnic Families Three Generations of Portuguese-Canadians Edite Noivo 2 A House of Words Jewish Writing, Identity, and Memory Norman Ravvin

5 Creating Societies Immigrant Lives in Canada Dirk Hoerder 6 Social Discredit Anti-Semitism, Social Credit, and the Jewish Response Janine Stingel

3 Oatmeal and the Catechism Scottish Gaelic Settlers in Quebec Margaret Bennett

7 Coalescence of Styles The Ethnic Heritage of St John River Valley Regional Furniture, 1763–1851 Jane L. Cook

4 With Scarcely a Ripple Anglo-Canadian Migration into the United States and Western Canada, 1880–1920 Randy William Widdis

8 Brigh an Orain / A Story in Every Song The Songs and Tales of Lauchie MacLellan Translated and edited by John Shaw

9 Demography, State, and Society Irish Migration to Britain, 1921–1971 Enda Delaney 10 The West Indians of Costa Rica Race, Class, and the Integration of an Ethnic Minority Ronald N. Harpelle 11 Canada and the Ukrainian Question, 1939–1945 Bohdan S. Kordan

18 Exiles and Islanders The Irish Settlers of Prince Edward Island Brendan O’Grady 19 Ethnic Relations in Canada Institutional Dynamics Raymond Breton Edited by Jeffrey G. Reitz 20 A Kingdom of the Mind The Scots’ Impact on the Development of Canada Edited by Peter Rider and Heather McNabb

12 Tortillas and Tomatoes Transmigrant Mexican Harvesters in Canada Tanya Basok

21 Vikings to U-Boats The German Experience in Newfoundland and Labrador Gerhard P. Bassler

13 Old and New World Highland Bagpiping John G. Gibson

22 Being Arab Ethnic and Religious Identity Building among Second Generation Youth in Montreal Paul Eid

14 Nationalism from the Margins The Negotiation of Nationalism and Ethnic Identities among Italian Immigrants in Alberta and British Columbia Patricia Wood 15 Colonization and Community The Vancouver Island Coalfield and the Making of the British Columbia Working Class John Douglas Belshaw 16 Enemy Aliens, Prisoners of War Internment in Canada during the Great War Bohdan S. Kordan 17 Like Our Mountains A History of Armenians in Canada Isabel Kaprielian-Churchill

23 From Peasants to Labourers Ukrainian and Belarusan Immigration from the Russian Empire to Canada Vadim Kukushkin 24 Emigrant Worlds and Translantic Communities Migration to Upper Canada in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century Elizabeth Jane Errington 25 Jerusalem on the Amur Birobidzhan and the Canadian Jewish Communist Movement, 1924–1951 Henry F. Srebrnik 26 Irish Nationalism in Canada Edited by David A. Wilson

Irish Nationalism in Canada edited by david a. wilson

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston London Ithaca G

G

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2009 isbn 978-0-7735-3635-7 (cloth) isbn 978-0-7735-3636-4 (paper) Legal deposit fourth quarter 2009 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of grants from the Department of Celtic Studies, University of Toronto, and from St Michael’s College. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp) for our publishing activities. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Irish nationalism in Canada / edited by David A. Wilson. (McGill-Queen’s studies in ethnic history. Series 2 ; 25) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-7735-3635-7 (bnd) isbn 978-0-7735-3636-4 (pbk) 1. Irish – Canada – History – 19th century. 2. Irish Canadians – History – 20th century. 3. Nationalism – Ireland. 4. Ireland – Emigration and immigration. 5. Canada – Emigration and immigration. 6. Ireland – Politics and government – 19th century. 7. Ireland – Politics and government – 20th century. I. Wilson, David A., 1950– II. Series: McGill-Queen’s studies in ethnic history. Series 2 ; 25 fc106.i6i76 2009

325’.24150971

c2009-903795-5

Typeset by Jay Tee Graphics Ltd. in 10.5/13 New Baskerville

In loving memory of our parents, margaret and p e t e r m cateer , who left Ireland for Canada in 1929. The Great Depression notwithstanding, like so many Irish immigrants they found work where they could, remained steadfast in their faith, and taught us by their love and example the true meaning of generosity and equality. maureen brady , peter (deceased), and jack

This page intentionally left blank

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction david a. wilson

xi 3

1 Using the Grand Turk for Ireland: Ottoman Images and the Irish Vindicator sean farrell 22 2 The Fanatic Heart of the North peter m. toner 34 3 Was Patrick James Whelan a Fenian and Did He Assassinate Thomas D’Arcy McGee? david a. wilson 52 4 Clerical Containment of Diasporic Irish Nationalism: A Canadian Example from the Parnell Era rosalyn trigger 83 5 Between King, Kaiser, and Canada: Irish Catholics in Canada and the Great War, 1914–1918 mark g. mc gowan 97 6 Canadian Catholic Press Reaction to the Irish Crisis, 1916–1921 frederick j. mc evoy 121 7 From Terry Finnegan to Terry Fenian: The Truncated Literary Career of James McCarroll michael peterman 140

x

Contents

8 Irish Canadians and the National Question in Canada garth stevenson 160 9 Stepping Back and Looking Around donald harman akenson 178 Notes 189 Contributors Index 235

233

Acknowledgments

This book is the third to emanate from the Annual Conference of the Celtic Studies Program at St Michael’s College in the University of Toronto; its predecessors are Ulster Presbyterians in the Atlantic World (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006) and The Orange Order in Canada (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007). The first two volumes were funded by the Institute of Ulster Scots Studies at the University of Ulster; this book, and the conference upon which it was based, was made possible by the generous support of Jack McAteer. I thank Jean Talman, Máirin Nic Dhiarmada, Ann Dooley, and Mark McGowan of the Celtic Studies Program for their continuing support; Carlotta Lemieux and Kate Merriman for their first-class copyediting; Michael Power for compiling the index with his customary skill; Kyla Madden and Don Akenson at McGill-Queen’s for their enthusiasm and encouragement; and Zsuzsa Balogh for being her wonderful self.

This page intentionally left blank

irish nationalism in canada

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction david a. wilson

Given the importance of the subject, surprisingly little has been published on the history of Irish nationalism in Canada. Over the last twenty-five years, historians of the Irish in Canada have focused instead on the extent to which Irish immigrants and people of Irish ethnicity became acculturated to Canadian norms – and, indeed, the degree to which they helped to define those norms. Although there have been differences about the timing of the process and lively debates about regional variations, a general consensus emerged that by the beginning of the twentieth century, and probably earlier, Irish Canadians as a whole (defined as both immigrants and their descendants) had successfully adjusted to their new environment – so much so, that for most of the twentieth century they became historically invisible.1 Historians have also emphasized the difference between the Irish in the United States and in Canada. In the United States, Irish Catholics pulsed into the country between the Famine and the Great War, constantly reinfusing and re-shaping the Irish American nationalist tradition that originated with United Irish émigrés during the late eighteenth century. But in Canada, Irish immigration dwindled to a trickle after the mid-1850s, and most of the earlier immigrants had been Protestants who arrived before the Famine; it was the Orange Order, rather than the Fenian Brotherhood, Clan na Gael, or the Ancient Order of Hibernians, that became the quintessential Irish institution in Canada.2 In the United States, large numbers of immigrants (but by no means all) lived in cities, where they bore the brunt of nativist discrimination and where they had the critical mass for effective political organization.3 But in

4

David A. Wilson

Canada, most Irish immigrants and their descendants lived in the countryside; and although Irish Catholics undoubtedly faced discrimination, the French fact helped to protect them from Protestant domination and ensured that they would have their own school system. In the United States, radical Irish nationalists could and did argue that they were following in the footsteps of American revolutionary republicans who had emancipated themselves from British tyranny during the War of Independence. But in Canada, radical Irish nationalism ran counter to the country’s loyalist political culture. Putting the Canadian pieces together – the successful acculturation of Irish immigrants and their descendants, their rural dispersal and their historical invisibility, the preponderance of pre-Famine Protestant migration, the links between Irish Catholics and French Canadians, and the loyalist character of British North America – it seemed that there was little room for Irish nationalism in the country. Irish nationalism appeared to be on the margins; insofar as it existed at all, it was seen as an adjunct of the much more powerful, vibrant, and dynamic American movement. This view fitted rather well with traditional academic and longstanding popular assumptions that the Fenians were essentially external to Canada. According to the orthodox version, the Fenians arrived on the scene in 1866 with a hare-brained scheme to liberate Ireland by invading British North America, only to find that their amateurish efforts created a “rise of national feeling” in Canada and ironically contributed to the cause of Confederation.4 The phrase “comic opera” recurs repeatedly. True, there were some homegrown Fenians, such as Michael Murphy, but they never amounted to much; most Irish Catholics, it was argued, followed the lead of Thomas D’Arcy McGee and became loyal supporters of Canada and the Crown.5 Those Irish Canadians who wanted an independent Irish republic by peaceful means if possible and physical force if necessary, who believed that Canada should be annexed to the United States, who supported the strategy of invading Canada, or who thought that McGee was a traitor and apostate who deserved to be assassinated were dismissed as a risible, insignificant, and “dastardly” minority, hardly worthy of serious study.6 There were a few dissenting voices, but they struggled to make themselves heard. In 1974 Peter M. Toner wrote an excellent doctoral dissertation on “The Rise of Irish Nationalism in Canada,

Introduction

5

1858–1884”; when he submitted it for publication, it was turned down on the grounds that he had exaggerated the significance of the subject.7 Nothing could have been farther from the truth. It is impossible to understand Irish Canadian history without understanding Irish Canadian nationalism. As might be expected, Irish Canadian nationalism was preoccupied with Irish issues – Daniel O’Connell’s campaign for Catholic Emancipation and later the repeal of the Act of Union, the Young Ireland rising of 1848, the Irish activities of the Fenian Brotherhood, the Home Government Association and Home Rule League of Isaac Butt, the rise of Charles Stewart Parnell, the Land League, the dynamite campaign of the 1880s, the Home Rule bills, the Easter Rising, and the Troubles of 1919–21, to name some of the major ones. But it also had a distinctly Canadian content and character. Radical Irish nationalists joined radical Canadian nationalists during the Rebellions of 1837–38; some of them also supported Irish American campaigns to liberate Canada from the British connection in 1848 and again during the 1860s. Anyone who thinks that the Fenians in Canada were unimportant need only read the John A. Macdonald Papers, where the interactions between American and Canadian Fenians were a source of constant concern. Meanwhile, constitutional Irish Canadian nationalists contended that both Canada and Ireland should become equal partners with Britain in a reformed and revitalized British Empire. Apart from its intrinsic importance, Irish nationalism in Canada can also serve as an entry point into larger questions about the transference of Old World political traditions into North America, the dynamics of ethnoreligious conflict, and state responses to a revolutionary minority within an ethnoreligious group. It is sometimes assumed that the persistence of Irish nationalism in North America was a function of alienation. Discrimination and exploitation in the United States, from this perspective, hardened and deepened Irish American nationalism, while the relatively successful adjustment of Irish migrants to Canadian life meant that Irish issues gradually faded from consciousness. There is some truth to this, but the picture is overdrawn. For one thing, the hardships facing Irish Catholics in the United States can easily be exaggerated; the “No Irish Need Apply” syndrome was less prevalent than is generally supposed, and the overall Irish American experience was too varied to be contained within the box of discrimination.8 For

6

David A. Wilson

another, many Irish Catholics who became socially and economically integrated into Canadian life remained closely attuned to events in Ireland and supported the movement for Home Rule. In a sense, radical Irish nationalism in the United States and constitutional Irish nationalism in Canada can actually be seen as products of assimilation rather than alienation, since in both cases there was an attempt to project the political system of the adopted country back onto the country of origin. This does not apply to revolutionary republican nationalists in Canada, of course, who by definition were alienated from the Crown and Empire. The socio-economic profile of Fenianism in Canada was remarkably similar to that in Ireland, with an artisan and semi-skilled base shading off into labourers at one end, and small-scale entrepreneurs and radical professionals at the other. But in Canada, Irish Catholics were overrepresented in the urban working classes and formed their own ethnoreligious associational culture in which radical nationalism could flourish. Describing the Canadian Fenians who had been arrested in 1868 under the suspension of habeas corpus, George Brown’s Globe commented that there was “not a man of position, wealth, or ability among them – not a single one that any person would ever have thought of looking upon as a leader of his countrymen in his neighbourhood.”9 The class bias is revealing. Within the Irish Catholic working classes, grassroots Fenian leaders commanded significant local influence; but in the Irish Catholic middle classes, constitutional nationalists presented a more respectable alternative. To a significant degree, the conflict between revolutionary and constitutional nationalists in Canada reflected class conflict between workingand middle-class Irish Catholics. Along with intra-ethnic divisions, there were also severe tensions between radical Irish Canadian nationalists and hyper-loyal Irish Orangemen. “In Toronto,” D’Arcy McGee observed in 1866, “Orangeism has been made the pretext of Fenianism, and Fenianism is doing its best to justify and magnify Orangeism.”10 This was one of the main reasons why constitutional nationalists were so alarmed by the radicals in their midst; militant Irish nationalism, especially in the context of Irish American invasion threats, could trigger an escalating ethnoreligious conflict which the Catholics, as a minority, could only lose. “If this root of suspicion of treason should strike into our ranks, then no good subject of this country, no lover

Introduction

7

of Canada or her laws, could employ or encourage the settlement of another Irishman among us,” argued McGee. “No public office which could be withheld – no private employment which could be filled by any one else – no professional patronage, no social recognition, no office of trust, no magisterial duty, could be, or would be, entrusted to one of the suspected denomination.”11 McGee’s view that Orangeism and Fenianism fed off each other was certainly true for Toronto and could be extended to other ethnoreligious storm zones, such as the Peterborough region and Adjala township north of Toronto. But Fenianism, like Orangeism, had its own internal capacity for growth; radical Irish nationalism was particularly strong in Montreal and Quebec City, for example, which were not exactly Orange strongholds. Within the expanding Canadian Fenian movement, a hard core of revolutionaries – a minority within a minority – planned a campaign of domestic disruption to assist an Irish American invasion. Among other things, they attempted to subvert the militia and suborn Irish soldiers in British regiments, and planned to spike guns, burn down or blow up political and financial buildings, and disrupt railway and telegraph communications. One of the most fascinating issues, in the light of our contemporary concerns, is how the Canadian state reacted to this internal threat. In raising this subject, a sense of proportion is in order; the Fenian Brotherhood was manifestly not an early version of alQaeda. But the government during the 1860s was faced with a question that has returned in a different form: How can a revolutionary minority within an ethnoreligious out-group be isolated, contained, and defeated without alienating other members of that group? On balance, John A. Macdonald got it right – suspending habeas corpus after the Fenian invasion of 1866 but resisting popular panic and making a limited number of targeted arrests, based on information gathered largely by the recently formed secret police service under the leadership of Gilbert McMicken.12 While there is no doubt that the 1860s were the high point of radical Irish nationalism in Canada, there are other peaks that need to be scaled and valleys that have not yet been fully mapped. The role of radical Irish nationalists in the Rebellions of 1837–38 requires further investigation, as does their participation in the Patriot Hunters’ lodges and their support for the Irish Republican Union in 1848. Deeper continuities have yet to be traced; some

8

David A. Wilson

revolutionary Irish Canadian nationalists from the 1840s became Fenians during the 1860s, and some Fenians from the 1860s actively supported the dynamite campaign during the 1880s. At the same time, an exclusive focus on the revolutionary variant of Irish Canadian nationalism would be very misleading. Although there was no clear-cut division between physical-force and moralforce nationalism, and while the Fenians themselves were divided over the Canadian invasion strategy, the dominant strand of Irish Canadian nationalism was constitutional rather than revolutionary. From the late 1840s, the same message was repeated over and over again: if Ireland could get what Canada already had – responsible government, a large degree of de facto independence within the empire, freedom from both landlordism and an established church – then Ireland would be satisfied. Even some Canadian Fenians argued along these lines. It was from this constitutional nationalist tradition that John Costigan in 1882 introduced his Home Rule resolutions in the Canadian House of Commons, and although they were significantly diluted by Macdonald, the fact that they were passed at all was a remarkable achievement. And it was from this tradition that Canadian politicians such as Edward Blake and Charles Ramsay Devlin became Home Rule mps representing Irish constituencies at Westminster, even as Canadian Orangemen were supporting the Unionist Party. These topics have had a semi-visible existence in Irish Canadian historiography, appearing in unpublished doctoral dissertations and occasionally surfacing in articles. Robert Grace’s dissertation on the Irish in mid-nineteenth-century Quebec City has an interesting section on the Fenians, for example, and Simon Jolivet has recently analyzed the complex relationship between French Canadian nationalism and Irish nationalism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.13 Among others, James Jackson and Mary Haslam have published articles on Irish nationalism in Quebec during the 1820s and 1830s; Mark McGowan has explored Irish Canadian nationalist interpretations of the Famine; Peter Toner’s phd research has spawned several articles; Jeff Keshen and Gregory Kealey have examined the reaction of the Canadian secret police force to the Fenian movement; and Michael Cottrell and Rosalyn Trigger have discussed the relationship between Irish Canadian nationalism and St Patrick’s Day parades in Toronto and Montreal.14

Introduction

9

This book attempts not only to expand the existing published literature on Irish Canadian nationalism but also to reconsider and reconceptualize some of the main themes in the historiography, to suggest new avenues of research, and to raise more questions about the subject. What can Irish Canadian nationalism tell us about Irish attitudes to empire and race? How has Irish Canadian nationalism influenced the definition of “Irishness” in Canada? What was the character of Canada’s Fenian subculture during the 1860s? What kind of tensions existed within Irish Canadian nationalism and how were they played out? How did Irish Canadian Catholics respond to the Easter Rising, the rise of Sinn Féin, and the Troubles of 1919–21? What were the literary representations of Irish Canadian nationalism? How might Irish Catholics have influenced Canadian nationalism? And how might Irish Canadian nationalism be located within a global context? The chapters that follow span the years from O’Connell’s Catholic Emancipation campaign of the 1820s to the Troubles of 1919–21. For the first half of this period, Irish Canadians were the single largest ethnic group in English-speaking Canada. Irish Catholics constituted around one-third of this group and about 8 per cent of the Canadian population as a whole. By 1921, Irish immigration had plummeted, and Canadians of Irish ethnicity had fallen from a quarter to an eighth of the total Canadian population, although their absolute numbers had risen to over a million. From the 1920s to the 1960s, the Irish percentage of the Canadian population continued to fall, while the establishment of the Irish Free State and partition appeared to have provided a workable compromise between Irish nationalists and unionists. All this changed, of course, after 1968; and among the Irish immigrants who arrived in Canada during the 1970s and 1980s were those who remained passionately involved with Irish politics, whether as nationalists or as unionists. This story – the story of Irish Canadian nationalism during the mid-twentieth century and the Troubles of 1968–98 – has yet to be told and awaits its historians. But whatever conclusions they reach must be built on foundations that were established during the long nineteenth century. We begin in Montreal in 1828–29, when the struggle for Catholic Emancipation was at its height, and when the Russian and Ottoman empires were at war. Covering both issues, among many

10

David A. Wilson

others, was Daniel Tracey’s Irish Vindicator, an O’Connellite and Patriote newspaper whose pages shed light on Irish nationalist attitudes to the British Empire and to foreign “races,” as the term was used in the early nineteenth century. In his analysis of the Vindicator’s articles, Sean Farrell shows that Tracey, along with British liberals and other Irish nationalists, viewed Russia as the archetypal enemy of liberty and criticized the British government for failing to take a strong stand against Russian expansionism in the Balkans. This failure, in Tracey’s view, was symptomatic of a deeper malaise within the British Empire – a malaise that could only be remedied by imperial reform and limited home rule for Ireland and Canada. At the same time, Tracey criticized the Ottoman Empire for failing to provide good government for its people. Attempts at modernization, he argued, were fatally undermined by the Turkish character. Embracing increasingly influential British orientalist stereotypes, the Vindicator depicted the Turks as a barbaric, cruel, deceitful, lazy, and lustful people, who spent most of their nights in orgies at the local harem. The Irish and the Canadians, in contrast, were a civilized, intelligent, and respectable people, who were worthy and able to govern themselves within the British Empire. Two main points arise from Farrell’s analysis. First, Tracey’s Irish and Canadian nationalism was not anti-imperialist; rather than heading in a republican and separatist direction, it sought to combine increased autonomy for Ireland and Canada within a reformed British Empire – thus establishing a theme that would run through nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Irish Canadian nationalism. Second, such reform was only available to civilized peoples such as the Irish and Canadians; people such as the Turks would remain trapped in barbarism, victims of their seemingly ineradicable collective character defects. Moreover, the putative barbarism of the Turks became a foil against which Irish and Canadians could assert their own worthiness for inclusion as equals within the British Empire. This has broader historiographical significance. In contrast to the arguments of Kevin Whelan and Luke Gibbons, who have suggested that Ireland’s “colonial” status promoted a sense of solidarity with other victims of empire, Farrell’s analysis indicates that radical Irish nationalists in Montreal bought into British imperialist stereotypes as part of their efforts to win greater autonomy for their native and adopted countries. This is not to deny that examples of cross-cultural identification can be found; but Farrell’s

Introduction

11

work tends to support Stephen Howe’s argument that such examples were the exception rather than the rule. The kind of nationalism espoused by Tracey in the Vindicator was very much in the constitutional nationalist O’Connellite tradition. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, revolutionary Irish nationalism was becoming increasingly important in Canada. Peter Toner shows how revolutionary Irish nationalism in Canada emerged out of Orange and Green clashes in Toronto, benefited from the growing power of American Fenianism, spread into Canada East and the Maritimes, and became further radicalized by the Fenian raids of 1866. Only after the dismal failure of John O’Neill’s second invasion attempt in 1870 did the more extreme Canadian Fenians abandon the idea of liberating Ireland on the plains of Canada; henceforth, they would focus their attention on Ireland itself. During the 1870s, they regrouped in the revolutionary United Brotherhood, and although they remained a minority within Irish Canadian nationalism, they were sufficiently strong and energetic to subvert Irish Canadian support for Isaac Butt’s moderate Home Rule League. They also infiltrated Canadian branches of the Irish National Land League, where they ran up against the combined opposition of constitutional nationalists and conservative clerics. Although constitutional Irish Canadian nationalism found its most striking expression in John Costigan’s Home Rule resolutions of 1882, the revolutionary underground persisted. Some Irish Canadians subscribed to Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa’s “Skirmishing Fund,” and most Canadian members of the United Brotherhood supported the campaign to bomb Britain into leaving Ireland. Indeed, one of the principal bombers, William Mackey Lomasney, had been a member of Toronto’s quasi-Fenian Hibernian Benevolent Society, and two architects of the dynamite campaign, Denis C. Feely and Alexander Sullivan, were Irish Canadians. In assessing the character and significance of revolutionary Irish nationalism in Canada, Toner points out that sectarian conflict is only part of the story. Running through issues of sectarianism, discrimination, and social status, and in some senses transcending them, was the transmission of political principles from one Irish Canadian generation to another and a persistent emotional identification with “Ireland.” As Irish nationalists in Canada moved up the social scale and became more respectable, they were well

12

David A. Wilson

placed to define “Ireland” in ideological and religious terms; to be “Irish” was to be nationalist in politics and Roman Catholic in religion. The extent to which Catholicism came to eclipse nationalism, and the degree to which Canadian acculturation eroded interest in the Old Country, remain matters of controversy. But the equation of “Irishness” with Catholic nationalism remained, and Irish Catholic responses to the Home Rule crisis, the Easter Rising, and the Troubles of 1919–21 indicate that Irish nationalism could sit easily if not entirely comfortably with Canadian nationalism; the “Irish,” from this perspective, were only trying to attain the same degree of independence that Canada had already secured. The issues that Toner has raised are explored further by Rosalyn Trigger, Frederick McEvoy, Mark McGowan, and myself. My study of Patrick James Whelan, the man who was accused of assassinating Thomas D’Arcy McGee, should be seen as an extended footnote to Toner’s chapter – literally, since it takes as its starting point Toner’s comment that he “has not yet been convinced about either Whelan’s guilt or his alleged connections with organized Fenianism, but is willing to become educated on both matters.” There is compelling evidence that Whelan did indeed have close connections with organized Fenianism. Although his trial is usually discussed in terms of his guilt or innocence, it is also a fascinating entrée into the Fenian subculture of Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto. This was a male world peopled by artisans and labourers, centred on taverns and Irish Catholic ethnic associations, strengthened by kinship networks, and characterized by close friendships and fierce arguments, deep loyalties and intense hatreds, hard work and heavy drinking. Its members read and discussed radical nationalist newspapers such as the Irish American and Irish Canadian, and attended popular touring Irish plays such as Dion Boucicault’s Arrah-na-Pogue, whose song “The Wearing of the Green” became a staple in the Irish nationalist repertoire. Anyone who violated the codes of this world – informers, for example – could expect very rough treatment indeed. And its great hate figure, the Emmanuel Goldstein of Irish Canadian Fenianism, was Thomas D’Arcy McGee. When Bernard Devlin publicly accused McGee of being “a foul informer” during their election contest in 1867, the shout “He’s dead” rang through the crowd.15 Whelan was very much part of this subculture and was probably a sworn member of the Fenian Brotherhood, despite his denials. But

Introduction

13

was he guilty of assassinating McGee? His defenders argued that he was the victim of a rush to judgment by an enraged population that desperately wanted a scapegoat; Whelan himself always insisted that he had not shot McGee; the trial was characterized by perjury (on both sides) and procedural irregularities. Using the criminal law criterion of reasonable doubt, he should have been found not guilty. But using the civil law criterion of the balance of probabilities, he should have been found guilty. Even after dismissing the testimony of the key prosecution witness, assuming that other leading prosecution witnesses were out for the reward money, allowing for the procedural problems, and accepting the defence argument that his jailors and the police tried to manufacture evidence against him, there was still strong circumstantial evidence that Whelan had the motive, means, and opportunity to assassinate McGee and that the fatal bullet could have been fired from his gun. Although Whelan insisted that he was not the assassin, he did say just before his execution that he was present when McGee was shot and that he knew the man who pulled the trigger. Even if he did not assassinate McGee himself, Whelan was part of a hit squad – and guilty as an accessory before the fact. While I have examined the particular case of Patrick James Whelan, Rosalyn Trigger has explored one of the broader issues raised by Toner’s work – the struggle within Irish Catholic Canada between conservative nationalists in the McGee tradition and radical nationalists in the Fenian tradition. She describes the conservatives as “embedded nationalists,” in the sense that their Irish nationalism was embedded in the Canadian context. The great lesson of Irish Canada, they believed, was that when Catholics experienced political, religious, and economic freedom, they became loyal supporters of the Crown and Empire – a lesson that should be heeded by imperial statesmen. Against them stood the “diasporic” nationalists, whose commitment to Irish independence transcended their specific allegiance to Canada. The diasporic nationalists wanted to form close links with their compatriots in other countries – most notably, the United States – and supported united transnational political action to strengthen the cause of Irish nationalism. Focusing on Montreal during the 1880s, Trigger shows how the struggle centred on three issues: the attempt of diasporic nationalists to bring the city’s Irish societies into the Irish National League

14

David A. Wilson

of America; the radical editorials of the Montreal Post; and the activities of the Young Irishmen’s Literary and Benefit Society, which was almost certainly a revolutionary Irish nationalist front organization. Leading the conservative clerical nationalists was Father Patrick Dowd, who had been a strong supporter of McGee two decades earlier. To incorporate Montreal’s Irish societies within the Irish National League of America, Dowd argued, would be to assume responsibility for Irish American decisions without exerting significant influence over them; it also ran the risk of creating an Orange backlash and stirring up ethnoreligious tensions in the city. Equally alarming from Dowd’s perspective was the Post’s position that Canadian loyalism was incompatible with Irish nationalism and that priests should not align themselves with the “enemies” of their countrymen. More dangerous still was the Young Irishmen’s Literary and Benefit Society, with its array of invited physical-force speakers from the United States and the possible connections of at least one of its members, Edward Tobin, to O’Donovan Rossa. Ostensibly, the conservative clerical nationalists carried the day. In response to Dowd’s criticisms, the diasporic nationalists abandoned their plans to join the Irish National League of America, and instead formed their own Canadian organization; they expressed their respect for the Roman Catholic Church and their loyalty to Canada and declared that they wanted Ireland to secure the freedom that Canada already enjoyed. It seemed to be a complete capitulation. The clerical attack on the Young Irishmen’s Literary and Benefit Society appeared equally successful; in 1888 Dowd banned its members from the city’s St Patrick’s Day procession. At the same time, the Montreal Post was comprehensively denounced from every Catholic pulpit in the city. Unable to withstand the offensive, it went under later in the year. Appearances, however, can be deceptive. Although the Montreal branch of the Irish Canadian National League was formally a separate organization, it continued to have close informal connections with its American counterpart; beneath the façade of embedded nationalism, diasporic nationalism remained a significant force in Montreal. Radical Irish nationalism may have been officially marginalized through the ostracism of the Young Irishmen’s Literary and Benefit Society and the closing of the Post, but it continued to have a twilight existence in the city. Many Irish Catholic Mon-

Introduction

15

trealers combined elements of both embedded and diasporic nationalism and could not be neatly consigned into “constitutional” or “revolutionary” categories. Which element prevailed would be contingent partly on internal politics and class relations; but it would also be deeply influenced by external circumstances – particularly during the crisis in Anglo-Irish relations after the Easter Rising of 1916. The impact of the rising on Irish Canadian nationalism is discussed by Mark McGowan and Frederick McEvoy. In his discussion of Irish Catholic recruitment patterns during the Great War, McGowan examines three issues: the extent of voluntary Irish Catholic participation in the war effort; how and why Irish Catholics came to participate; and the extent, if any, to which the Easter Rising affected their professed loyalty to the British Empire. McGowan shows that Irish Catholic recruitment patterns generally matched those of the Canadian population as a whole; Irish Catholics enlisted in proportionate numbers, and they were generally single men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five who spanned a range of blue-collar, skilled, and white-collar occupations. They were, however, much more likely to have been born in Canada than to have immigrated from Ireland; this was in marked contrast to Anglican and Presbyterian immigrants from Britain, who supplied large numbers of recruits. Like other Canadians, Irish Catholics enlisted for a variety of reasons, from unemployment or the desire for adventure to commitment to the imperial cause. But whatever the personal motivation, they were strongly encouraged by the hierarchy, priests, and the Catholic press to fight for Canada, Britain, and for King and Empire. Most English-speaking Catholic bishops had been born in Canada and raised as British Canadian subjects; their loyalty to the Crown in time of war was virtually axiomatic. Irish Canadian priests declared that Canadian freedom depended on imperial victory, and they raised funds for the war effort and launched recruitment drives; many of them also served overseas with the Canadian Chaplaincy Service. Support for the war came from every level of English-speaking Catholic society, from prominent politicians to nurses who volunteered for the front line. All this appeared to demarcate Irish Catholic Canadians from their Irish American counterparts. When the American Ancient Order of Hibernians declared that the real enemy of Ireland was not Germany but

16

David A. Wilson

Britain, Canadian members of the order were aghast and immediately dissociated themselves from such sentiments and talked about seceding from the organization. It might be expected that the Easter Rising would have jolted many Irish Catholic Canadians out of their loyalty to the empire and drawn them toward a more radical outlook. But that did not happen; instead, most Irish Catholic Canadians defined their loyalty to the empire in a way that combined support for the war with support for Home Rule. Catholic newspaper editors condemned both the rising and the execution of its leaders and increasingly supported Home Rule for Ireland as a means of undercutting separatist republicanism and placing Ireland on the same imperial footing as Canada. Significantly, the rising had no impact on Irish Catholic recruitment, which remained strong in 1916. The most divisive issue facing Irish Canadian Catholics was not Home Rule in Ireland but conscription in Canada. Yet despite deep differences over conscription in Canada, there was a broad consensus that the war must be won and that justice must be secured for Ireland. Far from forgetting Ireland, McGowan concludes, most Irish Catholics embraced the “double duty” of saving the empire from German tyranny and then ensuring that a victorious empire applied the principles of liberty to Ireland. Frederick McEvoy pursues this issue with an extensive examination of the way in which two major Canadian Catholic weekly newspapers, the Catholic Register of Toronto and the Catholic Record of London, responded to events in Ireland from 1916 to 1921. Both papers were very much aligned with John Redmond’s Irish Parliamentary Party and were initially critical of Sinn Féin and the Ulster Unionists. The thrust of their argument was that the British government, by caving in to Unionist threats and by its “brutal” response to the Easter Rising, was playing into the hands of Sinn Féin and the enemies of the empire. The papers viewed Unionist resistance to Home Rule as the product of prejudice and privilege, and consistently underestimated the depth and breadth of Ulster unionism. But if the papers were unequivocally opposed to unionism, they proved to be ambivalent toward Sinn Féin. The rise of Sinn Féin, they argued, was a regrettable but understandable result of British and Ulster Protestant intransigence and of thoroughly misguided policies such as the Military Service Act, which opened the way for conscription in Ireland. Although the Catholic Register fully

Introduction

17

supported conscription in Canada, it rejected conscription in Ireland. Why, it asked, should the Irish be forced to fight for liberty that was being denied them? And did the government not realize that conscription in Ireland would only stir up Irish opposition to the war? When Sinn Féin won its landslide political victory in December 1918, the papers believed that most Irish people would settle for dominion status within the empire; they supported Dáil Éireann as the legitimate voice of the Irish people (or three-quarters of them), and they hoped that Woodrow Wilson’s principle of selfdetermination would be applied to Ireland. As it became clear that Wilson had no intention of interfering in the internal affairs of the United Kingdom and as the guerrilla war in Ireland gathered momentum, the papers became increasingly radical. Reports of republican violence were simultaneously dismissed as imaginary products of British propaganda and defended as a real reaction to British repression; reports of police and military violence were emphasized and were denounced in terms of high moral indignation. (Meanwhile, the Canadian Orange Sentinel presented a mirror image of the conflict, in which reports of British violence were simultaneously dismissed as imaginary products of republican propaganda and defended as a real reaction to terrorist violence.) Significantly, in the context of the Great War and all the rhetoric about the rights of small nations, the most common word to describe British military behaviour in Ireland was “Prussian.” Although the papers sympathized with and supported Sinn Féin during the Troubles of 1919–21, they still believed that dominion status rather than republican separatism was the way forward. Accordingly, they welcomed the truce of July 1921 (with some caution), and viewed the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 as a great victory for Ireland. The new Ireland, they believed, would become thoroughly Catholic and Celtic but would also somehow be welcomed by sensible Ulster Protestants; like most Irish nationalists, they equated Irishness with Catholicism, implicitly excluding Protestants from the Irish nation while insisting that they were part of the nation. McEvoy also addresses Mark McGowan’s view in The Waning of the Green that Toronto’s Irish Catholics were motivated more by an intellectual adherence to Wilsonian principles of self-government than by an emotional attachment to the motherland. In fact, concludes McEvoy, it was a case of “both and” rather than “either

18

David A. Wilson

or”; the integration of Irish Catholics into the social, economic, and political life of Canada coexisted with a powerful sense of idealized Irishness. Along with the political history of Irish nationalism in Canada, there is an important but neglected literary dimension, which is explored in this volume by Michael Peterman. He takes as his subject the forgotten figure of James McCarroll, an Irish-born Protestant who was brought up in Peterborough and who combined work in the customs service with a career as a journalist, poet, satirist, and musician. During the 1860s, McCarroll was best known as the author of the Terry Finnegan letters, in which he used the stock figure of the stage Irishman to provide an ironic commentary on Canadian political affairs. He was liked and admired by figures as different as Thomas D’Arcy McGee, who described him as “a man of true genius,” and the founder of Canadian Orangeism, Ogle Gowan, who praised him as an outstanding Irish poet and musician in Toronto. But McCarroll made some dangerous and powerful enemies, including Sandfield Macdonald, the premier of the Province of Canada between 1862 and 1864. Not entirely coincidentally, McCarroll was fired from his customs position in September 1863 – an act that was widely decried in Irish Canadian circles as an example of anti-Irish discrimination and that left him a deeply embittered man. By this time, McCarroll had already become involved with Patrick Boyle’s pro-Fenian Irish Canadian; after his dismissal, Boyle and Michael Murphy, the Fenian head centre in Canada, had rushed to his assistance. But McCarroll also pinned his hopes for reinstatement on his old drinking companion, John A. Macdonald, and presented himself as the man who could bring radical Irish nationalists into the Liberal-Conservative Party. (This goal was not as far-fetched as it might seem; Macdonald would prove himself more than willing to form an alliance with radical Irish nationalists, as long their radicalism was directed toward Irish rather than Canadian ends.) But as McCarroll’s increasingly desperate pleas for help fell on deaf ears, he became increasingly alienated from the Canadian political system and increasingly drawn to Fenianism – so much so that by the spring of 1865, “Terry Finnegan” had become “Terry Fenian,” and McCarroll had established himself as the poet laureate of Canadian Fenianism.

Introduction

19

Disgusted with his treatment in Canada, which he saw as symptomatic of a more general Anglo-Scottish hostility to the Irish, McCarroll left for Buffalo in early 1866. There, he was closely connected with the auctioneer and newspaper proprietor Patrick O’Dea, who actively supported the Fenian invasion of Canada. As the editor of O’Dea’s (Buffalo) Globe and then of the Fenian Volunteer, McCarroll combined angry articles about his dismissal with impassioned poems about the oppression of Ireland. His bestknown work, though, was his novel Ridgeway, An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada (1868), in which he supported the invasion as a means of expanding the area of American freedom, liberating Canadians from the yoke of colonialism, delivering a blow to the British Empire, and paving the way for the emancipation of Ireland. Not surprisingly, this did not go down too well in Canada, where former friends such as James Moylan wrote blistering articles denouncing McCarroll as a turncoat and traitor. Another – and ultimately more effective – way of dealing with McCarroll’s “apostasy” was simply to pretend that he had never existed; this was the approach taken by Nicholas Flood Davin, whose book The Irishman in Canada (1878) named just about every Irishman in Canada except James McCarroll. As the decades passed, McCarroll sank into complete obscurity in Canada. While Peterman sheds light on Irish nationalist literature in Canada, Garth Stevenson opens up a new perspective on the politics of Irish Catholic Canadians. Instead of examining their attitude to Irish nationalism, Stevenson explores the ways in which they may have contributed to national unity and social peace in Canada. He points out that although Irish Catholics and French Canadians were divided by language, they were united by religion; this meant that the two groups could form a common front against the anti-Catholic attitude in much of English-speaking Canada. There was also a sense in which Irish Catholics could sympathize with French Canadians who wanted to protect their way of life from anglophone Protestants and to reduce the influence of the British Empire over Canada. This shared sympathy could work both ways: French Canadian politicians such as Honoré Mercier and Henri Bourassa were strong supporters of Home Rule in Ireland. Moreover, although Irish Catholics were

20

David A. Wilson

spread out thinly in English Canada, they constituted one-third of the English-speaking population in Quebec and were a large enough group to punch above their weight. As a result, Stevenson argues, Irish Catholic Canadians from Quebec were particularly well positioned to act as intermediaries between anglophones and francophones, and were more likely than British Protestants to sympathize with French Canadian or Quebec concerns. At the federal level, Irish Catholic cabinet ministers such as Charles Doherty and Charles “Chubby” Power moved easily between the anglophone and francophone political worlds, and took positions on imperial power and conscription that were shared by most French Canadians but rejected by most Englishspeaking Canadians. And, more recently, Brian Mulroney formed close links with Quebec nationalists, attempting to bring them into the constitutional fold through the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords. Irish Catholics from Quebec also played a significant role in provincial politics, where they helped to reduce tensions between anglophones and francophones. In 1859 D’Arcy McGee suggested that the double minority status of Irish Catholics – a religious minority in English-speaking Canada and a linguistic minority in Catholic Canada – meant that they occupied an “open debatable space” between the British and French populations and had to negotiate their way through the “manifold intricacies” of their situation.16 If Stevenson is correct, not only did they do this successfully for themselves, but they did it in a way that benefited Canada. In the final essay in this volume, Donald Harman Akenson invites us to locate Irish Canadian nationalism within its global context. Drawing on the methodology of the literary scholar Franco Moretti and warning us against the twin pitfalls of institutionalized parochialism and intellectually vacuous postmodernism, Akenson calls for a conceptual revolution in our approach to Irish nationalism – one that demonstrates how “a cross-cultural system forms, operates, transmutes, and eventually dissolves.” Such a project would require international cooperation among scholars who combine specialist studies with “big frame reading” and who set out to discern broader patterns within the evidence. Part of this conceptual revolution involves the decentring of Ireland, in which Irish nationalism would be examined from a variety of geographical locations – looking at the view from Halifax in Nova Scotia, for example, or from Hokitika in New Zealand. It

Introduction

21

would also necessitate the “rational categorization” of different strands of Irish nationalism, the use of quantitative analysis to verify patterns of behaviour and cultural expression, and a deep awareness of temporal and spatial contexts with national, regional, and local variables. In speculating about what such a system might look like, Akenson (echoing James Joyce) suggests that Irish nationalism has been the “bastard child of imperialism,” since without imperialism, there would have been no need for Irish nationalism in the first place. But he also points out that Irish nationalism was a global system spread through two empires – the British and the American – and was made possible by the displacement or genocide of indigenous peoples; in this sense, it became an integral component of imperialism, however much its adherents may have tried to ignore or conceal such an embarrassing reality. Akenson further argues that Irish nationalism must be viewed against the background of market capitalism – both in the sense that the uneven development of capitalism shaped the broader context in which Irish nationalism operated and in the sense that the different strands of Irish nationalism can be seen as mutually competitive international consumer goods. This is an ambitious, exciting, controversial, and original project, with the potential to take our understanding of Irish Canadian nationalism to a new level. Some of the material is already here, in the form of microstudies and Irish Canadian themes that can be connected to global patterns – images of other races, variants of international Fenianism, tensions between embedded and diasporic forms of Irish nationalism, attitudes to the Great War and the Irish Revolution, and literary representations of Irish nationalism. There are opportunities here to be grasped, new directions to be pursued, important discoveries to be made. The contribution of women to Irish Canadian nationalism needs to be understood in this context, as does the relationship of Irish nationalists to the indigenous peoples of Canada – subjects that deserve books in themselves. It is hoped that these early explorations in Irish Canadian history will stimulate more research and writing in the area and transform the marginal into the mainstream.

for Ireland

1 Using the Grand Turk for Ireland: Ottoman Images and the Irish Vindicator sean farrell On 12 December 1828, Daniel Tracey published the first edition of the Irish Vindicator and Canada Advertiser, which provided its Lower Canadian readers with a sturdy advocacy of O’Connellite and Patriote politics over the next decade. In recent years, scholars interested in political and associational culture in pre-rebellion Montreal have used the newspaper as a window into the Montreal Irish community’s complex position within the emerging and increasingly tumultuous world of Lower Canadian popular politics.1 Indeed, in preparing this chapter, my original intent was to explore the landscape of Montreal politics in the 1820s, hoping in particular to chart an Irish middle ground in this increasingly polarized political culture – a long-neglected subject that is beginning to receive much-deserved attention.2 As one might expect, however, Montreal’s Irish Vindicator provided its readers with news coverage that ranged far beyond the world of Lower Canadian politics or Daniel O’Connell’s momentous crusade for Catholic Emancipation in Ireland. As I leafed through its pages, I was particularly struck by the nature of coverage devoted to the conflict between the Russian and Ottoman empires in the late 1820s, a discourse that raised interesting questions about the links among the Irish diaspora, nation, and race. The newspaper’s seemingly contradictory and shifting descriptions of the Turks seemed of particular interest, since the Irish Vindicator championed the Turkish cause (against the Russians, at least, for the paper supported Greek nationalists as well) while at the same time printing sweeping orientalist explanations of the defects of Turkish character. The juxtaposition of O’Connell and the Grand

Using the Grand Turk for Ireland

23

Turk, of Papineau and the Sultan Mahmoud, of Brunswickers and rotting civilizations – none of this was accidental. In his award-winning book Irish Orientalism, Joseph Lennon has argued that Irish nationalist attitudes toward empire, race, and nation were typically ambivalent and that “the discourse of Irish Orientalism is best understood as strategic in its deployment.”3 Perhaps understandably, the diasporic dimensions of these connections have rarely been explored in depth. What follows is a brief foray into these comparatively uncharted waters. Centred on an examination of the ways in which the editors of the Irish Vindicator employed Ottoman representations in 1828 and 1829, I argue that these images all served a kind of double purpose for Daniel Tracey, allowing him to criticize British foreign and imperial policy while using shared racial hierarchies to argue for the Irish and Canadian cause. In the Montreal offices of this radical newspaper, at least, principled anti-imperialist affinities with oppressed peoples coexisted rather comfortably with frank expressions of orientalist disdain.

representing the turk in montreal Not surprisingly, it was Daniel O’Connell and the Catholic Association’s efforts to win Catholic Emancipation that dominated the pages of the Irish Vindicator and Canada Advertiser throughout the period. By the late 1820s, O’Connell had mobilized an increasingly politicized Irish Catholic population (with the critical support of many Irish Presbyterians) behind the cause, using the innovation of the Catholic Rent, the support of the Roman Catholic Church, and his own considerable political and rhetorical talents to create something of a standoff with the Duke of Wellington’s Conservative government. This stalemate, of course, was broken by O’Connell’s famous victory in the 1828 by-election in County Clare, where he won a parliamentary seat that he could not take as a Catholic. Wishing to avoid the widespread violence and social unrest that would accompany the continued denial of the Catholic Association’s overwhelming popular mandate, the Conservative government acceded to popular pressure, and Catholic Emancipation became the law of the land on 13 April 1829. Daniel Tracey’s editorials consistently lionized O’Connell’s achievement, arguing rather breathlessly that the Catholic Association was the most “extraordinary coalition” the world had ever seen and describing

24

Sean Farrell

O’Connell himself as the “great benefactor” of the Irish people. On another occasion, Tracey even argued that Catholic Relief would surely stem the flow of emigrants to North America.4 As Daniel O’Connell stood before the electors in County Clare, however, international attention focused on the Balkans, where warfare between the Russian and Ottoman empires once again threatened geopolitical stability in that region and beyond. In this case, Russo-Ottoman conflict was intertwined with the Greek War of Independence, triggered by Sultan Mahmoud II’s ineffective efforts to curb the autonomy of a particularly independent provincial governor, Tepedeleni Ali Pasha. Declared a rebel by the sultan’s government in 1820, Tepedeleni responded by calling for an anti-Ottoman uprising across the Balkans. This created an opening for Greek nationalists, and an indecisive bloody back-and-forth struggle dominated the Peloponnesus between 1824 and 1827. While British public opinion was overwhelmingly sympathetic to the Greek cause (particularly after Lord Byron’s death in Greece in 1824), George Canning’s government steered clear of active involvement in the Greek controversy, a policy that allowed Russia to pursue an increasingly aggressive foreign policy throughout the region.5 As Caroline Finkel relates in her recent magisterial history of the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman inability to put down the revolt eventually led the initially hesitant Great Powers to take a more direct role in the gathering conflict, and after two years of diplomatic manoeuvring, Britain, Russia, and France put aside their differences and blockaded the Peloponnesus.6 After an Ottoman/ Egyptian fleet was defeated by the blockading naval forces at the Battle of Navarino in October 1827, the ensuing tense stalemate in the region gradually deteriorated, and the Russian and Ottoman empires were formally at war by April 1828. In the first days of the war, hopes were quite high on the Ottoman side, where Mahmoud had recently initiated his famous Tanzimat, or “re-ordering” reforms, of the imperial military state. Enacted in 1826, the re-ordering eliminated the famous janissaries (the source of so much political intrigue and instability in lateeighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Istanbul) and built an Anatolia-centred “new army,” to be trained and organized according to modern military doctrines.7 These hopes were dashed rather quickly on the battlefield, however, as Russian forces moved forward with relative ease on multiple fronts. By July 1829 the Russian

Using the Grand Turk for Ireland

25

army was within 125 miles of Istanbul, and the Ottoman government sued for peace. The ensuing Treaty of Adrianople forced the Turkish regime to recognize the newly independent Greek state and provided the Russian Empire with both expanded influence throughout the Balkans and easier trade access to Ottoman territories. This formal recognition of Russian power in the region transformed British strategic thinking about the eastern Mediterranean, and Britain played a much more active diplomatic and military role from the mid-1830s onward. In the summer and fall of 1829, however, the treaty generated a furious debate about the nature of British foreign policy. While recent scholarship has emphasized Russian restraint (Russian military forces did not advance into Istanbul) and Canning’s ineffective diplomacy, the new Wellington government (George Canning had died in August 1827) was broadly criticized after the Treaty of Adrianople, especially by liberal reformers angered by Britain’s failure to restrain “reactionary” Russia in the region. This radical critique of Wellington’s foreign policy, of course, was not confined to British politics. Viewing these events from Montreal, Daniel Tracey, the Offalyborn editor of the Irish Vindicator from 1828 to 1832, quickly backed the Ottoman Empire in its struggle with Russia. A former physician (he died from cholera in 1832, contracted while treating patients during the infamous epidemic that year), Tracey was best known for his staunch admiration for Daniel O’Connell and LouisJoseph Papineau, reflected in the fiery rhetoric he employed to support their radical causes.8 But the Irish Vindicator also provided continual coverage of international events, and Tracey devoted significant space to the Russo-Ottoman conflict. Although it could be said with some justice that this support stemmed more from fear of the expansion of Russian autocratic power than from principled support for the justice of the Turkish cause, Tracey took an editorial tack that frequently praised the positive aspects of “the Turkish character”: “By the late accounts from the seat of war in the east, it may be seen that active and vigorous measures are used by the belligerent powers. The enthusiasm of the Turks knows no bounds, and they seem by their gallant conduct to astonish those, who, from hereditary prejudice, hold them in contempt and abhorrence.”9 While the numerous orientalist tales about the “enthusiastic” Turks that surrounded these commentaries may call into question

26

Sean Farrell

the degree to which Tracey and the Vindicator were free from “hereditary prejudice,” Tracey consistently argued that Turkish men and women deserved good government and human respect. Indeed, the Irish Vindicator’s support for the Turkish underdog fitted rather neatly with its support for continued Mexican independence (under threat in 1829 by a Spanish effort to reconquer Mexico)10 and, of course, with its own robust critique of British policy in Ireland and Canada. It is this latter theme that gets to the heart of the matter. While there may be signs of imagined affinities between Tracey and the Turks, they are unidirectional and extremely limited, overwhelmed by the pragmatic concerns of opportunity and utility. From its creation in December 1828, the Irish Vindicator was much more than an avid supporter of O’Connellite politics; it was also a keen advocate for political reform in Lower and Upper Canada. This was especially true after July 1829, when Ludger Duvernay, Denis-Benjamin Viger, and other leading Patriote politicians provided the financial resources that rescued the floundering newspaper. Removing the Irish label from the newspaper’s title later that month, Tracey declared that the journal would henceforth provide much more coverage of Canadian matters. Catholic Emancipation in Ireland, after all, had been secured: “The question that agitated the British Empire so long being now, forever, we hope, set at rest, it is our intention to apply ourselves more directly to the affairs of the country from which we draw our subsistence.”11 Along these lines, Tracey’s leading stories increasingly focused on questions of constitutional and political reform: reducing the civil list, protecting free speech, shifting power from the undemocratic Legislative Council to a more representative Legislative Assembly. In the Canadian context, the living symbol of an overmighty executive was the former governor, George Ramsay, 9th Earl of Dalhousie, the bête noire of Canadian Reformers and the standard against which the desperate need for reform was constantly asserted. Of course, the British and Irish Isles were not ignored; as noted above, both the Duke of Wellington and his Conservative allies were frequent targets of Tracey’s pen. For Reformers interested in curbing the power of the executive, the Russo-Ottoman War provided a great store of ammunition to be employed against their political opponents – a kind of rhetorical storage bin of Belfast paving stones. Tracey could use the conflict (and the British government’s tepid and ineffectual support of

Using the Grand Turk for Ireland

27

the Ottoman Empire) to critique the current state of Britain and its mighty empire: “This is part of the system which favours the Ambition of the Russian autocrat; the usurpation and murders of the Portuguese Tyrant, and which allowed the government of France to occupy Spain and transport armies to Greece ... We believe it would be more difficult to recognize the old lady, if she was not as drunken, dissipated and riotous now as she has been and cannot be from the nature of the system pursued.”12 Clearly, for the lady to be made recognizable again, the system needed to be reformed so that tyranny and autocracy (Russia, Portugal, Canada under Dalhousie ... ) were eliminated and not rewarded. Moreover, Tracey placed Wellington’s ineffective foreign policy in historical context, arguing that Britain had not “cut so inglorious a figure” since the partition of Poland. Two weeks later, as the “northern devastator” advanced southward toward Istanbul, Tracey again lamented the listless drift of British policy, reflecting that the eastern conflict symbolized the “Rising Sun of Russia, the decaying Oak of England and the end of the Turkish Empire.”13 In short, Britain was in desperate need of renewal, and only a more representative and open system of government, in which the worthy nations of the empire (Ireland, Canada) were given a voice, would allow Great Britain to return to her former greatness. As Tracey himself argued, “We would see Canada which must be governed different from the other provinces, the strongest and most faithful outpost of the British Empire ... [Canadians] ought to be allowed the appointment of their own rulers, the imposing of their own taxes and the expenditure of their own funds as they think most proper.”14 The case for imperial reform and a kind of limited home rule could not be put more trenchantly. Given the paper’s fervent support of Catholic Emancipation, it should come as no surprise that Tracey used similar rhetorical devices in his editorials on Irish politics. Predictably, his rhetorical fire was focused on Daniel O’Connell’s most implacable Irish foe, the Loyal Orange Order. Writing about O’Connell’s campaign for re-election in 1829, Tracey targeted Talbot Glascock, a zealous Orange attorney who was one of O’Connell’s most vociferous opponents: “The reader, we apprehend, will be disposed to lament that Mr. Talbot Glascock and his Turkish scymeter were not cutting flourishes on the Balkan heights: such a prodigy of valour might have stayed the progress of the russian army in this ominous time

28

Sean Farrell

of turkish defeat and disaster. But the fates will have their way, and talbot and the turk, it seems, are destined to a similarity of misfortune. We hope they will send deputations of condolence to each other.”15 For Tracey, the Turkish metaphor was about more than the simple equation of Orangeism and its reactionary British allies with the decline and inevitable failure of the Ottoman Empire. It also allowed him to take a sarcastic shot at the Orangeman’s supposed military prowess, a core component of the Orange Order’s self- image and identity. But the Russo-Ottoman War offered more material than this rather standard radical critique of reactionary government implies. Put simply, the Turkish failure was linked to bad government, associated particularly with aristocratic corruption. Arguing against those with hereditary prejudice, Tracey stated that Turkish men and women deserved good government, and in Sultan Mahmoud II they were blessed with an honourable and energetic ruler; but unfortunately, the combination of Turkish character and generations of ineffective and autocratic government made it unlikely that Mahmoud’s reforms would succeed: “Russia will, she must, go on conquering; she has thrown Europe into a slumber and the Grand Turk into a doldrums from which, were he to new model his Empire one hundred times over, he will not be able to extricate himself. The devil is worthy some compassion – we pity him.”16 Although the weight of autocratic tradition might make it difficult for the Turks to extricate themselves from their current misfortune through the application of good government, clearly, Britain and particularly its loyal provinces, Ireland and Canada, were not so situated. This sense of national difference – the political gap between Britain, Ireland, and Canada on the one hand and the Turks on the other – brings us to a second way in which representations of the Turk were deployed in the pages of the Vindicator. For if the clash between Russia and the Ottoman Empire provided governmental critics with the tactical opening for asserting their programs of reform and good government, it provided another kind of opening for Tracey and his radical allies to advance Irish and Canadian causes. Here, stock and static representations of the sensual and barbaric Turk served to underline the civilized and worthy nature of Irish and Canadian nationality. Daniel Tracey and his editorial team used two standard orientalist tropes to advance the Irish cause: Turkish sensuality and licentiousness, and the undeveloped

Using the Grand Turk for Ireland

29

nature of the Turkish mind. In the process, we can clearly see a kind of Irish orientalism at work, where Irish and Irish Canadian writers applied both a sense of imagined affinity and racial/ national difference to tactical advantage. In a trenchant if somewhat unsatisfying critique of Edward Said’s treatment of travel literature in Orientalism, Reinhold Schiffer stresses both the diverse and the ever-shifting nature of British travellers’ representations of Turkey and its people in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Particularly important for our purposes is Schiffer’s argument that the 1820s saw the emergence of the essentialist construction of the barbaric and lustful Turk – an oppressor of freedom, a cruel and deceitful foe.17 Clearly shaped by lurid narratives of the Greek War of Independence (the Vindicator’s Greek epigraph made its sympathies clear),18 Tracey regularly employed orientalist images of the Turk that allowed for advantageous comparison for Irish nationalists and Canadian Reformers. One of the most powerful elements in this essentialist construction of Turkish men and women portrayed them as sensual, lascivious, and brutal in their excessive sexuality. Empowered and legitimized by a long narrative history that stretched back to the court of Harun al Rashid and tales of Scheherazade, this discourse was an integral part of the Vindicator’s coverage of the Ottoman Empire. Devoting a full front page to a review of R.R. Madden’s 1829 travel narrative, Travels in Turkey, Egypt, Nubia and Palestine in 1824, 1825, 1826 and 1827, the reviewer introduced the text by stating that he could not imagine a more acute, intelligent spectator than the famed Irish doctor and future historian who, he insisted, clearly had not wasted his time and his access to the most intimate spaces of Istanbul. After all, he was a doctor, a professional at observation and analysis – and who better to provide an objective and detailed description of Turkish beauty and fashion? In the book, Madden countered eighteenth-century French travel narratives that portrayed the Turkish man as haughty and stoic by arguing, “The reverse of this statement is nearer the truth; the orgies of the evening, in most harems, are conducted with all the levity of licentiousness and the gravity of the Moslems totally disappears ... ; and in my opinion, the gravity of the Turk during the day is only the exhaustion of his spirits from previous excitement.”19 Here was an explanation for the failure of the Turkish scimitar! The text moves inevitably into a close and fantastic portrait of the

30

Sean Farrell

harem and the bath, closing with a warning about the religious fanaticism of the elite Turkish women: “God help the Christian who crosses her path. I have had the honour of being insulted by ladies of rank far more frequently than by any other women.”20 Like many of the travellers surveyed by Reinhold Schiffer in his study, Madden imagines and creates Turkish gender roles as a series of unhealthy and contradictory binaries: the women fearful in public but lascivious behind closed doors; the men plodding and haughty by day, sexual demons by night.21 To be fair, Madden does celebrate the Turkish man’s commitment to family life and states that his fanaticism is fundamentally the same as that of the Greeks and Armenians, but the message is clear: the individual and national character of the Turk, however redeemable, was dominated by sexual excess, indolence, and the absence of thought. The reviewer concluded by hoping that books like Madden’s travel narrative would help to dispel widespread prejudices about the nature of Ottoman government and society.22 More powerfully, these assertions of racial or national difference helped to reinforce Irish and Canadian claims for national justice and reform. Celebrating O’Connell’s or Papineau’s manly bearing in this broader international context served to underline claims of national civility. This certainly has its rich parallels across the British Empire, for as the “new imperial” historians have shown quite powerfully, gender was one of the standard markers of civility across the British Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.23 If representations of degenerate Turkish gender ideals reinforced the Vindicator’s claims of Irish and Canadian civility, so did its orientalist depiction of the Turkish incapacity to adapt to the modern world. At times, Tracey’s portrayal of contemporary Turkish life parallels the static orientalist visions that Said featured in his famous work. Once a great people and civilization, the argument went, the Turks now were but a faint shadow of their former selves, and the very fertility of the land had been allowed to decay into waste along with the empire itself. Like Madden and Captain Charles Colville Frankland (an English naval adventurer, whose Travels to and from Constantinople [1829] was published in the Montreal newspaper in September 1829), Tracey located the fundamental problem in the irrational and medieval Turkish mind, which had simply failed to adapt to the modern world: “They are good men but they do not know how to make use of their good-

Using the Grand Turk for Ireland

31

ness, and in this age of science the physical force of itself will be found to accomplish very little.”24 Even when a noble modernizer such as Mahmoud II rose to a position of leadership in Istanbul, he had little chance of success; such was the weight of obdurate tradition there. Without outside leadership or help, the Turks simply could not adapt to succeed in the modern world. The contrast with Canada or Ireland could not be clearer. As Tracey wrote in a pointed critique of Secretary of State Sir George Murray’s 1829 assertion that Canada was not ready for self-government, “Clearly he knows nothing of Canada, of the intelligent inhabitants. This is not ‘Sierra Leone or Fernando Po, where this assertion might apply, with less fear of contradiction.’”25 I want to be clear that this was not some sort of Irish Canadian parallel to the orientalism examined by Edward Said, whose rather static portrayal of the European construction of the Orient rightly has been critiqued for its lack of nuance. Indeed, Reinhold Schiffer has shown that by 1850 the portrait of the Turkish male as sexual demon had all but disappeared, as had many other elements of the essentialist avaricious Turk of the 1820s and 1830s.26 As always, overgeneralization must be avoided. But in examining the ways in which Turks were represented in the Vindicator in 1828 and 1829, it does seem evident that a double purpose emerges: the RussoOttoman wars provided Daniel Tracey with the opportunity to critique a corrupt and aristocratic British imperial government in Canada, reinforcing the reform program embodied by the Patriote attack on the unrepresentative legislative assembly. At the same time, the Vindicator’s orientalist representations of the Turk served to reinforce Canadian and Irish claims to British-style civility. In short, by asserting a racial and national hierarchy that they shared with the British, Irish Canadian nationalists buttressed their own national causes. This very ambivalence, it strikes me, raises some interesting questions about recent works on the Irish diaspora and on race, nation, and empire, and it is to these I want to turn in my conclusion.

irish exceptionalism? race, nation, and empire In recent essays, two of the leading scholars in Irish Studies, Kevin Whelan and Luke Gibbons, have examined exiled United Irish-

32

Sean Farrell

men’s attitudes toward race in North America, constructing sophisticated arguments that centre on the notion that because of their colonial experience, the Irish were particularly well suited to escape the simplistic binaries of racialized thinking and to forge imagined and real affinities with native peoples.27 Gibbons takes this notion the farthest, claiming that radicalized United Irishmen became increasingly uncomfortable with the treatment of slaves, and that this ultimately led them to the articulation of a “crosscultural solidarity,” where the rights of man “applied to cultures as well as individuals,” a notion that forged “a more ethnographic Enlightenment.”28 While it is true that Gibbons is careful to tie this notion to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, his sweeping assertions about the ability of radical Irish emigrants to articulate a cross-cultural solidarity are based on a limited source base and can be reached only through a narrow reading of those sources.29 At the very least, more caution is in order, and it is the diversity of Irish constructions of nationality and race in different temporal and environmental landscapes that must be examined and explained. After all, as Donald Akenson and David Gleeson amongst others have shown, the Irish who emigrated to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Montserrat and the nineteenthcentury American South were capable of quickly adapting to and benefiting from the racialized social orders of Montserrat and South Carolina.30 Regional variation and chronology matter. To paraphrase Gleeson, Irish emigrants to the American South had no need to “become white.” I certainly agree with Kevin Whelan and Jason King that we must try to uncover the radical reciprocities and complex relationships formed between Irish emigrants and non-European peoples in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; but at this point, I am inclined to agree with Stephen Howe that these imagined affinities constitute the exception rather than the rule.31 Certainly, the evidence presented here – that radical Irish nationalists in Montreal used images of the Turk in overlapping but tactical ways to advance both Irish and Canadian causes in 1828 and 1829 – fits well with new work on the ambivalent attitudes toward the British Empire held by Irish nationalists later in the nineteenth century.32 But again, we must be careful not to overgeneralize, for it is the different ways that Irish men and women at home and across the diaspora con-

Using the Grand Turk for Ireland

33

structed and enacted ideologies of race and nation that instructs. If we are not more sensitive to the diverse and contingent nature of such constructions, we run the risk of becoming Talbot and the Turk ourselves – ghostly caricatures offering meaningless condolences to one another, perhaps over cups of rich Turkish coffee.

he North

2 The Fanatic Heart of the North peter m. toner

In 1858 the Catholic Irish in Toronto were determined to parade on St Patrick’s Day. The featured speaker for the planned festivities was Thomas D’Arcy McGee, a recent arrival from the United States, who had a well-publicized background in Young Ireland. The parade was broken up quickly by equally determined Orangemen, unimpeded by the police or the military. In the wake of this violence, a group of defeated Irishmen, including a young Edward O’Meagher Condon, met in a tavern, where they organized what was designed to be a self-defence force, the Hibernian Benevolent Society, under the leadership of Michael Murphy.1 By one of those strange coincidences, on the same day in Dublin the former Young Irelander James Stephens organized the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood (irb), whose object was to drive the British out of Ireland by force of arms.2 During the next year, an American branch of the irb was organized by yet another Young Irelander, John O’Mahony, who romantically called it the Fenian Brotherhood. The name “Fenian” eventually became a generic term applied to Irish nationalists who were committed to the establishment of an Irish Republic by force of arms. Before long, Murphy’s Hibernians became linked to the Fenian Brotherhood. Whatever its original purpose may have been, the Hibernian Benevolent Society served as the cornerstone for revolutionary Irish nationalism in Canada. C.P. Stacey has observed that it was more difficult to plot Irish revolutionary activities in Toronto than in Manhattan.3 It was even more difficult to continue this plotting for decades in the face of a vigilant Canadian government. Yet the Fenian conspiracy in Canada persisted and

The Fanatic Heart of the North

35

helped to create a new concept of what it meant to be “Irish.” A new variety of Irish nationalism was taking shape in many minds, and a relatively small group dedicated to the cause of “Irish freedom,” whatever that meant to them at the time, built upon the idea and kept it alive for generations. As a by-product, the Fenian presence evolved and changed, and helped to delineate the integration of the Irish into Canadian society – however confused and ambiguous that integration may have been – before matters settled down decades later. This was the odyssey of Irish nationalism in the Canadian environment. The traditional view of the Irish in Canada has been cluttered with a range of misleading constructs and reconstructs.4 Until the middle of the twentieth century, the standard line was based on a series of safe interpretations, exceptions to which were often ignored. Everything was tied closely to the experience of the Famine immigration, with various attempts to make the Irish fit into a warm and fuzzy concept of Canadian society. After all, self-delusion, sometimes aided and abetted by scholars, is an enduring feature of the Canadian mentality. Virtually everything written about Confederation has mentioned the Fenians, usually in disparaging terms, but has given scarcely a nod to the Fenian presence north of the border. The Fenian raids could be dismissed as the work of desperadoes amongst the American Irish, and the fact that the raiders were turned back successfully was a tribute to the militia, defending yet again that undefended border. But there was this other problem – McGee. While D’Arcy McGee is remembered in Ireland as a minor romantic poet, in Canada he is lauded as a Father of Confederation, and his brief career has been cited as proof that the Irish in Canada have made a positive and loyal contribution to building the nation.5 Although never quite stated but implied nonetheless, McGee was proof that all Irish were not “like that.” And in the words of our almost forgotten unofficial national anthem, the maple leaf was entwined, not only by the rose and thistle but also by the shamrock. It was common knowledge that for more than a century, McGee was Canada’s only victim of political assassination – and by a lone, crazed Fenian at that.6 This was a sufficiently safe interpretation shared in other times and climes. Simultaneously, McGee’s quick streak across the Canadian political skies brought with it evidence of the best and the worst of the Irish image in the middle of the nineteenth century.

36

Peter M. Toner

Little investigation is required to reveal that there was more to the story. In the same way as some historians began to look at the opponents of Confederation as well as at its Fathers, a few began to look at those of McGee’s countrymen who did not lionize him.7 Certainly, his career was worthy of examination, but so were the careers and goals of those who opposed him, including those who wanted him murdered. This was the other side of the story of the Canadian Irish at the time of Confederation, one that remained obscure for so long. McGee arrived in Canada with credentials that would seem to have satisfied at least moderate nationalists. He had been a member of Young Ireland and had fled to the United States when that movement collapsed. His sojourn there was plagued by a widespread and often hostile reaction to the Famine Irish, and by the mid-1850s he had become disenchanted, both with the United States and with the ranting of some of his own countrymen. In his poet’s heart, he accepted the idea that the Irish in America should return to their rural background, if not in the United States, then in Canada. Many Americans no doubt would have relished the idea of tens of thousands of Irish moving north, but strong opposition to such a migration came from Irish leaders, both lay and clerical.8 McGee was one of the very few to make the move, invited and welcomed by the Irish of Montreal, who saw in him the political leadership they felt they needed. McGee’s track record, many believed, made him a star worth following. But not everyone rejoiced at his arrival. A “rebel” background initially made him less than popular with the largely Scots elite. Some Catholics saw McGee as too “Irish” and not “Catholic” enough, while some Irish no longer saw the fire of the Young Ireland revolutionary; for them, he was now not Irish enough. Some of this Irish opposition to McGee eventually gravitated in the direction of Fenianism, though never became identical with it. Similarly, the Hibernians in Canada West never became identical with the Fenians. Michael Murphy’s followers were initially almost Ribbonmen or Whiteboys in a Canadian setting.9 But although they were connected with John O’Mahony’s organization, they did not all became sworn Fenians. The most important accomplishment of the Hibernian Benevolent Society was to force the Orangemen in Toronto to stand down. This was accomplished fairly quickly, and it was sufficient to satisfy most Hibernians, even

The Fanatic Heart of the North

37

though many stuck by their brotherhood, if only for boasting rights. Murphy himself became dedicated to the Fenian cause and had some influence with the American Fenian leadership, but he never managed to lead all of his followers along the same path. Not that this mattered to many, including McGee, who went to great pains to distance himself from the Hibernians; although Murphy was loud, even boisterous, McGee had a quieter and more serious problem closer to home. Probably in 1862 the Fenians established a small base in Montreal, courtesy of F.B. McNamee, a “contractor” who had connections in the United States. This Fenian circle had a front organization that styled itself the Hibernian Benevolent Society, but it was not a formal affiliate of Murphy’s organization of the same name. The Montreal Hibernians were never numerous during this phase, but they were influential. They were instrumental in helping Bernard Devlin take over the St Patrick’s Society and thus provided a legitimate base for opposition to McGee. Possibly as early as 1864, but certainly by the next year, a Fenian circle was established in Quebec by Frank Gallagher, and it also used the title Hibernian Benevolent Society as a front for open political activity.10 There are a few pieces of evidence that Fenian circles, perhaps quite small, also took shape in such places as Ottawa, Halifax, Saint John, and Charlottetown. But it was Murphy and the Hibernian Benevolent Society, and the Montreal Fenians, who drew most of the attention. The raids in 1866 ensured that. The end of the American Civil War released thousands of Irish from the ranks of the Union Army, and many of these experienced soldiers were enticed to join the army that the Fenian Brotherhood hoped to throw against British power in Ireland. This was impossible in the face of the Royal Navy. So the plan to strike at the British in Canada was born. The idea of invading Canada was unintentionally encouraged by the intemperate boasting of Murphy, who announced, both at home and at Fenian conventions in the United States, that he could raise thousands of Irishmen for the liberation of Ireland. American Fenians who wanted action against the British took note, and plans began to take shape for a strike on Canada. Belatedly, Murphy tried to talk them out of any such invasion, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. While a military strike against Canada was possible, it would have no realistic consequences, and the whole idea ruptured the Fenian Brotherhood. Although the American

38

Peter M. Toner

Fenians who were determined to strike north (labelled “Canadian Fenians” by their fellows) were in the majority, O’Mahony still had a following, including the Fenians in Canada, who were aware of the situation far better than William Roberts and his invasion party. Somehow, O’Mahony was persuaded to allow his followers to attempt an invasion of New Brunswick, probably on the suggestion of Patrick Sinnott, a Boston resident formerly of St George. Even had it not been an organizational disaster, this raid on New Brunswick was never going to happen. Both British and American troops arrived at the border in time to prevent anything more than a few incidents.11 But it did bring Murphy out into the open. He had been a supporter of O’Mahony during the Fenian split, and when ordered to join the invasion of New Brunswick with his supporters, he managed to land himself and a few companions in jail in Cornwall. This ended his Canadian career. Although he escaped from prison and continued to be an active Fenian in Buffalo, his mantle in Canada passed to others.12 The only raid of consequence was in Niagara, where a small Fenian brigade commanded by Colonel John O’Neill inflicted a defeat on a stronger column of Canadian militia. Many Canadian historians have dismissed this as a “skirmish.”13 In fact, Ridgeway was the only battle during the whole of that century in which troops acting in the name of Ireland defeated troops acting in the name of the British Crown. That it came to nothing in military terms is unimportant compared with its political consequences. After this bloody little affair, the Fenians, including their alleged fifth column north of the border, were taken seriously by the authorities and by the Canadian public, and the government made feverish and expensive preparations for the rematch that never really came. The backlash against the Irish in Canada and in New Brunswick drove some to silence, but it drove others closer to those who were committed to “the cause,” and they in turn became more daring and more extreme. The more vocal knew that the threat of further raids gave them a moral influence over the faint-hearted, and the government spent energy and money trying to keep track of whatever might be seen as Fenian activity in the towns and cities. This activity became more political during the Confederation elections.14 McGee had lost much of his Irish support, and the Fenians were determined to unseat him. He responded by accusing his political opponents of Fenian connections and threatening to expose the

The Fanatic Heart of the North

39

Fenians in Montreal.15 He won his seat but lost his previous control over the Irish vote; and in the new parliament Timothy Anglin, who also had a nationalist reputation, was emerging as an alternative Irish spokesman. McGee’s assassination resulted in the prolongation of the suspension of habeas corpus, allowing the incarceration of a number of Fenians and near-Fenians, led to the public execution of Patrick James Whelan, and gave the government a moral pedestal. But it did not destroy Fenian support in this country as has been conjectured. There were numerous Fenian prisoners in Kingston, many of whom had been under sentence of death, and the threat of further raids by the American Fenians was still alive. As long as that external threat persisted, there was also the spectre of an internal Fenian threat. Proof of this was demonstrated in the throngs who turned out for the funeral of Patrick Doody. He had been arrested after the McGee murder, became gravely ill in prison, and died very shortly after his release. The crowds who lined the route of his cortege were indicative of the level of support the Fenians could muster, even in those tense postassassination days. Briefly, Patrick Doody became the Terence Bellew MacManus of Montreal.16 In 1870 John O’Neill’s last raid on the Canadian border at Eccles Hill broke the bubble of the threat from the south. This raid was doomed before it even crossed the border.17 The force that O’Neill had organized so effectively on paper – now styled the Irish Republican Army – was largely fictional, and only a small fraction of those listed on its impressive muster rolls answered the call to arms. The Fenian artillery, consisting of one war-surplus cannon, was sabotaged by the most important British agent ever to penetrate the Fenian ranks, a man who styled himself Henri Le Caron but whose real name was Thomas Billis Beach.18 And waiting for O’Neill’s forlorn hope was a field brigade of Canadian militia, now better armed and far better trained to meet such a threat. Loyal Canadians, while breathing their collective sigh of relief, began to transform the five-year-old spectre into a ridiculous green version of Casper. This collapse of the Fenian threat from the south has been seen as the end of Fenianism in Canada, and there can be no doubt that this extreme version of Irish nationalism went into a severe decline. But it soon began to regenerate in a more potent form, thanks to events in Ireland and the United States. The irb had never managed much of a rising, except for small affairs in south

40

Peter M. Toner

County Dublin and in one corner of Kerry, where Murtagh Moriarty, a Toronto Hibernian, was one of the leaders.19 The great Fenian rising, planned and anticipated for years, was all over in 1867. There were a few dramatic sequels, most especially the Manchester Rescue, when an Irish mob attempted to free a couple of Fenian prisoners, which is remembered for the stirring declaration from the dock by another Toronto Hibernian, Edward O’Meagher Condon, “God Save Ireland!” This was to become the central Fenian slogan and the title of a stirring Fenian anthem.20 Of course, had the road to Irish freedom been paved by brave declarations and songs, Ireland would have outstripped the glory that was Rome centuries ago.21 Unlike William Allen, Michael Larkin, and Michael O’Brien, the Manchester Martyrs, who were hanged for their part in the rescue attempt, Condon’s death sentence was commuted. His American citizenship was the cited reason, but his father had managed to raise a petition in Canada that included the signatures of dozens of politicians, including members of the government.22 Almost totally unnoticed while these little bands of Fenians were being arrested by the Irish Constabulary, which in the process earned the prefix “Royal,” a few American Fenians, led by Jerome Collins and including our old friend Michael Murphy, attempted to repair the split in their organization by creating yet another faction, the United Brotherhood.23 This amounted to very little so long as there was the chance of another raid, but after Eccles Hill there was an opportunity for a change in the American Fenian movement. As a gesture of conciliation toward the more moderate in Ireland, the British government decided to release a number of Fenian prisoners on condition that they go into exile, which most of them did in the United States. Moriarty returned to Toronto and soon passed from prominence, although his house was targeted by a loyalist gang when Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa visited the city in 1878.24 O’Donovan Rossa, the former editor of the Irish People, a Dublin newspaper that had served as the official organ of the irb, was the best known of the exiles. He eventually took over the fragments of John O’Mahony’s following, but a young and relatively unknown exile, John Devoy, decided that the United Brotherhood offered more hope for the long term. It was masonic in its secrecy (and its rituals), and this became its main strength, and it provided the vehicle to regenerate Fenianism in Canada.25 The United Brotherhood did not feel bound by the mistakes of the past and

The Fanatic Heart of the North

41

became more flexible than its predecessors in its approach to dealing with the problem of British domination of Ireland. It may have had a circle in Montreal as early as late 1869, but certainly there was one there by 1874.26 These later Fenians did not draw attention to themselves with the bombast and boasting for which Murphy had been famous, but they gradually exerted their influence over various expressions of “Irish” activity. Their principal strength was to infiltrate, influence, and ultimately control seemingly modest and moderate Irish organizations. Their influence in the St Patrick’s Society of Montreal, for example, seems to have been early and persistent, and this was tested during the early 1870s by an attempt to find a constitutional solution to the Irish problem. Back in Ireland, Isaac Butt, the former legal defender of many Fenian prisoners, launched a respectable and promising attempt to win a measure of self-determination for Ireland, the Home Government Association, which he soon replaced with the more assertive Home Rule League. Butt’s proposal was in part predicated on the example of the self-governing colonies, especially Canada, which had gained a great measure of sovereignty without breaking its ties to the British Crown.27 Even though this was far ahead of O’Connell’s Repeal agitation in concept, more realistic than the romancing of Young Ireland, and far more practical than anything yet conjured up by the irb, it was considered a threat by the more extreme nationalists because of its respectability and because this in turn would detract from the dream of that sacred republic. Since Butt’s concept of Home Rule did not promise to eliminate the British presence in Ireland completely, the Fenians decided that it had to be destroyed before it could undermine their “purer” nationalism. This they accomplished first in Canada. Initially, Butt had few ambitions for his movement outside Ireland, or at least outside the United Kingdom, but his appeal was soon answered in Montreal by former supporters of McGee. A branch of the Home Rule League was organized there, and it began a campaign of propaganda and fundraising that had no parallel in the Irish diaspora. A former governor general, Lord Monck, had frequently made the case that Home Rule for Canada had been a success without weakening the bonds of empire, and he argued that the same could be true for Ireland. This was an approach that might have had a beneficial effect on the whole debate related to Ireland. But the Fenians had no interest in maintaining the

42

Peter M. Toner

bonds of empire, and the Fenians in Canada gradually but effectively began to destroy the Home Rule League there. In Toronto, they managed to prevent any branch of the league from coming into existence. In Quebec, they took charge of organizing a branch and then ensured that it did virtually nothing. The biggest challenge for them was in Montreal, where McGee’s memory and influence were still a factor and where the Irish had managed to achieve a certain degree of the respectability that was so important to Butt’s concept of Irish Home Rule. It took some time to accomplish, but the Montreal branch of the Home Rule League died the death of a thousand cuts, administered by Fenian blades. This destruction of the league in Canada was the first important coup of the United Brotherhood north of the border, and in accomplishing this the brotherhood demonstrated that it was possible to rally support in Canada for something more extreme than constitutional nationalism.28 In 1876 the British were alerted to the potential of the United Brotherhood in a dramatic fashion. From its headquarters in New York, the organization struck a symbolic blow on the far side of the world, rescuing several Fenians from a prison in Fremantle in Western Australia. This had required a high degree of secrecy, the cooperation of supporters in Australia, and the use of an American ship, the Catalpa.29 The British instantly recognized that an organization more formidable than the shreds of the Fenian Brotherhood was behind this operation, but they had no idea what it was and no reliable intelligence to explain what had happened. For the United Brotherhood, the Fremantle mission had been an unqualified success. It signalled to the British, “We’re still here,” and inspired many Irish nationalists to renew their struggle for “the cause.” One of the first to respond was O’Donovan Rossa, who had not been able to rouse the old Fenian Brotherhood from its coma. He did not have the hard organizational ability to do so, even though his gift for propaganda was emotional and powerful; he could endorse the annual picnics in Buffalo, where Ridgeway was re-enacted in full view of the residents of the Canadian town of Fort Erie, but he knew that actions were more important than celebrations. What O’Donovan Rossa proposed was to change the nature of Irish tactics against the British, and his ideas served as a prototype for small revolutionary movements that persevered into the next millennium. The traditional notion of large formations of

The Fanatic Heart of the North

43

Irish rebels streaming over the heather, pikeheads flashing in the sun, was dismissed as old-fashioned and no longer practical. Instead of waiting for a full-scale rising – if that moon would ever rise again – O’Donovan Rossa proposed a campaign at the lower level, using the “appliances” of modern science. Rather than battles, he wanted “skirmishing,” hit-and-run attacks on the symbols of British rule, and he wanted to use the bomb rather than the bullet.30 O’Donovan Rossa’s skirmishing campaign had an instant appeal, enough that he managed to persuade Patrick Ford to host a column in his newspaper, the Irish World, in which to spread the gospel and raise money for these activities.31 The Skirmishing Fund became the most important source of money for Irish revolutionary activity in North America, and it allowed Irish immigrants and their North American-born offspring to participate in this new phase of “the struggle.” Contributions, mainly modest, began to flow into O’Donovan Rossa’s coffers, including a growing number from Canadian sources; he could boast about each and every one of these nickel and dime donations being a mark of the endurance of the Irish spirit. When group contributions began to flow in, he encouraged the organization of “skirmishing clubs” in order to facilitate the transmission of funds. Although most of these clubs were in the United States, a few were organized in Canada. There were group contributions from Irishmen in small towns where there never had been any organized means of expressing Irish nationalism of any variety. The United Brotherhood was always conscious of O’Donovan Rossa’s activities and began to take them seriously. His relationship with the brotherhood was ambiguous. He tried to stay on good terms with its leaders, and they with him, but he resisted being controlled by any organization. In contrast, it had been United Brotherhood policy to infiltrate and use for its own purposes any “Irish” organization that came to hand, and the skirmishing clubs could be used as a means of recruiting. Because of the timing, it is possible that the popularity of the Skirmishing Fund led to the formation of d377 of the United Brotherhood in Saint John.32 United Brotherhood leaders also had their eyes on the growing balance in the Skirmishing Fund. O’Donovan Rossa was not doing this for its own sake: he eventually began a training centre for the design and construction of time bombs, and this resulted in the development of a classic device: “a couple of sticks of gelignite and my auld

44

Peter M. Toner

alarm clock.” Of course, this was possible thanks to Alfred Nobel’s timely invention of dynamite. All of this was noticed in Ireland as well as in North America. First Michael Davitt of the irb and then Charles Stewart Parnell of the Irish Parliamentary Party began to realize that the United Brotherhood could support their efforts, and this led to the “New Departure,” the blending and reblending of tactics in the face of changing situations to advance what was held to be a common goal. The success of this approach was demonstrated during the late 1870s and early 1880s. When failure of the cash crops necessary to pay the rents threatened to bring evictions, Davitt organized the County Mayo Land League, which quickly expanded into the Irish National Land League, with support from both the irb and the United Brotherhood. It seemed a genuine coup when Parnell became its formal leader. Under Davitt’s guidance, the league fostered an initially non-violent campaign of resistance to the estate system. Some inspiration probably came from a similar struggle in Prince Edward Island;33 and the most memorable tactic, revived and refined, was the boycott, named for its first publicized victim. The Irish National Land League soon had branches in the diaspora, including many in Canada. The Skirmishing Fund had already gained some support in Prince Edward Island, and the Land League became even more popular there for obvious reasons. The United Brotherhood immediately took note of this support for the Land War and attempted to infiltrate and control branches of the Land League wherever possible. Its success varied, depending on the strength of respectable – and therefore moderate – lay leaders and the influence of the Catholic clergy.34 In Canada, at least three additional United Brotherhood locals were formed at this time, possibly inspired by the success of the Land League. O’Donovan Rossa, who saw the Land War as the perfect opportunity to test his skirmishing principles, broke with the United Brotherhood and started his own organization, which eventually included at least two locals in Canada.35 Parnell used the Land War and its overseas support to advance the standing of the Irish Parliamentary Party, and he received active support from the United Brotherhood on both sides of the North American border. During the course of the Land War, the Fenians had to settle for less than complete control. In Ireland, Davitt was a force in his own right, while in Canada the land

The Fanatic Heart of the North

45

question was deeply emotional because of the Famine. This meant a more active participation by previously non-political elements, Protestant as well as Catholic. But the Land War in Ireland soon took a nasty turn; rural violence, often supported by O’Donovan Rossa or the United Brotherhood, led to repressive measures by the British government, which in turn spiralled into further violence. The tough response of the government included the arrest of Parnell. From his cell in Kilmainham, Parnell was willing to end the Land War in favour of a more moderate approach, and an agreement was reached with the government to investigate the estate system. Parnell’s action had some measure of support from the less extreme members of the irb and the United Brotherhood, but the truce was quickly overshadowed by the assassination of Lord Cavendish and his secretary Thomas Burke in Phoenix Park, Dublin, an event that crossed the Plimsoll line for most. Even moderately vociferous supporters of the Land War recoiled at the outrage and were willing to try other tactics. This so-called Kilmainham Treaty between Parnell and the government changed the nature of the Irish struggle against England. Parnell, supported by moderate republicans as well as the constitutionalists, advocated an intensification of the political struggle and wrought havoc in the House of Commons, all in the hope that a weary British public would tire of the “Irish nights” and consent to some degree of Home Rule for Ireland. In time, Parnell’s constant disruption of British politics produced the frustration he had predicted by clogging the legislative arteries, and Gladstone’s Liberal government became more willing to consider Home Rule. Meanwhile, there was a Unionist backlash, spurred on by the continual threat of violence from the irb and its overseas supporters. The fear that Parnell had helped to create – “Home Rule or else” – flavoured the Irish question in Britain, Canada, and elsewhere. There was a response in Canada at the political level. A New Brunswick Conservative mp, John Costigan, managed to persuade John A. Macdonald to allow a motion favouring Irish Home Rule to be passed by the Canadian House of Commons. Although couched in cautious, even loyal, phraseology, it was a clear indication that the Canadian government shared some of the concerns that faced Gladstone’s government.36 This growing support of Irish Canadians for the Irish Parliamentary Party eventually contributed two Canadians to that caucus – Edward Blake and Charles Devlin.37

46

Peter M. Toner

But the problem was that the Land War had created a climate of expectation both in Ireland and abroad, along with a taste for the new tactics, especially among those who were far from the crucible. Rossa’s prediction that the continual application of force, even at a low level, would yield disproportionate results seems to have been borne out by the Land War. Some European anarchists used bombs for terror, but none seemed as converted to this approach as the more extreme Fenians, especially Fenians in Canada, where there seems to have been a disproportionate degree of support compared with the United States.38 In 1883, when the United Brotherhood was taken over by a new leadership that called itself “the Triangle,” one of its three leaders, Alexander Sullivan, was of Canadian birth and another, Denis C. Feely, was of Canadian upbringing. The conduit for both bombs and money to support this continuing campaign was through Canada. In one of the more audacious attempts to bomb Britain into surrender, a former Toronto Hibernian, William Mackey Lomasney, blew himself up, though he failed to damage London Bridge. But the dynamite campaign split the United Brotherhood; the minority followed John Devoy, who rejected terror in favour of a classic armed uprising, while the Canadian wing followed Sullivan and Feely and organized two districts divided by the Ottawa River. It is fair to say that this extreme Irish nationalism was a far greater threat to the integrity of the empire than Michael Murphy had ever been. The complexity of this threat was revealed to the public in a rather bizarre way. The Times published a letter that made Parnell’s connection to the irb and the United Brotherhood crystal clear. The ensuing debate led to the creation of a special commission to investigate the allegations. During the hearings, British intelligence was forced to bring its most valuable American spy into the open – Thomas Billis Beach, alias Henri Le Caron, who had played such an important role in subverting the Fenian raid of 1870 and had remained an important source of information about American Fenianism. At the commission hearings he reeled off a list of United Brotherhood documents that exposed its operations in the United States and Canada and demonstrated Parnell’s close links with the organization. It is difficult to read this report without accepting the validity of the allegations made in the published letter.39 However, the letter was admitted to be a forgery written by a former Parnell ally, and the uncrowned king of Ireland walked

The Fanatic Heart of the North

47

away vindicated in the eyes of his admiring supporters. While the commission revealed to the British public the close relationship between Parnell and the Fenians at home and abroad, it took the Kitty O’Shea divorce case to unseat the Irish leader. In the wake of Parnell’s fall from grace, the Irish Parliamentary Party was held intact partly by Edward Blake, the former Canadian minister of justice and past leader of the Canadian Liberal Party, who mustered the financial support necessary to keep the Irish MPs in Westminster.40 Even the fall of Parnell did not make the Irish question go away – the alliance he had forged with those who advocated other means of protest had proved too durable. Unfortunately, little can now be ascertained about the fortunes of the United Brotherhood in Canada. Before the Triangle took control, John Devoy kept a good paper record of the brotherhood’s activities, which has survived, and British spies and informers supplemented this with other documentation. Although the United Brotherhood’s activities in Canada were hatched in secrecy, there were enough breaches to allow one to sketch an outline and make a number of identifications. These later Fenians in Canada did not boast about their achievements or parade, but they were effective in other ways – organizing, infiltrating, and where possible undermining “legitimate” Irish activities. But the details of this activity are very elusive. Because of the secrecy, only a scattering of evidence has survived. Although there is enough to establish the continued existence of organized Fenianism, there is not enough to get a clear picture of it or to find more than a few mug shots. These later Fenians were dedicated to what they believed to be a righteous cause, but there was not the public bragging of the past. Some Canadian Irish men and women supported Irish Home Rule, and between 1919 and 1922 some supported the Dáil.41 Later, a few supported the Irish Republican Army. But most accepted the Anglo-Irish Treaty as enough to satisfy their ambitions for Ireland. So we are left with the problem historians always face: What was it all about? Can any sense be made of it? Also, should any twenty-first century sense be made of it? The investigation of any form of nationalism, especially one steeped in a romantic tradition, must begin with a willingness to avoid a retroactive application of present standards and values, especially any attempt to force our sense of reason upon it. Such is the case of Irish nationalism, especially in the diaspora. The

48

Peter M. Toner

nationalism that took root among the Irish in Canada developed from a set of beliefs about Ireland that were often factually dubious and inaccurately applied yet could be held tenaciously. The effects were fertilized by difficulties, real and imagined, related to the integration of Irish immigrants into Canadian society and its economy. The gradual success of the Irish in coming to terms with this environment and achieving some degree of integration did not kill this spirit or even rein in its more extreme manifestations. Instead, the gradual integration of the Irish into the Canadian environment matured and elevated Irish nationalism, perhaps not to the point of respectability but to the point of a grudging and reluctant acceptance of its more moderate expressions by a fair proportion of the Catholic Irish in Canada. Its principal strength lay in its ability to influence, guide, and even control seemingly benign Irish organizations. In this way, Irish people with little or no political inclinations might be nudged in a political direction and prevented from adopting positions that were opposed to the Fenian agenda. Irish nationalism in Canada, like its counterparts elsewhere, evolved, altered to meet current circumstances and issues, appealed to various levels of society, and remained constant only in its vague and sometimes shadowy goal: “A Nation once again.” But this need not make sense to a later generation. The Irish in Canada were not going to return to their homeland and could do very little to advance its cause. They had left Ireland, were in Canada to stay, and whatever they did to support what they saw as the Irish cause was not going to assist their integration into Canadian society, let alone their assimilation. So why did Irish nationalism take root in the first place? Sectarian violence can provide only a partial explanation. The Fenian genesis in Toronto was directly related to sectarianism, but all the Hibernians were not Fenians. Renewed sectarianism could provide the more dedicated Fenians with increased support, but this was essentially transitory, and the less revolutionary Irish went back to more immediate personal concerns, such as making a living. A sectarian argument could be made for Saint John as well. By the time Fenianism came into existence, Saint John already had a strong track record of pitched battles in the streets, which had been scripted long before at the Butcher’s Gate in Derry, whence so many of the local Irish immigrants had originated.42 As long as the Irish in Canada had the Big Brother effect created by militant

The Fanatic Heart of the North

49

Fenians in Boston and New York, they could strut in the streets of Montreal and Quebec. O’Donovan Rossa’s reputation and continued propaganda efforts can explain the occasional quarter or dime from some Irish Canadians, and the echo of a bomb in London could produce cheers of approval from the denizens of grog houses in Halifax. The Land War could tug at the heart strings of even those born in Canada, and the emergence of Parnell provided the necessary personification for “the struggle.” Yet the strongest continued nationalist activity at the more extreme level was in Montreal and Quebec, where sectarianism was weak or non-existent. Fenian activities in those cities were pronounced and significant before the raids across the border and long before the Land War and the rise of Parnell; and these activities persisted after the threat of raids had vanished, after the British government began to deal with the land issue, and after the disgrace and fall of Parnell. The importance of Montreal and Quebec in this saga can best be illustrated by the success of the later Fenians in adapting to new circumstances during the 1870s and 1880s. The United Brotherhood was able to take advantage of the response to the Fremantle rescue, to spread O’Donovan Rossa’s propaganda and the Land War to further their aims, and possibly to recruit. They also created a lens through which their more casual and less dedicated countrymen could see “the cause” in an atmosphere that lacked the sectarianism of Toronto or Saint John. This nationalism, seemingly irrational in the Canadian environment, was based on political principles and proved to be strong enough to persist into a new generation and even beyond. One of the biggest impediments to finding an easy answer to the problem is the silence of the principals. Only one of these Fenians, J.L.P. O’Hanly of Ottawa, left anything like a body of papers for historical examination, and they are mainly related to immediate situations. There are no memoirs or diaries to provide insight into the minds of even the most minor participants. In fact, we can now identify very few of these more extreme nationalists with any certainty, and we know very little of what they thought. Of the few who can be identified at the various stages, one thing is clear: as time went on, they represented a better cut of society, even if that meant that individuals had raised their own status. Some were still imported, such as W.F.P. Stockley, professor of mod-

50

Peter M. Toner

ern languages at the University of New Brunswick.43 Others were more like Jeremiah Gallagher of Sillery Cove, who had left Macroom, County Cork, to begin a new life as a labourer on the Victoria Bridge, worked his way up to civil engineer, and had a son who eventually sat on the Quebec bench.44 In other words, Irish nationalism in Canada gradually moved out of Michael Murphy’s pub and had support from at least some of the Irish social and economic elite. This may not have made it respectable to the nonIrish, but it certainly won the respect of many of the Irish who had to get on with making a living, and it kept the idea of Ireland’s struggle alive for them. The lower orders of Irish society still had their romantic images, but the political realities had passed to a more sophisticated class. The Easter Rising, coming as it did when large numbers of Irish Canadians were in Flanders’ Fields, tested devotion to “the cause,” and ripped apart some Irish families, but conscription provided some incentive for renewal, and war-weariness and the whole business of the rights of small nations helped to create the emotional experience of the Self-Determination League. If nothing else, the creation, persistence, and transformation of Irish nationalism in Canada, even at its most extreme, heralded a significant stage in the integration of the Irish into Canadian society. One could argue that immigrants from a society with such strong local identities, as Ireland before the Famine certainly was, had to come to terms with a collective identity in their new homeland, no matter how reluctantly. In Canada, a Cork, Derry, or Waterford background counted for little in the face of neighbours who were of Scots, Loyalist, or French background. In Canada, the immigrants and their offspring were seen as – and eventually became – simply “Irish.” This collective identity was hijacked by the Irish nationalists, who added a political meaning to the word: increasingly, it would be more limited, denoting “Irish Catholic,” and when used as a political adjective it would imply “nationalist” or even “republican” as well. Naturally, many Irish Protestants rejected this linguistic perversion and began to identify with a remote but more politically acceptable connection to Scotland or England, which was often made plausible by surnames of those origins. The new definition which these Fenians tried to foster amongst their countrymen in Canada was rejected by those Irish Catholics who put their emphasis on the “Catholic.” Other Catholic Irish rejected this political definition because they preferred to

The Fanatic Heart of the North

51

espouse a vague notion of Canadian nationalism, which itself could be rather intolerant of British influence here. Nevertheless, the very “green,” anti-British republican identity promulgated and nurtured by the Fenians in Canada had a certain appeal, no matter how casual and regardless of how little some of its advocates actually did to aid “the cause.” And it could flare up in response to later events in Ireland. Certainly, this persisting contribution to the sense of identity and the mentality of the Catholic Irish was as significant as the caricature of the Canadian Irish invented by the ultraloyal. In New Brunswick, the last “contested” Orange parade was attempted in 1924. Decades later, when I asked one of the Catholic participants why they did what they did, the septuagenarian muttered something in Irish, pointed a gnarled finger at my face, and admonished, “You should know! We did it for Ireland!” Rather than being directed at my head, that finger would better have been pointed at my heart.

elan a Fenian?

3 Was Patrick James Whelan a Fenian and Did He Assassinate Thomas D’Arcy McGee? david a. wilson It is the greatest murder mystery in Canada’s history. Around 2:15 in the morning of Tuesday, 7 April 1868, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, the former Irish revolutionary who became a Liberal-Conservative Father of Confederation and British North America’s most vociferous opponent of Fenianism, was shot through the back of his head outside Mrs Trotter’s boarding house on Sparks Street in Ottawa. The following day, acting on a tip, the police arrested a tailor named Patrick James Whelan; he was charged with murder and tried in Ottawa five months later during the fall assizes. On the evening of 14 September 1868, as the jury deliberated over whether or not Whelan was guilty, he wrote an impassioned letter to John A. Macdonald. The case against him had been manufactured, he insisted; the sheriff and the governor of the jail had taunted and threatened him, and had rigged the evidence to make him look like the killer. Nor was it true that he was a Fenian, Whelan continued; he was the son of an Englishman and had been born in Edinburgh, had served with the British army in India and the Canadian Hussars in Quebec, and he was deeply loyal to the Queen. “If that noble little woman wanted my servis as my Contry,” he wrote, “i would sacrafies the last Drop of Blod In her Defense To morrow that is the Fenianism I profess.” After making his case, he signed with the statement, “I Remain your most Respectful an Innosent persecuted Brittis subject.”1 He continued to protest his innocence right to the end. The day before his execution, he received a letter from Mary McGee, forgiving him for killing her

Was Patrick James Whelan a Fenian?

53

husband. Such forgiveness was unnecessary, he replied, since he had not committed the crime.2 Was Whelan telling the truth? Even before his execution, opinion was deeply divided, generally along political lines. John A. Macdonald and the prosecuting attorney, James O’Reilly, were convinced that Whelan was guilty and that he was part of a Canadian-based Fenian conspiracy; these views preponderated in the press, reflected majority opinion at the time, and were shared by conservative Catholic Irish journalists such as James Moylan.3 But a minority of radical Irish Canadian nationalists thought otherwise. Writing from Ottawa in May 1868, John Lawrence Power O’Hanly contended that Whelan was merely a convenient scapegoat who would be sacrificed to appease the loyalist “thirst for blood.” McGee’s assassination, he argued, had unleashed a “sectarian war of extermination” in which no Irish Catholic was safe: “The universal themes are: ‘Hang ninety nine out of every hundred of the “bloody Irish papists”; and it is pretty safe to conclude that the right one will be of the number: string them up first, and try them afterwards.’”4 The farther one moved in time from the emotionally charged atmosphere of the assassination, the greater the doubts became about Whelan’s guilt and his Fenianism. In 1915 Charles S. Blue concluded that the jury had reached a “true and just verdict,” but he rejected the notion of a Fenian conspiracy; in his view, Whelan was a lone gunman, motivated by a desire for political revenge and stimulated to action by “drink as much as by factional influences and by an insensate craving for notoriety.”5 Charles Murphy, the Liberal mp who organized the McGee centennial celebrations in 1925, agreed with Blue that the Fenians had nothing to do with McGee’s assassination. But Murphy also argued that there was no proof of Whelan’s guilt, and he echoed O’Hanly’s view that Whelan had been the victim of a rush to judgment. “The situation,” wrote Murphy, “was that a dastardly crime had been committed; that some one had to be executed as the perpetrator of it; and that the inflamed public were appeased by the conviction and hanging of Whelan."6 Murphy’s views reflected and reinforced oral traditions in Ottawa that the government had got the wrong man. The general view in the city, according to Murphy, was that Whelan may have been a “blatherskite” who was “thoroughly disliked,” but he did not pull

54

David A. Wilson

the trigger.7 A rumour was circulating in the 1920s that the assassination was carried out “by a man named Giroux, a low down contemptible thug who was paid to do the dirty work.” When the source of the story, an elderly civil servant, was asked how he knew, “he simply said with much emphasis ‘I know.’”8 Other stories raised major questions about Whelan’s trial, particularly about the evidence of Jean-Baptiste Lacroix, the only man who claimed to have witnessed the murder. In 1934 Chief Justice Robert Latchford, who as a young boy had seen McGee’s blood melting the snow on Sparks Street, remembered overhearing a conversation between his father and one of the jurors immediately after the trial. The jury believed that Lacroix was committing perjury, dismissed his evidence, and based its verdict on a combination of circumstantial evidence and the police report that Whelan’s revolver had recently been fired. This meant, in Latchford’s view, that there were no “satisfactory answers” about Whelan’s guilt or innocence. On the subject of Fenianism, however, Latchford believed that he was on much firmer ground. “One thing is certain,” he declared. “Whelan was not a member of the Fenian brotherhood.” A civil servant in the Department of Justice had assured him that the government possessed lists of all the Fenians in Canada during the 1860s and that Whelan’s name was not on them. This was apparently confirmed by a conversation Latchford had with a leading Ottawa Fenian, who told him that Whelan had tried to join the city’s Fenian circle but had been rejected.9 Similar rumours and anecdotes circulated among the Irish in Montreal, where the consensus was that Whelan may have been the accomplice but was not the assassin. The Montreal lawyer and McGee biographer T.P. Slattery recalled that his father once told him, “I know who shot McGee and he was not Whelan.” After conducting the most thorough investigation ever made into the trial, Slattery concluded that his father was right; Whelan should have been found not guilty, although the identity of the real killer remained elusive. Slattery’s assessment hinged on several key issues – Lacroix’s testimony, Whelan’s supposed jailhouse confession, the condition of his revolver, the character of his conduct, and the question of his motivation.10 Slattery had no trouble discrediting Lacroix’s evidence, effectively showing that the Crown’s principal witness was either hopelessly confused or a congenital liar who was out to get the reward

Was Patrick James Whelan a Fenian?

55

money. Lacroix had wrongly said that Whelan was a short man and that McGee was tall; he had also said that McGee had been wearing a black beaver hat when he had actually been wearing a white top hat. Moreover, Lacroix had been unable to recognize Whelan when he encountered him in the jail, and could make the identification only after Whelan was brought back wearing the same clothes he had worn on the night of the murder. Not surprisingly, Slattery concluded that the jury was correct to reject Lacroix’s testimony.11 But Whelan’s supposed confession to his fellow prisoners was less easily dismissed. In the Ottawa jail, Whelan’s cell floor was full of other suspects who had been rounded up by the police. As the Police Magistrate’s Inquiry into the murder was proceeding and the prisoners were talking about each day’s testimony, the sheriff and the governor of the jail positioned two men in the landing to overhear their conversation. One of the men, Robert Hess, had been imprisoned a year earlier for assault but was about to be released and was on good terms with the governor. The other, Andrew Cullen, was an Irish-born Montreal detective who had been selected partly because he was fluent in the Irish language and could understand Whelan when he switched from English to Irish, as he frequently did. What Hess and Cullen heard – or said they heard – on the evening of 16 April was explosive. “Yes, I’m a great fellow,” Whelan allegedly said to his friend and fellow prisoner John Doyle: “I shot that fellow ... I shot him like a dog.” When Cullen recounted the conversation during the trial, it caused a sensation; the impact on the jury is not hard to imagine.12 In dealing with this evidence, Slattery pointed out that such testimony, although admissible by the standards of the time, was inherently unreliable; hearing without seeing can be misleading, people often hear what they want to hear, and written accounts of oral evidence cannot convey the tone of voice. It was entirely possible that Whelan, if indeed he did utter those words, was making a sarcastic comment. The fact that during the trial Cullen and Hess embroidered their initial written statements did nothing to improve their credibility, and it was intrinsically unlikely that Whelan would have admitted his guilt in a loud conversation – especially since, on Cullen’s own testimony, Whelan had urged a fellow prisoner to be “mute as a mouse” because “these buggers might be listening around.” It was also significant that just before his execution Whelan denied that he had ever said to Doyle, “I shot

56

David A. Wilson

McGee like a dog.” All this, argued Slattery, cast reasonable doubt on Hess’s and Cullen’s story.13 Slattery stopped short of saying that Cullen and Hess were deliberately lying and were engaging in the same kind of evidence rigging that the sheriff and governor had practised when they helped Lacroix identify Whelan. Yet the possibility cannot be ruled out. Shortly after Whelan’s arrest, the authorities learned four things about him: he had a history of making threats against McGee; he had been in and around Parliament on the night of the murder; he had no alibi; and, most important of all, he had in his possession a Smith & Wesson revolver that had recently been fired. All this constituted prima facie evidence of his guilt. Why not, then, help things along a bit by inventing or manipulating more evidence to ensure that the guilty man gets what he deserves? It certainly would not have been the only time that such things happened.14 Whether or not this was the case, there is no doubt that the condition of Whelan’s revolver was crucial to his conviction. According to Detective Edward O’Neill, who examined the gun, one of the cartridges had recently been inserted into a chamber, and the mouth of the barrel “showed the appearance of a fresh discharge of powder.”15 Against this, the defence demonstrated that a servant named Euphemie Lafrance had accidentally discharged the revolver in the middle of February, and brought in another witness who testified that the revolver had an empty chamber a week before the assassination; it seemed that there was a perfectly innocent explanation for the condition of Whelan’s gun.16 In weighing the evidence, Slattery contended that O’Neill had provided a garbled account of the state of the gun and may well have described the powder in the muzzle as being “white as snow.” If this was the case, Slattery continued, O’Neill’s testimony actually strengthened the defence’s contention that the gun had last been fired some seven weeks before the assassination, since during that time the residue of the black powder that propelled the bullet would have turned light grey or “practically white.”17 To shed more light on the issue, Slattery turned to the techniques of modern forensic science. Here, he encountered a problem. When he wrote his book, the bullet that killed McGee was extant (in a metal case marked jamacd, together with one of McGee’s teeth), but Whelan’s revolver had gone missing. Nevertheless, an analysis of the bullet could determine the general speci-

Was Patrick James Whelan a Fenian?

57

fications of the gun that fired it. The tests indicated that the bullet could have been fired by only two kinds of gun, one of which was the Smith & Wesson model no. 2, .32 calibre army revolver with six chambers – the same type of gun that Whelan owned. This did not, of course, prove that Whelan’s revolver fired the bullet; after all, there were many thousands of such guns in circulation. So Slattery tried a different tack. When Whelan was arrested, he had a box of C.D. Leet cartridges. If it could be shown that the fatal bullet had been made by a different company, then the case for Whelan’s innocence would be much stronger – although the possibility that Whelan’s opened box contained a variety of cartridges could not be ruled out. Slattery consulted three experts, two of whom deduced from the shape of the bullet (which had been badly damaged from the impact) that it had not been manufactured by C.D. Leet. On balance, Slattery concluded, the forensic evidence worked in Whelan’s favour.18 The apparently strong case of the Crown, based on Lacroix’s eyewitness testimony, Whelan’s confession, and the condition of the gun, was actually full of holes, leading Slattery to conclude that there were good grounds for reasonable doubt. Then there was the question of Whelan’s conduct before and after the assassination. If Whelan had planned the assassination, argued Slattery, his behaviour beforehand was reckless in the extreme; he had been quite open about owning a revolver, he had visited McGee’s lodgings and the tavern opposite on several occasions, he had visibly threatened McGee from the parliamentary gallery, and he had made no effort to disguise himself. On the other hand, this apparently impulsive man behaved in a cool and collected manner after the murder. Instead of panicking, hiding his revolver, and running away, Whelan visited the Russell House as if nothing had happened, kept his gun in his pocket, and actually tried to visit one of his friends in the jail the next day. According to the Crown, Slattery continued, this was the behaviour of a guilty man who was consciously and deliberately trying to deceive the authorities by acting as if he was innocent. But the Crown could not have it both ways: “The murderer may have been a blustering, blundering amateur, or a diabolically clever professional. But he could not have been both.”19 Furthermore, there was no proof, in Slattery’s view, that Whelan had anything to do with Fenianism. In opening the case for the

58

David A. Wilson

prosecution, James O’Reilly had promised to show that Whelan was a Fenian, but he had failed to produce any evidence for this assertion. Despite the vast counter-revolutionary resources of the state and the scarcity of Fenian circles in Canada, the authorities had drawn a blank, maintained Slattery: “In all those secret reports, cash books, accounts, stolen lists, and rifled correspondence ... the name of James Whelan never appeared.” It was true, he acknowledged, that Whelan – using the pseudonym of Sullivan, his mother’s maiden name – had been arrested in Quebec City three years earlier for trying to swear a soldier into the Fenian Brotherhood, but the judge had thrown out the case. It was also true that the Crown had attempted to show that Whelan had “a political motive of hatred” for McGee, but this did not amount to much. There were many people who hated McGee, and this did not make them murderers; besides, Whelan “was not an active figure in politics; nor was it established that he was a political fanatic.” Here, then, was yet another weak link in the prosecution’s chain.20 Along with his systematic dissection of the Crown’s evidence, Slattery also contended that there were strong procedural reasons to argue that Whelan did not receive a fair trial. For one thing, John A. Macdonald actually sat next to Judge William Buell Richards during the proceedings, and this almost certainly prejudiced the jury against the defendant, argued Slattery. For another, Judge Richards had made an error of law in the jury selection. When the defence appealed on this ground after the guilty verdict, the case for a retrial went to the Court of Queen’s Bench. By this time, however, Judge Richards had been promoted to chief justice, which meant that he would be one of three judges ruling on his own decision. Not only that, but because the other two judges were divided about a retrial, Richards in effect had the casting vote. Although he conceded that he had made an error in the jury selection, Richards reasoned that the result had not been harmful to the prisoner and that the conviction should be allowed to stand. There was no retrial, and Whelan was executed on 11 February 1869.21 All in all, Slattery, a Queen’s Counsel who spent his professional career working for the prosecution, produced a tour de force for the defence; John Hillyard Cameron, Whelan’s lawyer, would have been proud. Along with his searching critique of the Crown’s evidence, Slattery imaginatively reconstructed the examination of witnesses and conveyed a strong sense of courtroom drama. By the

Was Patrick James Whelan a Fenian?

59

time he had finished, the dominant nineteenth-century view of the assassination and trial lay shattered on the ground; Whelan was not a Fenian, and there was no conclusive evidence that he had murdered McGee. And before long, this became the new orthodoxy.22 Contemporary defence lawyers have endorsed Slattery’s view that Whelan was wrongfully convicted; there has been talk of trying to obtain a posthumous pardon; and a stage play by Pierre Brault, Blood on the Moon, has reinforced the view that there was a miscarriage of justice. In Brault’s play, Whelan is beaten up in prison and put into solitary confinement, his wife is turned against him, and he is victimized by a “conspiracy of nefarious men” – all this within the first fifteen minutes of the action. It is no wonder that when Brault’s audiences were invited to act as the jury, their verdict was “not guilty, every time.”23 Yet the case is far from closed. There is very strong evidence from a variety of sources that Whelan was in fact a Fenian, and there are good grounds for concluding that he either shot McGee or was part of a hit squad. The issues are not coterminous; even if it can be established that Whelan was a Fenian, this does not, of course, make him the assassin. Yet the two are not entirely unconnected, since Whelan’s Fenianism would strengthen the prosecution’s case for motive. It is also important to establish a working definition of Fenianism. In its strictest sense, the definition would include only those who were sworn members of a Fenian circle – something that is very difficult to pin down, given the conditions of secrecy in which Canadian Fenians operated. The definition could be extended to include people who supported or sympathized with the Fenians’ goal of bringing about an independent Irish republic through revolutionary means, whether or not they believed that an American-based Fenian invasion of Canada should be part of that strategy. On this broader definition, there is little doubt that Whelan was part of the Fenian subculture in Canada; on the narrower definition, there is circumstantial evidence to suggest that he was an active participant in the Fenian Brotherhood. Certainly, his attitude to McGee was consistent with militant Fenianism. One of the key witnesses at the Police Magistrate’s Inquiry after the assassination was Alec Turner, who had been a lodger in Whelan’s house in Montreal during the hard-fought election contest between McGee and Bernard Devlin in September

60

David A. Wilson

1867. In the course of the campaign, McGee had published a detailed exposé of Fenian activities in the city and accused Devlin of drawing on Fenian support – a charge that Devlin vociferously denied, but that was in fact true.24 Partly because McGee was right and partly because McGee must have had informers in the Fenian camp, his revelations unleashed a storm of anger; Devlin publicly denounced him as “a foul informer, a corrupt witness, a knave, and a hypocrite,” and spat in McGee’s face when he next met him on the street.25 According to Turner, Whelan was so incensed by McGee’s exposé that “he left the house in a rage, saying he would go to McGee’s house and blow his bloody brains out. He did go out and stopped away all night.” The next day, seeing McGee on the street, Whelan remarked to his friends, “It is a good thing we did not catch the b—r last night.”26 After Turner delivered his testimony at the inquiry, Whelan was returned to the jail, where Andrew Cullen and Robert Hess lay in waiting. If their account is to be believed – and as we shall see, at least part of their report can in fact be verified – Whelan said that he had been “nailed bloody tight today” by “that bugger Turner.” “I wouldn’t give sixpence for his carcase [sic],” Whelan supposedly continued. “There was boys there to-day that spotted him. I saw a great deal of them here from the country and from Gloucester and all around.”27 And Turner was indeed targeted as an informer. A few weeks later, he was attacked at an Ottawa dance, and saved himself only by pulling out a revolver.28 This did not, however, stop Turner from testifying at the trial, where he was questioned further about Whelan’s behaviour during the election campaign. The day before Whelan went to McGee’s house, he and Turner had gone to a performance of Dion Boucicault’s play Arrah-na-Pogue, which featured the song “The Wearing of the Green.” Turner said that when Whelan heard the lines “they’re hanging men in Ireland / For the wearing of the green,” he lost his temper and tried to choke a man in the audience who told him to be quiet. Afterwards, Turner continued, Whelan “said he loved a young girl dearly in Quebec, and burst into tears, and said he did not care for his life, and would as soon take McGee’s life as drink a cup of tea.” Turner also recalled that after McGee’s election victory, Whelan had told him in Kate Scanlan’s tavern that “the bloody old pig won’t reign long, and I will blow his bloody old brains out before the session is over.”29

Was Patrick James Whelan a Fenian?

61

The picture that emerged from Turner’s testimony was that of a volatile and potentially violent man who carried a revolver, had a hair-trigger personality, and was fixated on McGee. Turner was so alarmed that he warned McGee two weeks after the election that a group of men at Scanlan’s tavern were planning to take his life.30 McGee believed that this was simply the overheated rhetoric of a bitter election campaign and did not take any precautionary measures. But on New Year’s night 1868, it seemed that Whelan was going to carry out his threat. At the Police Magistrate’s Inquiry in April, John Joseph McGee, Thomas D’Arcy’s half-brother, testified that Whelan and another man had visited their house between one and two o’clock in the morning. When John Joseph opened the door, Whelan said that he had a message for McGee and must see him personally. McGee would not come to the door but told John Joseph to let the men into the house and stand guard by them. In the event, only Whelan went in, and John Joseph locked the door behind him. Whelan introduced himself as “Smith of the Grand Trunk” and said that he had come to warn McGee of an attack on his house that would be carried out later that night; McGee gave him a note to send to the Montreal Water Police. But Whelan’s story did not ring true. Why, if he wanted to help McGee, did he lie about his name? And why did he not deliver McGee’s note to the police until five o’clock, long after the danger had passed? During the trial in September, Turner said that he could supply the answers. He testified that on 2 January he had overheard Whelan tell John Doyle at the Russell House that he had just come back to Ottawa from Montreal and had been to McGee’s house. Had McGee opened the door, Whelan supposedly said, “I would have shot the b—r like a dog.”31 Now, it is possible that Turner was making all this up to win the reward money. During the Police Magistrate’s Inquiry, at which he was interviewed before John Joseph McGee gave his testimony, Turner never mentioned Whelan’s conversation with Doyle at the Russell House; it was only afterwards, when John Joseph’s story was public knowledge, that Turner recalled the conversation. The defence not only seized on this point but also produced six witnesses who reported that Turner had remarked that he would “swear his grandfather’s life away” for half the reward money.32 But even if one dismisses Turner’s testimony about the conversation, Whelan’s behaviour at McGee’s house remains highly suspicious.

62

David A. Wilson

And the defence failed to challenge two other witnesses for the Crown, Joseph Inglis and Joseph Faulkner, whose testimony corroborated Turner’s evidence that Whelan had repeatedly threatened to kill McGee. A fellow lodger with Turner in Whelan’s house, Inglis testified that Whelan called McGee a traitor, visited his house during the election, and had said that if no one else killed McGee, he would do the job himself. Faulkner, a tailor who had worked with Whelan in Montreal, recalled that Whelan regarded McGee as a traitor who ought to be shot.33 This evidence has usually and understandably been weighed in relation to Whelan’s guilt or innocence. But if we switch perspectives and consider it in relation to his political views, a clear pattern emerges: Whelan’s behaviour during the performance of Arrah-naPogue, his rage after reading McGee’s “Account of the Attempts to Establish Fenianism in Montreal,” and his belief (according to Turner) that “McGee had received money from the Fenian organization, that he was a traitor to his country, and had gone over to the Protestants” are all consistent with Whelan being a radical Irish nationalist.34 Although such views correspond with Fenianism in the general sense of the term, they do not necessarily mean that Whelan was a sworn member of the Fenian Brotherhood. Further light on this question, however, can be shed by what detectives Cullen and Edward O’Neill found when they arrested Whelan on 7 April. Among other things, Whelan possessed a copy of the rules and bylaws of the Montreal St Patrick’s Society and a badge of the Toronto Hibernian Benevolent Society – organizations that were Fenian in tone and temper and functioned as fronts for Fenian circles.35 In the winter of 1862–63, a small group of Montreal Fenians had embarked on a strategy of infiltrating and taking over the St Patrick’s Society; despite some initial setbacks, they had achieved a significant degree of success by 1867–68, when they enrolled an increasing number of members, displayed banners celebrating prominent Fenians, and were powerful enough to eject McGee from the organization. The Toronto Hibernian Benevolent Society had been formed in 1858, and quickly developed close links with the Fenian Brotherhood in New York; the badge in Whelan’s possession contained the classic Fenian symbols of the sunburst and the phoenix. According to one well-placed spy, reporting at the end of 1865, around half of the 1,300 members of the Hibernian

Was Patrick James Whelan a Fenian?

63

Benevolent Society were sworn Fenians.36 Whelan had visited Toronto in September 1866 and again in June 1867, using the pseudonym Sullivan; it is likely that he joined the Hibernian Benevolent Society during one of these visits.37 Not all members of the St Patrick’s Society and the Hibernian Benevolent Society were Fenians, of course, and it is possible that Whelan was attracted to these organizations purely for social reasons. Yet there is much evidence to suggest otherwise. According to the Globe’s report of Detective O’Neill’s testimony at the Police Magistrate’s Inquiry, Whelan had “a number of papers called Irish American, published in New York, dated 7th March, 1868”; the Irish American was the leading Fenian newspaper on the continent. Accounts of O’Neill’s evidence at the trial in September are unclear about whether Whelan had several copies of the paper or only one.38 Either way, his choice of newspapers is revealing; and if he had several copies, it is reasonable to infer that he was one of the paper’s Canadian distributors. Whelan not only read the Irish American and moved through a radical Irish associational network, but his closest friends in Montreal were part of the city’s Fenian underground – including Patrick Doody, a tavern keeper who had reportedly been the head centre of the Montreal Fenian Circle.39 One of Whelan’s last wishes was to be buried next to Doody, who had contracted tuberculosis in prison and died in January 1869.40 It may also be significant that the witness at Whelan’s marriage to Bridget Boyle in February 1867 was Edward Condon.41 This was probably Edward O’Meagher Condon, one of the founders of the Hibernian Benevolent Society in Toronto; later in the year, he was sentenced to death (but subsequently reprieved) for his role in the rescue of the Fenian leader Thomas Kelly in Manchester, during which a policeman was killed. If indeed it was the same Edward Condon, Whelan was intimately connected with one of the central figures in the transatlantic Fenian world.42 At Kate Scanlan’s tavern in Montreal, Whelan’s regular drinking companions were Michael Enright and Thomas Murphy, both of whom were Fenians. According to Turner’s testimony at the Police Magistrate’s Inquiry, Enright and Murphy had accompanied Whelan on the threatening nocturnal visit to McGee’s house during the election of August 1867.43 If Andrew Cullen and Robert Hess are to be believed, Whelan denied that Murphy was there:

64

David A. Wilson

“That b—r Turner swore that Murphy was with me at McGee’s,” Whelan apparently told Doyle, “and that was a lie.”44 (Interestingly, though, if this account is accurate, Whelan did not deny that he and Enright were there or that they intended to get McGee.)45 On the other hand, at the Police Magistrate’s Inquiry, John Joseph McGee identified “Murphy, now in custody,” as the man who was lurking in the shadows during Whelan’s later visit to McGee’s house on New Year’s night in 1868.46 A word of clarification is needed here, since Thomas Murphy has sometimes been confused with another Montreal Fenian, Henry Murphy.47 Thomas Murphy was a beer carter and a rank-and-file Fenian, while Henry Murphy was a shoemaker, a prominent figure in the organization, and the secretary of Bernard Devlin’s election committee.48 On the weekend before McGee’s assassination, Henry Murphy had been closeted with the Fenian executive in New York for a five-hour meeting; they were probably discussing ways of coordinating the next invasion attempt with local Fenian actions in and around Montreal.49 When the Canadian authorities received this information from the British consul in New York, they arrested Henry Murphy and searched his house; among his possessions was a list of Fenian names in his own handwriting. Henry Murphy admitted that he had met the Fenians in New York and that the list contained Fenian names, although he refused to provide any further information. Among the names were those of Michael Enright and Thomas Murphy; conspicuously absent, however, was that of Patrick James Whelan.50 It is not clear whether John Joseph McGee pointed to Thomas or Henry Murphy as Whelan’s companion on New Year’s night, but there are three reasons for believing that it was Thomas. First, there is good evidence that he and Whelan were close friends, but nothing that ties Whelan directly to Henry Murphy. Second, Henry Murphy was brought from Montreal to Ottawa on the morning train of 16 April, the day that John Joseph McGee gave his testimony, and he may not have been in court when John Joseph made the identification; Thomas Murphy, however, had been arrested earlier and would have been there. And third, John Joseph McGee’s description of the man he saw with Whelan does not fit that of Henry Murphy; John Joseph said that Whelan’s companion was “a smallish man,” while the British consul in New York reported that Henry Murphy was “about 5 feet 9 inches.”51

Was Patrick James Whelan a Fenian?

65

At any rate, Whelan’s Fenian friendships are clear, and the fact that he had moved from Montreal to Ottawa in November 1867 could well explain his absence from Henry Murphy’s list. In Ottawa, Whelan continued to mix in radical Irish nationalist circles. His employer, Peter Eagleson, was one of the city’s leading Fenians and along with his brother Patrick was well known for his “extreme opinions on the question of Irish grievances.”52 Eagleson was also a prominent figure in Ottawa’s St Patrick’s Literary Association, and he had nominated Whelan as an assistant marshal in the St Patrick’s Day parade; possibly because of Whelan’s own “extreme opinions,” the nomination proved highly contentious. Eagleson’s proposal was seconded by Michael Starrs, who owned the hotel where Whelan lodged and who was well aware of Whelan’s political views.53 Their arguments prevailed, and Whelan played a significant role in a St Patrick’s Day parade that contained both conservative and radical Irish elements.54 Not only were Whelan’s closest friends and his employer members of the Fenian Brotherhood in Canada; his brothers had participated in the Fenian rising of March 1867 in Ireland. According to Robert Hess and Andrew Cullen, as they eavesdropped on the jailhouse conversation in April 1868, Whelan had said to John Doyle, “My brother is in prison too.” “What for?” asked Doyle. “Fenianism,” replied Whelan; “for firing the police barracks in Tullough [sic], Ireland. What a fine family my mother had – what a fine lot of boys. One thing, they were fond of Ireland. One was shot at the firing of the police barrack, one is in prison for the same, and I’m here.”55 Whatever one makes of the rest of Hess’s and Cullen’s report, they were right about Whelan’s brother Joseph, who was indeed in jail for his part in the Fenian attack on the police barracks at Tallaght during the 1867 rising. Joseph Whelan’s pub in Marlborough Street, Dublin, was a well-known Fenian meeting place, from where he had sworn Irish soldiers into the Fenian Brotherhood. After escaping from the attack at Tallaght, he apparently said that “the Fenians should have murdered every one who did not assist them particularly the magistrates and others in authority,” and added that “they were determined to encounter England everywhere; that he had it on good authority, that she would be met, and if possible be driven out of Canada this summer.” Shortly after-

66

David A. Wilson

wards, he was arrested for high treason, and he served several months in prison before being released in February 1868 on condition that he leave for America; he wound up in Canada, where he attended his brother’s trial later in the year.56 This, of course, raises another question: If Hess and Cullen accurately reported Whelan’s words about his brother Joseph, what else that they heard was true? According to their account, Whelan went on to say that he himself had spent eighteen months in prison in the west of England for Fenianism.57 This is too vague to be easily verified, and the task is further complicated by the possibility that Whelan could have been using one of his two pseudonyms, Smith or Sullivan. A clue might be provided by an intelligence report from Britain that Whelan had worked for one Mr Lichfield in Bolton for two years; there is no evidence, however, that either the British or the Canadian authorities pursued this lead.58 If Whelan was indeed imprisoned in England, the most likely cause would have been swearing Irish soldiers into the Fenian Brotherhood, which his brother did in Dublin and for which Patrick James had been arrested in Quebec City during the winter of 1865–66. As we have seen, he was acquitted for lack of corroborating evidence, but this does not necessarily mean that he was innocent. It was notoriously difficult to convict anyone for suborning soldiers, since two witnesses were required; knowing this, Fenians usually approached potential recruits in the army one at a time. In the Quebec case, only one soldier testified against Whelan, and that was not enough. The fact that Whelan was using the pseudonym Sullivan when he met the soldier suggests that he felt the need for secrecy – something that would hardly have been necessary if it was simply a social call.59 If Whelan had indeed attempted to recruit Irish soldiers into the Fenian Brotherhood in Canada, it would not only identify him as a sworn Fenian but would also place him within a broader American Fenian strategy to prepare the way for an invasion of Canada. Subverting the militia and suborning soldiers had been a Fenian objective from October 1865, when the Fenian convention in Philadelphia had embarked on the course of invading Canada. After the failure at Ridgeway, the Fenians had regrouped and prepared for a second invasion; at the Cleveland Convention in early September 1867, they voted $20,000 “for the purpose of drawing the Irish soldiers of the Queen’s Service in Canada from their alle-

Was Patrick James Whelan a Fenian?

67

giance, and inducing them to join the organization,” according to an informer.60 Similar reports came in from other sources, amid fears that British regiments were becoming recruiting grounds for Fenians in Canada.61 It is worth noting, in this respect, that two separate spy sources identified Whelan not simply as a marginal Fenian figure but as a well-known extremist and active supporter of the Fenian plan to invade Canada. These sources were not used in the trial, and contradict T.P. Slattery’s assertion that Whelan’s name never appeared in any counter-intelligence reports.62 One emanated from the British Consulate in New York, where the Nova Scotia-born Edward Archibald ran a network of spies and informers against the Fenians. A few days after McGee’s assassination, one of Archibald’s informers identified Whelan as “the Delegate from Canada to the Cleveland Convention” in September 1867, at which the Fenians discussed their invasion plans.63 There is no way of assessing the accuracy of this report, but its ex post facto character means that great skepticism is in order. More intriguing, however, is the second source, which was transmitted to Francis Lousada, the British consul in Boston, by an informer using the codename James Rooney. “I know and had seen this man Whelan several times in New York,” wrote Rooney, “and had herd [sic] him express his wish to dispatch some of her Majesty’s Subjects and friends in Canada. You remember I mentioned his name sometimes long before the murder."64 It is unlikely that Rooney would have reminded Lousada of something that he had not previously said, and it is significant that Rooney’s earlier reports had provided accurate information about Fenian activists in Montreal. Nevertheless, in the absence of any other evidence, this must rest in the realm of hearsay. Even if we dismiss the spy reports as paranoid fantasy, even if we assume that Alec Turner was lying through his teeth for the reward money (which he did not get), and even if we believe that Robert Hess and Andrew Cullen invented or misheard the story about Whelan’s imprisonment in England for Fenianism, the remaining evidence demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that Whelan was at the very least a strong supporter of the Fenian Brotherhood. The sheer intensity of his hostility to McGee, his view of McGee as the archetypal traitor, and his threatening language and behaviour all place Whelan on the radical edge of Irish nationalism in Canada. His membership of the Hibernian Benevolent Society of Toronto

68

David A. Wilson

and the St Patrick’s Society of Montreal locate him within the two major Fenian front organizations in the country. The fact that he read, and possibly distributed, the Irish American suggests that he supported or sympathized with the Fenian Brotherhood’s Senate Wing, which believed that the invasion of Canada would culminate in the emancipation of Ireland. His closest friends in Montreal were sworn Fenians – Michael Enright, Thomas Murphy, and Patrick Doody. His employer in Ottawa, Peter Eagleson, was an active supporter of the Senate Wing. Whelan took pride in the fact that one of his brothers was in jail for participating in the rising of 1867, and he may well have attempted to swear Irish soldiers into the Fenian Brotherhood. All this suggests that Whelan was lying when he told John A. Macdonald that he was not a Fenian and when he repeated the denial the next day in his speech from the dock. This brings us to the next question: Was Whelan telling the truth about his innocence? “I am charged with being an accursed, foul assassin: but I am innocent,” he protested in his speech from the dock. “I never took that man’s blood. I never owed him spite. I knew that he was talented and clever, and the pride of his country ... I may be accused: I may be found guilty, but I know I am innocent.” After Judge Richards pronounced that he would be hanged, Whelan called out as he was being led from the courtroom, “All that sentence, My Lord, cannot make me Guilty.”65 Whelan’s statement that he never owed McGee spite is patently untrue; but there is still something striking about the intensity and persistence with which he proclaimed his innocence and in his apparent sincerity. If Whelan was lying about his innocence, he was a very good liar indeed. In considering this issue, it is important to remember that even if Whelan was guilty, this does not mean that McGee was the victim of an authorized Fenian hit. On the contrary, the Fenian leadership in New York condemned the assassination, even though many rank-and-file Fenians throughout the United States and Canada rejoiced that McGee had finally got what was coming to him.66 One of McMicken’s informers reported that although the Fenian leaders had “no sympathy” for McGee, “they repudiate any idea of the organization having anything to do with it.” Similarly, Archibald’s sources in New York informed him that John O’Neill, who had commanded the Fenian invasion at Ridgeway and was now the

Was Patrick James Whelan a Fenian?

69

head of the Senate Wing, “repudiates that outrage & probably does so sincerely.”67 It is much more likely that the assassination was the work of local Fenians from Ottawa and Montreal, who were acting on their own initiative, or that it was the spontaneous act of a gunman with a personal fixation and a political grudge.68 Central to the task of assessing what role, if any, Whelan played in the assassination is an evaluation of the evidence presented at the trial – and as Robert Latchford remarked in 1934, there was “doubtless much perjury” going on.69 This not only applies to the entirety of Lacroix’s testimony; it is also the case with another important witness for the prosecution, Reuben Wade – a private detective who said that he overheard Whelan and a group of coconspirators plotting McGee’s assassination at Michael Duggan’s Montreal tavern in December 1867.70 As the defence pointed out, this was inherently implausible; it was hardly likely that Whelan and his friends would discuss their plans within earshot of a complete stranger. The fact that Wade only came forward with his story a month after the assassination did not help his credibility; neither did the testimony of the five defence witnesses who said that Whelan was actually in Ottawa when the conversations supposedly occurred in Montreal.71 Wade further discredited himself with increasingly paranoid post-trial letters to Macdonald, which reached their nadir when he accused the Catholic prosecuting attorney, James O’Reilly, of stifling the investigation to shield his co-religionists.72 If the evidence of Lacroix and Wade can be categorically rejected, that of Alec Turner is more difficult to assess. He may indeed have been after the reward money, and the ex post facto nature of his testimony about Whelan’s conversation with John Doyle at the Russell House (that Whelan set out to assassinate McGee on New Year’s night) means that it cannot be taken at face value. On the other hand, his accounts of Whelan’s unremitting hostility to McGee were corroborated by other witnesses and must therefore be given more weight. As we have seen, Inglis and Faulkner had similar stories, which the defence failed to rebut. To this must be added the testimony of Edward Storr, a messenger in the House of Commons, who saw Whelan make a threatening gesture to McGee from the parliamentary gallery on the night of the murder; Storr also testified that after making the gesture, Whelan patted his breast pocket and nodded to one of his friends. “The other party answered

70

David A. Wilson

the nod,” reported Storr, “and also felt up and down his coat in the same way.” Storr was sufficiently alarmed to raise the issue with the doorkeepers, to confront Whelan directly in the parliamentary lobby, and to record the incident in his diary before he knew about the assassination. He would have been even more alarmed had he known that another witness, Louis Ray Desjardins, had seen Whelan in the parliamentary gallery the previous week, behaving in a “wild, excited” manner and carrying a pistol in his breast pocket.73 Given the evidence of Inglis, Faulkner, Storr, and Desjardins, it is reasonable to assume that those defence witnesses who testified that Whelan spoke well of McGee were committing perjury; this probably also applies to those witnesses who said that Whelan was a gentle man who never threatened McGee.74 Some of the defence witnesses were themselves Fenians or Fenian sympathizers and appeared to be more interested in protecting Whelan than in telling the truth.75 There was also some suggestion that one of the defence lawyers, John O’Farrell from Quebec, offered money to anyone who would provide testimony to discredit Lacroix’s character.76 Neither the prosecution nor the defence came out of this with entirely clean hands. In fact, O’Farrell himself was suspected of being involved in the assassination. Some of the rumours were outlandish, such as Reuben Wade’s story that O’Farrell was part of the conspiracy at Duggan’s tavern, that he had urged a reluctant Whelan to shoot McGee on the night of the murder and had then fled in a buggy across the bridge to Hull.77 More interesting, however, was the account of McGee’s close friend James Goodwin, who regularly invited McGee back to his house after the parliamentary sessions and had arranged to meet him on the night of the murder. But Goodwin was prevented from doing so by an unexpected visit from a man whom he hardly knew, who “detained him with a long, rambling talk” – none other than John O’Farrell.78 This may have been the story that made O’Reilly and Macdonald suspect that “a Quebec gentleman” was behind the murder.79 Another possible candidate for the “Quebec gentleman” was John Hearn, a leading Irish nationalist politician in Quebec City, who had supported the Irish Republican Union’s plan to invade Canada back in 1848.80 Several years after McGee’s murder, Alexander Campbell heard the “astounding news” that Hearn, together with Francis McNamee,

Was Patrick James Whelan a Fenian?

71

the founder of Fenianism in Montreal and possibly a government spy, had planned and paid for the assassination and had hired a “repulsive” looking French Canadian with “no bridge to his nose” to do the job – Giroux, perhaps?81 Nevertheless, Whelan remained the prime suspect, on the strength not only of his threatening words and behaviour but also of his supposed jailhouse confession and the condition of his gun. As T.P. Slattery has argued, the testimony of Hess and Cullen is inherently suspect and should probably be discarded – though the fact that at least some of the conversation can be verified suggests that it cannot be ruled out altogether. But what of Whelan’s gun, which played such an important part in the jury’s decision to deliver a guilty verdict? According to Detective O’Neill, the forensic evidence indicated that the gun had been fired recently. Against this, we have Euphemie Lafrance’s convincing and corroborated testimony that she had wounded herself with the gun seven weeks before the assassination – which, in the view of the defence, seriously weakened the Crown’s case. However, O’Neill’s evidence and Lafrance’s testimony are not necessarily incompatible. Whelan could have reloaded his gun after Lafrance’s accident, shot McGee on 7 April, and put in a new bullet afterwards. There were two reasons for supposing that this is what happened. First, O’Neill reported that five of the six cartridges in the cylinder of Whelan’s gun had dirt on the ends but the sixth was clean, indicating that it had been newly inserted. Second, and more important, although Whelan had just put new grease in all the cartridges and had cleaned the barrel of the gun, the mouth of the barrel “showed the appearance of a fresh discharge of powder.” When asked under cross-examination how he could tell, O’Neill replied that “the stain of powder will last perhaps two days after the discharge” – and he had examined the gun less than twenty-four hours after the murder.82 We have seen that Slattery, in discussing this testimony, claimed that O’Neill explained himself badly in court and could have been saying that the powder at the mouth of the barrel was white as snow. If the gun had indeed been fired recently, the powder would have been black; if it had turned white, this would indicate that the gun had not been fired for a considerable length of time. “If, therefore,” wrote Slattery, “Detective O’Neill saw a residue of powder at the muzzle that was ‘white as snow’ on the very day of the murder, it

72

David A. Wilson

could not indicate that Whelan’s revolver was discharged that same day. If anything, it could have been the residue from the accidental discharge by Euphemie Lafrance seven weeks before the murder.”83 The only trouble with this is that O’Neill did not explain himself badly in court; it was some of the reporters, and not O’Neill, who gave a garbled account of the forensics. Although several newspaper accounts of O’Neill’s testimony were ambiguous, others were not. The report in the Ottawa Times, for example, left no doubt that O’Neill had said that the grease on the cartridges, not the powder at the muzzle, was “white as snow”; the Irish Canadian, although using slightly different language, made exactly the same point.84 It seemed clear from O’Neill’s testimony that the gun had been fired within the previous two days; it is not surprising that this evidence was a major factor in the jury’s decision. We have also seen that Slattery organized his own forensic experiments without the actual gun that Whelan had owned, with mixed results. The bullet could have been fired by the kind of Smith & Wesson revolver that Whelan owned, but there were thousands of such revolvers in circulation. It is worth recalling that two of the three experts whom Slattery consulted believed that the fatal bullet was not manufactured by C.D. Leet – and since Whelan had a box of C.D. Leet cartridges, this would suggest that someone else had shot McGee. In 1973, however, Whelan’s gun was found, and the Ontario Centre of Forensic Sciences attempted to ascertain whether it could be matched with the bullet that killed McGee. Unfortunately, the bullet was too corroded to allow a firm answer; the lead had oxidized, and it was impossible to delineate striations that could be linked to Whelan’s revolver.85 But the tests at the Centre of Forensic Sciences contradicted the conclusion that the fatal bullet was not made by C.D. Leet; the shape of the test bullet was very similar to that of the bullet that killed McGee, and the cannelures also were consistent.86 Further tests on a similar gun, conducted at the Centre of Forensic Sciences by Douglas Lucas and Robert Nichol, also found that the fatal bullet was in fact consistent with a C.D. Leet bullet. Upon learning about the findings, Slattery altered his earlier opinion: “The results of these tests,” he wrote, “have tightened the grip of suspicion on Whelan.”87 Thus, much of Slattery’s apparently impressive defence of Whelan begins to fall apart under closer scrutiny. Slattery had argued that

Was Patrick James Whelan a Fenian?

73

there was no evidence connecting Whelan with Fenianism and that Whelan had not figured in any secret service reports; neither of these points is accurate. Slattery had argued that Detective O’Neill had given convoluted testimony and could well have been saying that the powder in the muzzle was white as snow – forensic evidence that would actually have exonerated Whelan. In fact, O’Neill was referring to the grease on the cartridges, indicating that a new bullet had recently been inserted – forensic evidence that pointed toward Whelan’s guilt. And Slattery had believed that the fatal bullet could not have been made by C.D. Leet and was thus highly unlikely to have been fired from Whelan’s gun – a view that he changed in the light of further evidence. Similar questions can be raised about Slattery’s discussion of Whelan’s behaviour before and after the assassination. Slattery, it will be recalled, argued that the Crown could not have it both ways; it could not reasonably argue that Whelan had behaved like a blundering amateur before the murder and like a cool professional afterwards. In considering this argument, let us first take stock of Whelan’s movements before the assassination. Suddenly, during the first week of April, Whelan began to frequent Mrs Trotter’s boarding house, where McGee was staying, and to visit Mary McKenna’s tavern directly opposite. Two or three days before the murder, he arrived at Mrs Trotter’s around eleven o’clock at night, overstayed his welcome, and was told to leave.88 Earlier in the week, he had paid three visits to McKenna’s tavern; on the Thursday before the murder, he was there after midnight, following the adjournment of Parliament, and stayed until two o’clock in the morning.89 There was also evidence to suggest that Whelan had been hanging around an abandoned house next door to McKenna’s tavern. On the Saturday after the assassination, Edward Armstrong, a crier for the Court of Queen’s Bench, decided to look around the rear of the house. At the veranda by the unlocked back door, encrusted in a shaded patch of old snow, he discovered a set of footprints; when the police investigated further, they found that one of the footprints perfectly matched Whelan’s left boot.90 Armstrong also found something surprising inside the house – “a piece of paper, soiled with powder stains,” indicating that a gun had been fired from the upstairs window. What made this even more intriguing was that a bullet had been fired into Mrs Trotter’s windowsill on the

74

David A. Wilson

Wednesday night before the assassination – the same night that Louis Roy Desjardins had seen Whelan in the parliamentary gallery carrying his revolver and behaving in a volatile manner.91 This does not, of course, fit the profile of a cool professional assassin who wanted to conceal his identity. But in the light of Whelan’s earlier threats toward McGee and late-night visits to his house in Montreal, it suggests something else – the profile of a stalker, holding a grudge and carrying a gun. With this in mind, let us turn to his actions immediately before and after the murder. Here, we run into a familiar problem; some of the witnesses were lying, either to nail Whelan or to protect themselves, and sorting out the truth is a difficult task. Reasonably reliable is Edward Storr’s testimony, which was not contradicted by the defence. As we have seen, Storr had been alarmed at Whelan’s aggressive behaviour in the parliamentary gallery; he also testified that after McGee’s speech, Whelan had gone to the lobby and kept watch on the corridor leading to the parliamentary library, where McGee was working.92 Similar behaviour was reported by Patrick Buckley, a doorkeeper in the House, who said that when the House adjourned, Whelan had hovered around the main entrance and fixed his eyes on the door from which McGee would come out.93 Whelan’s presence at the main entrance was confirmed by John Downes, a cab driver.94 But in other respects, Buckley’s evidence cannot be trusted. He denied knowing Whelan’s name and denied speaking to Whelan on the night of the murder, when in fact the two men had known each other since early March and had been in close conversation with one another in the lobby that night.95 It was clear that Buckley, who was in prison facing charges as an accessory to the murder, was trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and Whelan. Equally suspect, although for very different reasons, was the testimony of William Graham, another doorkeeper in the House. Graham agreed that Whelan had been restless that night, but doctored some of his other testimony to fit the prosecution’s case; he had changed his original description of Whelan’s clothing (given during the Police Magistrate’s Inquiry) to make it correspond with that of Lacroix.96 For the defence, Richard Quinn – one of the three men who was with Whelan in the parliamentary gallery that night – gave equally dubious testimony. Among other things, he said that Whelan had

Was Patrick James Whelan a Fenian?

75

been half-asleep in the parliamentary gallery, had stayed in the gallery between midnight and the adjournment, and then had left immediately, heading eastward.97 As James O’Reilly pointed out, this was contradicted by all the other witnesses – including Downes, who saw Whelan walking south by himself toward Wellington Street as the politicians began leaving the House.98 It would have taken Whelan about a minute to reach Sparks Street. Despite the problems with the prosecution witnesses, their evidence had enough in common to support the view that Whelan had been stalking McGee on the night of the murder. In Slattery’s view, as has been seen, this actually strengthened the case for Whelan’s innocence; if Whelan really had been planning to kill McGee, why would he have behaved in such a transparently hostile manner before the assassination? And if he had indeed been the assassin, why would he have appeared so cool, calm, and collected afterwards? Surely, one would have expected a continuation of the “reckless” behaviour that Whelan had exhibited on the night of 6–7 April. Yet it is possible to read Whelan’s behaviour after the murder in a very different way – as heightening rather than lowering the level of suspicion. According to Robert Hess, John Doyle said that he saw Whelan at the corner of the Russell House at 2:30 on Tuesday morning, fifteen minutes after the murder. When Doyle told Whelan that McGee had been shot, Whelan apparently replied, “That’s nothing, I know that.”99 Hess, of course, could have been making this up. But Patrick Groves, the second head waiter at the Russell House, reported an equally flat reaction from Whelan: “When I mentioned to Whalen [sic] that Mr. McGee had been shot,” he told the Police Magistrate’s Inquiry, “he wheeled about and said nothing.”100 After the Russell House, Whelan returned to Michael Starrs’s hotel; here, at around 5:45 am, a man named Francis Kilby came in, having just heard about McGee’s murder. When Kilby said that “the man who committed such an act should be torn limb from limb,” Whelan “wheeled around, with a curious smile or grin, leaning upon the counter, and asked Starrs for something to drink.”101 Whelan kept drinking until 7 am, when he decided to skip breakfast and go to work.102 Nothing in these three different reports indicates that Whelan was behaving like a “diabolically clever professional” after the assassination. If he had been involved in the murder, the clever

76

David A. Wilson

approach would have been to feign shock and surprise at McGee’s murder. On the other hand, if Whelan had not been involved in the murder, one would have expected an animated and excited response, given his earlier attitude toward and fixation with McGee. Instead, he hardly reacted at all – strange behaviour if he was innocent and certainly not smart if he was guilty. Sometime after he started his work, Whelan learned that his employer, Peter Eagleson, had been arrested for the murder of McGee; that afternoon, Whelan visited the jail in an unsuccessful attempt to see him. Slattery saw this as a sign of innocence – a guilty man, or “a person steeped in guilt,” he asserted, would not have behaved in such an open manner and would surely have taken steps to conceal his gun.103 Again, however, the evidence can be cast in a different light. Once Eagleson had been arrested, Whelan, if he was guilty, may well have concluded that he himself was not under suspicion – that he had, in effect, got away with it – and therefore had no need to go into hiding, change his behaviour, or ditch his gun. Nor is there any reason to suppose that Whelan would have been “steeped in guilt”; on the contrary, he could have taken a quiet satisfaction in knowing that the arch-traitor McGee had finally got the death he deserved, and he could have had a sense of pride that he himself had done the job. The behavioural evidence, then, is consistent with guilt, although of course it does not in itself prove guilt. Taken in conjunction with Whelan’s Fenianism, his earlier threats against McGee, and the forensic evidence, however, it becomes part of a pattern that points in that direction. It is not surprising that Patrick Buckley, when interviewed on 7 April by Detective O’Neill, blurted out that the “sandy whiskered tailor” should be arrested; nor is it surprising that the jury reached the guilty verdict.104 But this still leaves the important procedural issues – specifically, the presence of John A. Macdonald on the bench beside the judge and the judge’s role in the appeal against his own decision about the selection of jury members. Behind these issues lies the larger question: Did Whelan get a fair trial? By present-day standards, the answer is clearly no. In itself, the fact that the prime minister of Canada seated himself next to the judge would have been enough to invalidate the trial; it was entirely possible that Macdonald’s place on the bench could have been interpreted by the jury as a sign of Whelan’s guilt.105

Was Patrick James Whelan a Fenian?

77

Nevertheless, by the standards of the 1860s, it was not seen that way; Macdonald’s position received only passing mention in the press and certainly did not elicit any outrage. Even the editorials and letters in the pro-Fenian Irish Canadian, where one would have expected to find an angry reaction, ignored the issue. More striking still was the response of John Lawrence Power O’Hanly, one of the most passionate, articulate, and radical Irish nationalists in Canada. In the middle of a furious outburst against the way in which Irish nationalists were treated after McGee’s murder, after asserting that “the life of an Irish Nationalist in Ottawa was not worth 24 hours’ purchase,” O’Hanly argued that Macdonald was a powerful force against conservative extremism: “The Minister for Justice [Macdonald] attended the trial, he saw how the cat jumped, he humanely shut down and muzzled the thirst for blood.”106 There was no sense here that Macdonald’s presence on the bench prejudiced the jury against Whelan; that argument would be made only in retrospect. What did exercise Irish Canadian nationalists, and understandably so, was the composition of the jury. The fact that James O’Reilly had challenged and rejected all the Catholics on the jury panel, the Irish Canadian argued, reinforced the Protestant prejudice that there was “a sort of Fenian feeling to the entire Catholic community of the country” and that Catholics were “not competent ... to give a conscientious verdict.” “A Catholic Queen’s counsel, and, moreover, an Irishmen,” the paper continued, “has enrolled himself amongst the ranks of our worst and more rancorous enemies.”107 According to the Globe’s reporter at the trial, O’Reilly justified his position by referring to the “well-known sympathy on the part of many Roman Catholics in this neighbourhood with Whelan.”108 Whatever one makes of O’Reilly’s decision, it was certainly within the bounds of the law; one does not expect lawyers for the prosecution or the defence to accept any jurors who might conceivably turn the case against them. But in another respect, the process of jury selection was legally questionable. Here, we move into technical territory. Challenges to jurors could be made on one of two grounds – they could be peremptory (that is, without any reason being shown for the exclusion of a juror) or they could be for cause. The defence was entitled to have twenty peremptory challenges, along with any number where it believed there were grounds for cause. As the selection process got underway, the defence challenged a potential juror,

78

David A. Wilson

Jonathan Sparks, for cause, on the grounds that he had said that Whelan deserved to hang. In response, the prosecution argued that the defence could not challenge for cause until it had used up all its peremptory challenges. The judge agreed with the prosecution and insisted that the challenge to Sparks must be treated as a peremptory challenge – over and above the objections of John Hillyard Cameron for the defence. When the defence had used up all its twenty challenges, including the one for Sparks, it was confronted with another potential juror, George Cavanagh, whom it wished to exclude. Initially, the defence tried to exclude Cavanagh through a peremptory challenge, on the grounds that it still had one peremptory challenge left. The judge refused. And so Cameron was forced to challenge Cavanagh for cause, arguing that Cavanagh had already said that Whelan was guilty. At this point, the judge questioned Cavanagh, who said that he had not made his mind up and would be guided by evidence presented at the trial. The judge then instructed the jurors who had already been accepted to decide whether Cavanagh should be added to the jury. The jurors decided that he should. Cameron decided that if Whelan was found guilty, he would appeal.109 Now, as we have seen, by the time the appeal was made, Judge Richards had been made chief justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench and would thus rule on his own decision. The two other judges disagreed, leaving Richards with the casting vote – concluding that he had indeed made an error in law but that the prisoner had not been harmed by it, since Sparks had been excluded from the jury; there were therefore no grounds for ordering a new trial. With that, Cameron took his appeal to the High Court of Error and Appeal, where ten judges, including Richards, considered the matter. Again the judges were divided. And again Richards tipped the balance, in a six-four decision to reject the appeal. By modern standards, of course, this is a shocking case of conflict of interest, and a judge in Richards’s place would have recused himself from the appeal process. But like John A. Macdonald’s prominent presence at the trial, Richards’s position was not seen as unusual, abnormal, or prejudicial at the time and was not an issue in the press coverage – not even in the Irish Canadian, where one would have most expected a hostile response.110 Nevertheless, as T.P. Slattery argued, there were sufficient reasons here to have ordered a retrial.111

Was Patrick James Whelan a Fenian?

79

Where does this leave us? We have a prime minister who sat next to the judge during the trial, a judge who made an error of law in the jury selection and then had the casting vote in two appeals, and a jury that consisted entirely of Protestants. We have prosecution witnesses who were lying. Nothing that Lacroix and Wade said can be believed; some (but not all) of Alec Turner’s testimony is dubious; William Graham changed some of his evidence to correspond with the prosecution’s case. We have the sheriff and the governor of the jail helping Lacroix to identify Whelan. And if they were prepared to rig evidence against Whelan – as they clearly were – then the governor’s handwritten account of the conversation and confession that Cullen and Hess supposedly overheard must also be called into question. And we have the further possibility that Cullen and Hess either mistook Whelan’s tone of voice or simply invented Whelan’s confession. On the other hand, we have a defence counsel, John O’Farrell, who seems to have paid or treated witnesses to assail Lacroix’s character, and we have a number of other defence witnesses who were either lying or being economical with the truth in an attempt to save Whelan from the gallows; they included Richard Quinn, William Goulden, Patrick Kelly, John Lyon, William White, and James Kinsella. We know that Whelan had a motive: his Fenianism (or, at the very least, his strong Fenian sympathies); that he hated McGee and made threatening visits to his house (as reported not only by Turner but by the more reliable witnesses Inglis and Faulkner); that he behaved in a highly suspicious manner on New Year’s night 1868 (as recalled by John Joseph McGee); and that he made threatening gestures immediately before the assassination (from the testimony of Edward Storr). We know that Whelan had the means to kill McGee: the Smith & Wesson he routinely carried in his breast pocket, which, according to Detective O’Neill, had been fired shortly before Whelan’s arrest and, according to modern forensic evidence, was consistent with the fatal bullet. And we know that Whelan had the opportunity to commit the murder: that he was waiting for McGee to leave the House of Commons (from the testimony not only of William Graham but also of Edward Storr and Patrick Buckley), that he was seen by John Downes walking in the direction of Sparks Street just before the assassination, and that he had no alibi.

80

David A. Wilson

Complicating matters still further is the fact that Whelan himself was a very good liar. His impassioned letter to Macdonald as the jury were deliberating, his equally impassioned speech from the dock, and his parting words to the judge (“All that sentence, My Lord, does not make me Guilty”) still have considerable persuasive power.112 But Whelan was almost certainly lying when he repudiated Fenianism, when he said that he loved Queen Victoria, when he claimed that he had no spite toward McGee, and when he wrote that he had been forced to leave Montreal after warning McGee of an impending attack on his house. And if Whelan was such a convincing liar, how can we believe anything that he said or wrote? Nevertheless, it is well worth considering Whelan’s words after his appeals were exhausted and immediately before his execution. In a conversation with the police magistrate, Martin O’Gara, and the crown attorney, Robert Lees, Whelan admitted that he had been present when McGee was assassinated, but insisted that he did not fire the shot; he apparently said the same thing to McGee’s friend James Goodwin.113 On 9 February 1869, two days before he was hanged, Whelan made a statement to O’Gara and Lees in which he said that John Doyle and Patrick Buckley had nothing to do with the murder, and added, “I know the man who shot Mr. McGee.”114 With this in mind, let us consider what Bridget Whelan said long after the execution when a neighbour asked if her husband was guilty. The day before his execution, she replied, Whelan had implied that he knew who the killer was but said that he would rather be hanged than be called an informer.115 This corresponds with a rumour that was circulating several months earlier. After his arrest, when he was alone with Detective O’Neill, Whelan supposedly struck his breast and said, “I have it here; they can’t take it from me; I will never be a Corydon, a Massey, or a Nagle, let them do as they will.”116 If Whelan was telling the truth – and it is a big “if” – several things follow. First, he would still have been found guilty of murder, as an accessory, given his presence at the assassination. Second, Lacroix was lying about witnessing the murder – no surprise there. Third, Hess and Cullen were lying or mistaken about Whelan’s jailhouse confession. And fourth, the forensic evidence that Whelan’s gun could have fired the bullet that killed McGee becomes irrelevant – unless, of course, the other person used Whelan’s gun.

Was Patrick James Whelan a Fenian?

81

Something else follows, as well. Once the Crown had bought into Lacroix’s eyewitness testimony that Whelan, acting alone, had shot McGee, the possibility that Whelan was part of a hit squad was immediately foreclosed, and any evidence to that effect was either ignored or not pursued. Reports that a buggy had sped from the scene were quietly forgotten. And a key suspect – the man whom Edward Storr saw with Whelan in the parliamentary gallery on the night of the murder, patting his breast pocket in a menacing gesture – was left on the sidelines. Unfortunately, Storr did not publicly identify the man in question, though we know from Whelan’s trial that two of his three companions in the gallery were Richard Quinn and Reuben Lawrence. Both men were arrested under the suspension of Habeas Corpus Act and released after a couple of days. But who was the third man? In April 1869, during the trial of Patrick Buckley as an accessory to the murder, Storr identified the man as James Kinsella, Whelan’s drinking companion at Kate Scanlan’s tavern in Montreal.117 Kinsella had moved to Ottawa around the same time as Whelan, and worked with John Doyle as a waiter at the Russell House; he had been arrested after the assassination and subsequently charged with membership of the Fenian Brotherhood and as an accessory to the murder. During Whelan’s trial, Kinsella had been a witness for the defence. In his testimony, he said that he had worked at the Russell House until eleven o’clock on the night of the assassination and then gone straight home.118 Kinsella’s father, in a letter to John A. Macdonald, claimed that three witnesses could testify that James was asleep in bed when the murder took place.119 The case against Kinsella, like that against Buckley and Doyle, was thrown out for lack of evidence.120 But his testimony at Whelan’s trial was inconsistent and unconvincing (one reporter said that he was “very much confused”), and it seems clear that he was not telling the truth.121 If Storr was right, Kinsella was also lying about his whereabouts on the night of the murder. And it is possible that Whelan was covering up for Kinsella. Possible; but impossible to prove. It is equally possible that Whelan had arranged to meet someone else entirely and that his role was to alert the assassin when McGee would be returning to Mrs Trotter’s boarding house. Various names have been suggested: the mysterious Giroux, with the lawyer John O’Farrell pulling the

82

David A. Wilson

strings and ensuring that James Goodwin would not get in the way; Francis Bernard McNamee, the founder of Fenianism in Montreal, who may also have been an informer who feared that McGee was going to blow his cover; or one of the Slattery brothers, Ralph or Richard, who were among the most active Fenians in the Province of Quebec.122 Or it could have been someone else entirely, or no one else. Ultimately, we will never know. But this much can be said, through all the conditional clauses and all the qualifications. Patrick James Whelan was almost certainly a member of the Fenian Brotherhood and, at the very least, a strong supporter of the organization. Taking the trial alone, and using the criminal law criterion of reasonable doubt, he should have been acquitted. Taking all the available evidence and using the civil law criterion of the balance of probabilities, he was involved in the murder of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, either as the assassin or as an accomplice of the assassin, and he should have been found guilty.

of Diasporic Irish Nationalism

4 Clerical Containment of Diasporic Irish Nationalism: A Canadian Example from the Parnell Era1 rosalyn trigger In April 1883 a convention was held in Philadelphia attended by over a thousand delegates representing Irish societies from across North America. With the community no longer focused on the immediate need for famine relief that had existed in the late 1870s, the meetings took on the festive air of a party convention, with streamers and banners, long speeches, and a sense of excitement and euphoria. Despite Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa’s skulking presence and the occasional need to suppress dissent from the other “dynamite men” at the back of the hall, the convention succeeded in projecting an air of order and moderation.2 The aims of the Philadelphia Convention read like a manifesto of diasporic nationalism, promoting as they did “the consolidation of all Irishmen into one homogeneous organization and the banding together of all national societies into one grand corps, having for its aim the elimination of mis-government in Ireland.”3 The claim that it was “the greatest Irish representative body ever assembled in or out of the Island” was perhaps an exaggeration, but the presence of dignitaries such as Mrs Parnell, as well as five Canadian delegates, helped to add a certain flair to the proceedings.4 The city of Montreal was represented by two individuals from the Montreal branch of the Land League and two members of the Young Irishmen’s Literary and Benefit Society.5 One of these delegates, John Patrick Whelan, was managing director of the Montreal Post, a newspaper dedicated to Irish news and the nationalist cause, which ensured that the event would receive favourable coverage in

84

Rosalyn Trigger

Montreal. The delegates returned home anxious to persuade the city’s Irish societies to participate in the Irish National League of America – the organization that had been created by the convention to further the work of its Irish namesake, which had been launched the previous year by Charles Stewart Parnell. The unanticipated resistance that they encountered from members of the Roman Catholic clergy quickly dampened their high spirits and optimism, however. The most formidable opposition came from Father Patrick Dowd, the long-time Sulpician pastor of St Patrick’s Church in Montreal. Indeed, Dowd’s obituary in the Times (of London, England) noted that he “could hardly have wielded greater power at the head of an Ontario diocese than he possessed in Montreal.”6 This influence had enabled him to play an instrumental role in suppressing Fenian sentiment in the city during the 1860s. His efforts in this direction were in keeping with the Sulpicians’ loyalist-conservative politics and anti-revolutionary disposition.7 One source described Dowd as “a patriotic Irishman of the old school”; he was known as a moderate who could be counted on to favour the forces of law and order.8 Despite the widespread support elicited by constitutional rather than revolutionary efforts to secure greater independence for Ireland during the 1880s, Dowd remained suspicious of nationalist organizations with American connections and spoke with disdain of the “Yankeefied Irishman.”9 Dowd was also anxious that no excuse be given to the Orange Order for renewing its hostilities in Montreal. The Orangemen’s determination to march through the city in the late 1870s to commemorate the Battle of the Boyne had elicited a hostile and even violent response within the city’s Irish Catholic population.10 Following a somewhat more peaceful 12 July in 1878, Dowd reminded his parishioners that this was a victory of God and of charity “over the demon of hatred and discord,” as well as “the victory of our dear old City of Montreal over her worst enemies.”11 As this quotation suggests, Dowd had developed a profound attachment to his adopted city over the years, and he had turned down a number of bishoprics in order to remain there.12 This is not surprising, given that the city had much to recommend it to an Irish Catholic. “In no part of the British Provinces of North America,” wrote John Francis Maguire when he visited from Ireland in 1868, “does the Catholic Irishman feel himself so thoroughly at home as in the beautiful and

Clerical Containment of Diasporic Irish Nationalism

85

flourishing city of Montreal. He is in a Catholic city, where his religion is respected, and his Church is surrounded with dignity and splendour ... In fact, the atmosphere he breathes is Catholic.”13 Exploring the confrontation that emerged between Montreal’s leading Irish clergymen and those who supported the objectives of the Philadelphia Convention sheds light on relations between the clergy and Irish nationalism in Canada during the Parnell era. Irish nationalism generally avoided the extreme anticlericalism of its continental counterparts, but as Emmet Larkin and others have demonstrated, relations between the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland and nationalist politicians were often fraught with tension.14 While many members of the Irish clergy and hierarchy in both Ireland and North America supported land reform in Ireland as well as Irish nationalist aspirations, they remained divided over how these changes should be effected. Thomas Brown presents a rosy picture of the 1880s as a time when “Fenian and parliamentarian, peasant-terrorist and priest, exile and stay-at-home were brought together under Parnell’s leadership to shake the United Kingdom to its foundations.”15 While this was certainly the aim of many nationalists, Oliver Rafferty’s more modest vision of the 1880s as a time when one can “perhaps begin to talk of a Nationalist/Catholic rapprochement” in Ireland must also be considered.16 What impact, if any, did these developments have in the Canadian context? While the Home Rule movement, from its earliest days, generated common ground and attracted prominent supporters in Montreal, it will be argued here that the strong feelings of clergymen such as Father Dowd contributed to the endurance of two competing visions that continued to divide the Irish in Montreal throughout the 1880s.17 Both visions, it should be emphasized, claimed to be compatible with Irish nationalist objectives, but each worked with a “hierarchy of loyalties” that positioned the Roman Catholic Church, Canada, and the Irish nation in rather different configurations.18 The first was a conservative and Catholic vision, in keeping with the McGee tradition, that was deeply committed to demonstrating Irish capacity for self-government and the ability of Irish Canadians to contribute to the maintenance of social harmony in religiously divided communities. By setting this good example, it was hoped that Irish Canadians would help to convince a reluctant British public that they had nothing to fear from granting the people of Ireland the same constitutional liberty

86

Rosalyn Trigger

as that already enjoyed by Canadians. I am going to refer to this as “embedded” Irish nationalism, in the sense that it was firmly rooted in the Canadian context.19 In contrast, supporters of “diasporic” nationalism promoted a sense of Irishness that transcended the desire to be accepted in the new host societies in which the Irish found themselves.20 They were much more open to working alongside American nationalist organizations and argued strongly for the need to develop networks that would permit more unified political action on the part of a geographically dispersed Irish population. Diasporic nationalists tended to favour liberal and republican institutions, and – while not necessarily anticlerical – generally disapproved of what they perceived to be clerical (and especially papal) interference in Irish nationalist politics. My distinction between “diasporic” and “embedded” nationalism is similar in many ways to the contrast that Brian Clarke describes between “radical” and “moderate” nationalism.21 Adoption of my own terminology reflects, however, my desire to draw attention to the spatial dimension of Irish nationalism and, in particular, to emphasize the ongoing interactions between Irish nationalism in Canada and its American counterpart.22 The American influence looms large in the historiography of Irish nationalism in Canada during the 1860s and 1870s, when fears of a Fenian invasion were at their height. This can leave the impression that the United States’ sole contribution to the story of Irish nationalism in Canada was as a source of inspiration and support for physical-force nationalists, with the principal issue of debate being the extent to which Irish Canadians backed the Fenian movement.23 Yet as this chapter will illustrate, there were other facets of Irish American nationalism that raised concerns and controversy north of the border. To do this, I will examine the fate of the three Montreal Irish organizations that participated in the Philadelphia Convention in 1883, looking first at the Montreal branch of the Land League, then at the Young Irishmen’s Literary and Benefit Society, and finally at the Post. After focusing on the steps that were taken by the clergy to prevent direct cooperation between Irish societies in Canada and the United States, I will examine the clergy’s much more problematic attempt to hinder the exposure of Irish Catholics in Montreal to the informal networks and shared ideologies being promoted by diasporic nationalists.

Clerical Containment of Diasporic Irish Nationalism

87

external threats: the irish national league of america affiliation controversy The dispute that emerged in 1883 over the affiliation of the Montreal branch of the Land League with the Irish National League of America illustrates the difficulty with which this association negotiated the two competing nationalist visions outlined above.24 Charles J. Doherty and John P. Whelan, the two delegates sent by the Montreal branch of the Land League to attend the Philadelphia Convention, returned home convinced that participation in the program outlined at the convention offered the best means of furthering the Irish cause through constitutional means. “The work of the Land League,” reported an editorial in the Post, “will henceforth be carried on on a broader basis and will be governed by the programme of the National Convention of Philadelphia. The Land League will thus be merged into the National League of America, which will comprise every Irish society without regard to object.”25 The Montreal branch of the Land League initially endorsed this vision, and it appointed members to visit the various Irish societies in Montreal with a view to persuading them to affiliate with the Irish National League of America.26 It was also hoped that a central branch of the Irish National League could be formed to coordinate the work in Montreal, composed of representatives elected from each of the different societies. In other words, the aim was to embark on a course that was in keeping with the diasporic nationalist vision and would tie Canadian Irish societies more closely into a broader pan-North American network. The plan did not, however, meet with the approval of Fathers Patrick Dowd and James Hogan, the Sulpician pastors of Montreal’s two largest Irish Catholic parishes, who denounced the proposed affiliation with the Irish National League of America from their respective pulpits on 20 May 1883. The arguments given by Dowd are revealing. First of all, he maintained that the Irish Catholic societies in Montreal would have only a very weak influence over the affairs of any American political organization they joined but would nevertheless be held responsible for its actions. He went on to suggest that the Irish were now at peace with their neighbours in Montreal and this might be jeopardized if they became members of an alien

88

Rosalyn Trigger

organization that was distasteful to those with whom they did business on a daily basis. A related issue was his desire to avoid any appearance of disloyalty that might give the Orangemen an excuse to revive their disruptions in the city. These arguments, with their emphasis on maintaining the independence and good reputation of Irish Catholics in the local sphere, amounted to a rejection of the organizational tactics endorsed by diasporic nationalists.27 The wider significance of the affiliation controversy lies in the fact that it was a particularly dramatic example of the pattern of lay action and clerical reaction that routinely discouraged or prevented ties from being established between Montreal’s Irish community and organizations in the United States that did not meet with clerical approval. While the Irish National League of America was especially problematic because it threatened to draw all of the city’s Irish societies into its sphere of influence, branches of a number of the American organizations that attempted to establish themselves in Montreal during this period also found themselves under scrutiny. When the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) first appeared in Montreal in the late 1870s, for example, Dowd sent inquiries to various American bishops to determine whether it should be condemned as a secret society. The response he received was mixed, though far from reassuring.28 The AOH also received unfavourable coverage in Montreal’s Protestant press. “Now that the members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in the United States are talking about avenging Ireland’s wrongs by invading Canada,” observed the Daily Witness in November 1879, “citizens are beginning to enquire in regard to the objects of the Ancient Order of Hibernians which meets on St Joseph street in this city.”29 Given Dowd’s desire to keep the Orangemen in check, such coverage would not have furthered the cause of the AOH in gaining his approval. The Knights of Labor likewise had difficulty gaining clerical approval in Quebec, because it was deemed by Cardinal ElzéarAlexandre Taschereau, the archbishop of Quebec, to be a secret society potentially controlled by foreign interests.30 While the widely publicized contest between Taschereau and the Knights has most often been studied from a labour history perspective, the Knights’ connections with the Irish nationalist movement are also worthy of consideration. As was the case in the United States, where Terence V. Powderly was president of the Knights of Labor as well as a

Clerical Containment of Diasporic Irish Nationalism

89

high-ranking member of Clan na Gael, there were individuals in Montreal, such as Henry J. Cloran and William Keys, who were active in both the Knights of Labor and the Irish National League.31 Such connections were reinforced by Irish Land League founder Michael Davitt during his visit to Montreal in November 1886 when he responded to an address from the local branch of the Knights of Labor by expressing his hope that Taschereau would soon remove his ban on the organization.32 True to form, Dowd came out in support of Taschereau’s position. Having read aloud the circular from the Council of Bishops of the Province of Quebec condemning the Knights of Labor in 1886, Dowd added his own commentary. Not only did he feel that the Knights’ constitution contained socialistic tendencies, but he reiterated the bishops’ concern that complications might arise from belonging to an organization with an executive in a foreign country.33 Dowd’s and Hogan’s denunciation of affiliation with the Irish National League of America was therefore part of a broader pattern. The extensive coverage that the dispute received in the Montreal papers indicated that many prominent Irishmen were frustrated by clerical intervention in the political arena, yet most of those interviewed were reluctant to be named.34 A more forthright editorial in the Post stated that Dowd’s and Hogan’s pronouncement against affiliation had been construed as “a condemnation of the two grandest objects any race in exile could lay itself out to accomplish,” namely, “the regeneration of their native land” and “the establishment of a bond of union between the millions that are spread over a mighty continent.”35 This was accompanied by negative reaction to emerging reports that the Vatican had issued a circular to the Irish hierarchy condemning the Parnell Testimonial Fund.36 Undeterred, the Post went on to collect significant sums for the fund, with donations coming in from individual subscribers as well as from groups such as the Young Irishmen’s Literary and Benefit Society. This was hardly surprising, given that Charles Stewart Parnell’s visit to Montreal only three years earlier to promote the Land League had been a memorable event and the occasion for a tremendous torchlight procession made up of an estimated eight thousand Irishmen.37 For those who supported affiliation with the Irish National League of America, the controversy over the Parnell Testimonial Fund merely provided further evidence of unwanted interference by the Roman Catholic Church in nationalist affairs.

90

Rosalyn Trigger

This confrontational situation was subsequently moderated by statements made by Fathers Hogan and Lonergan. Father Simon Lonergan of St Mary’s parish agreed with Dowd’s and Hogan’s criticism of affiliation with the American league, but was nevertheless quick to declare in an interview with the Montreal Star that his “heart and soul” were in the movement to improve the condition of the people of Ireland by constitutional means. Hogan likewise made a point of emphasizing that he fully approved of the efforts of the National League in Ireland but simply opposed affiliation with the American branch of the organization. He instead suggested that it might be more appropriate to organize an independent Irish National League for Canada.38 In doing so, he presented an opening for graceful capitulation on the part of the Montreal branch of the Land League. At a wellattended meeting, branch president Charles J. Doherty expressed regret that the actions of his organization had upset Father Dowd and acknowledged that there was no hope of affiliating all the Irish societies in Montreal. As an alternative, he recommended that those present form themselves into a branch of the Irish National League in Canada.39 The new society went on to adopt a declaration of principles that reflected a hierarchy of loyalties of which Dowd could approve, first expressing its respect for the Catholic Church, then emphasizing its loyalty to Canada, before going on to state its full support for Parnell’s efforts “to obtain for Ireland the freedom that Canada enjoys.”40 This latter point emphasized the belief held by embedded nationalists that Canada represented an ideal model that could be emulated in Ireland without jeopardizing the position of Irish Catholics in Canadian society.41 Although some complaints were voiced within the Irish community at what was described as the “moderate tone” of the league’s declaration of principles, the compromise solution did at least ensure the creation of an effective lay-run organization that was able to mobilize support for Home Rule throughout the rest of the decade.42 This example reflects the vigilance of Montreal’s leading Irish Catholic clergymen in terms of reining in organizations that they felt were secret societies, lacked sufficient clerical supervision, or had foreign executives that could not be called to account. In such circumstances, the potential for developing non-clandestine organizational networks in keeping with the diasporic vision was – it would seem – quite limited. While the outcome of the Irish

Clerical Containment of Diasporic Irish Nationalism

91

National League affiliation controversy appears on the surface to have been a victory for the embedded nationalist forces, the fact that the Montreal branch continued to work closely with the Irish National League of America in arranging the tours of visiting speakers and as a means of forwarding funds to Ireland suggests that the anti-affiliationist victory may not, in fact, have been quite as absolute as it first seemed.

internal regulation: censuring the young irishmen’s literary and benefit society and the POST While taking steps to discourage direct affiliation with an American organization was relatively straightforward, it was more challenging for the clergy to prevent Irish Catholics in Montreal from tapping into the informal networks and shared ideologies that played such an important role in promoting diasporic nationalism in North America. As the 1880s progressed, Dowd’s efforts to implement such a strategy brought him into further conflict with those who had drawn inspiration from the Philadelphia Convention. The continued adherence of both the Post and the Young Irishmen’s Literary and Benefit Society to the diasporic nationalist vision and their associated susceptibility to outside American influences were ongoing sources of apprehension. An additional dimension to Dowd’s concern was their tendency to oppose clerical involvement in Irish political affairs and to criticize the clergy for placing deference to Canadian priorities or to the Vatican ahead of a commitment to Irish independence. Diasporic nationalists did not, however, distance themselves from Canadian political affairs as one might expect and were just as willing as embedded nationalists to use the Canadian political arena as a means of furthering their vision for Ireland. Although Catholic in outlook, the Post saw itself, first and foremost, as a defender of Irish nationalist aspirations.43 In 1881 John P. Whelan found himself under fire from Dowd for publishing a letter from an unnamed correspondent in Toronto. The writer had been critical of the pressure he felt was being brought to bear by the Vatican on Irish prelates such as Thomas William Croke, Archbishop of Cashel, to abandon their support for the Land League. “If the Catholic people of Ireland realize that their religious

92

Rosalyn Trigger

allegiance to Rome is taken advantage of to favour England and landlordism,” wrote the correspondent, “Catholics will become indifferent, and we all know that from indifference to infidelity is only a short step.”44 Having received a complaint from “a gentleman for whom we have the highest respect” (almost certainly Father Dowd), an editorial subsequently appeared acknowledging that the correspondent was “wrong in Catholic theology,” but defending him for being “right in Irish nationality.”45 This failed to satisfy Dowd, who promptly wrote a letter to Whelan in which he criticized the paper for suggesting that it was possible for something to be wrong in religion but right in politics.46 Whelan defended his newspaper by emphasizing that the principal aim of the Post was not to engage in theological debate but to defend Irish Catholic temporal issues, and he drove home his point by asserting that “on National Questions we are ... in accord with the views of the great mass of the Irish People the World over.”47 While this exchange was only a minor skirmish, the difference of opinion over the role of religion in politics remained unresolved and contentious throughout the ensuing decade. The visit to Canada of mp William O’Brien in 1887 again led the Post, as well as members of the Irish National League and the Young Irishmen’s Literary and Benefit Society, to place themselves in opposition to Father Dowd. While it was common for Irish Parliamentary Party mps to use speaking tours of North America as a means of raising funds for the struggle in Ireland during this period, O’Brien’s visit was explicitly designed to shame Canada’s governor general, the Marquess of Lansdowne, for his treatment of his Irish tenants.48 Dowd, like Archbishop John Joseph Lynch of Toronto, spoke out against the proposed tour.49 Brian Clarke argues that O’Brien’s visit to Canada was controversial because it “shattered the National League’s claim that ... Canadian loyalism and Irish patriotism were not only compatible loyalties but were also mutually reinforcing ones,” which was of course a key tenet of those advocating embedded nationalism.50 The report that “not a single prominent citizen” was present at the railroad station to meet O’Brien supports the idea that there was a class dimension to these debates.51 Canadian politics also infused discussions of O’Brien’s visit. The True Witness and Catholic Chronicle, a weekly paper under the same management as the Post, contended that many Tories were unwilling to greet O’Brien because they feared

Clerical Containment of Diasporic Irish Nationalism

93

upsetting the Orangemen within their ranks, and argued that support for Home Rule was therefore incompatible with support for the Conservative Party.52 Thus it was implied that embedded nationalists were willing to place their desire for respectability and their Conservative Canadian political interests ahead of their commitment to greater Irish independence. The following year, in March 1888, it was announced that Dowd had refused to provide the Young Irishmen’s Literary and Benefit Society with a new spiritual director, effectively banning it from participating in the annual St Patrick’s Day procession. The Young Irishmen’s society was noted for the “patriotic young Irish nationalists” who made up its membership and was described as “the leading Irish association in the metropolis of the Dominion.”53 It is not surprising that Dowd was keeping a close eye on the Young Irishmen. Since the society’s inception in the mid-1870s, it had been involved in inviting militant nationalists to speak in Montreal; if Lyne and Toner’s suspicions are correct, it may also have been a front for Fenian activity.54 The fact that Edward Tobin, one of the Young Irishmen’s delegates to the Philadelphia Convention, apparently attended a secret meeting held by O’Donovan Rossa at the same time indicates that individual members of the society had personal networks that brought them into contact with those whose views were most objectionable to the embedded nationalists.55 The decision to ban the Young Irishmen from the procession aroused considerable dissent: “I have never witnessed,” wrote one of the Post’s correspondents, “so much indignation excepting the time when almost every Irishman of wealth and position turned their back upon Ireland’s noblest and truest son, Wm. O’Brien.”56 While the Young Irishmen had recently brought militant nationalists General Thomas Francis Bourke and Edward O’Meagher Condon to speak in Montreal, the official reason for Dowd’s censure appears to have been their refusal to rescind a resolution they had passed condemning Conservative mps John Joseph Curran and John Costigan for weakening Edward Blake’s strongly worded Home Rule resolution.57 Dowd, it should be noted, was not unusual amongst the clergy in Quebec in being a strong advocate for the Conservative Party.58 While the young men did their best to avoid direct confrontation with Dowd without backing down, the first edition of the Post published a critique of him so adversarial that it was pulled from subsequent editions of the paper. The editorial

94

Rosalyn Trigger

stated that the Young Irishmen were being punished by those who “place the worship of Macdonaldism in Canada above the honor of Ireland” and went on to ask: “Has Father Dowd a right to dictate to an Irish association what it shall do in matters purely political? We think not ... When he descends from his sacred office to become one of us in a party squabble we tell him plainly that so long as he remains in the fight, he stands divested of his sacred functions and must take his chances the same as others, neither better nor worse ... If he cannot be with his countrymen, he should, at least, not join their enemies.”59 By expressing sentiments that bore a distinct resemblance to the Fenian view that “in the realm of politics, the opinions of a cleric ... had no more weight than those of any other individual,” the Post had crossed what would prove to be a very dangerous line.60 Only a few months later, the Post found itself condemned by Archbishop Édouard-Charles Fabre from every Catholic pulpit in the city as a result of its criticism of a papal rescript denouncing the Plan of Campaign in Ireland.61 In the weeks leading up to its condemnation, the Post had been very active in reporting negative reactions in the United States to the “alleged” papal rescript and had re-emphasized its position that “politics is a thing apart from religion.”62 In his circular, Fabre maintained that “malice could go no further than to suggest to Irish Catholics that their Holy Father, so beloved and so trusted, had sold them to England.”63 The Post thus joined a select group of French Canadian newspapers that had been banned by the Quebec hierarchy for their promotion of ideas deemed to be dangerously liberal and anticlerical.64 The fact that the Post was not actually named in the circular perhaps indicates that it was being given an opportunity to reform its ways.65 It never had the chance to do so. By the end of the year, for reasons unknown, the Post was no more.66

conclusion While the constitutional struggles of the 1880s provided significant opportunities for alliances to emerge across the nationalist spectrum, Father Dowd’s systematic and persistent intervention in the affairs of organizations that promoted diasporic nationalism in Montreal helped to ensure that the visions of diasporic and embedded nationalists continued to be seen as incompatible. There is lit-

Clerical Containment of Diasporic Irish Nationalism

95

tle evidence to suggest that any of the Canadian organizations that participated in the Philadelphia Convention were heavily committed to physical-force nationalism. Instead, clerical objections focused on such things as foreign connections, lack of accountability, and political orientation, as well as a perceived lack of respect for Vatican pronouncements. While there may have been an underlying fear that contact with Irish American organizations and ideologies would encourage members of Montreal’s Irish community to sympathize with Fenians in the United States, Dowd seems to have been equally concerned that exposure to American influences would give rise to anticlericalism and expose his community to accusations of disloyalty in a Canadian context. Dowd undoubtedly knew much more about what was going on in Irish nationalist circles than we do, and Toner’s suspicion of covert activities on the part of the Young Irishmen’s Literary and Benefit Society needs to be taken seriously. Yet the nature of Dowd’s campaign suggests a much more concerted effort to limit the organizational and ideological integration of Irish nationalism in Canada into the orbit of its much more powerful counterpart in the United States. But how successful was Dowd at actually influencing these groups? Given that most organizations were anxious to avoid the censure of the Roman Catholic Church, Dowd appears to have succeeded in preventing formal affiliation with American organizations such as the Irish National League of America and in discouraging American branches from establishing themselves in Montreal until they had obtained clerical approval. His actions may also have persuaded some Irish nationalists to articulate their patriotism in embedded rather than diasporic terms, as the Irish National League ultimately decided to do. It is nevertheless difficult, given the sources available, to assess whether individuals and organizations genuinely agreed with Dowd or whether they simply made superficial adjustments in order to regain clerical approval. It also seems likely that many Irish Montrealers would have preferred a more fluid hierarchy of loyalties, which would have facilitated cooperation between embedded and diasporic nationalists. Dowd’s ongoing efforts to mould Irish nationalist sentiment in Montreal must, however, have been reassuring to those wishing to emphasize the loyalty and respectability of Irish Catholics living in a British dominion. Rather than seeing the Irish diaspora as “an entity, a bounded group, an ethnodemographic or ethnocultural fact,” this explora-

96

Rosalyn Trigger

tion of Irish nationalism in Montreal during the 1880s supports the argument that diaspora should instead be seen as “a way of formulating the identities and loyalties of a population.”67 Whether or not to adopt a diasporic nationalist vision was something that was being contested in Irish communities around the globe at this time. It was of course natural that Irish communities living within the British Empire found it more difficult than their American counterparts to formulate their nationalist identities in this way, particularly if it meant getting drawn into nationalist organizations over which they had relatively little control. Whether individuals favoured diasporic or embedded nationalism appears to have depended largely on the hierarchy of loyalties to which they adhered, with class and political divisions having a significant impact on the choices they made.

and Canada

5 Between King, Kaiser, and Canada: Irish Catholics in Canada and the Great War, 1914–1918 mark g. mcgowan On Easter Monday, April 1916 , Patrick Pearse emerged from the Dublin post office, which was held by his rebel forces, and dramatically proclaimed for all who might hear, and to the world, the birth of the Republic of Ireland. The Easter Rising became the spark that ignited seven years of violence and turmoil in Ireland, and proved to be a costly operation for the British Empire at a time when it least needed such a distraction. His Majesty’s forces, with supporting divisions from the colonies and dominions, were already locked in a seemingly futile struggle with the German Empire and its Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman allies. British and French advances against Germany had stalled along a 300-mile frontier from the North Sea to the Alps, producing a maze of vermininfested trenches and barbed wire, surrounded by mud and putrid ooze, where once cattle had grazed and orchards stood. Farther south, imperial troops and divisions from Australia, New Zealand, and India were cut to pieces by the surprising strength of Kemal Ataturk’s forces, who had pinned down the empire’s forces on the narrow peninsula of Gallipoli, where they became easy targets for Turkish guns. In Greece, Britain’s allies were held at bay, while on the Russian front, the tsar’s army was in a state of collapse as the Germans pushed toward Moscow. In 1916 the British did not need trouble in Ireland, nor did Britain need the shock waves that would be sent throughout the Irish diaspora in the Americas and Antipodes. There, among the Irish migrants and their descendants,

98

Mark G. McGowan

patriotism would be challenged, loyalties divided, and commitment to win the war questioned. In the days and weeks that followed Pearse’s proclamation, the failure of the rising, and the summary execution of its leaders, Canada’s Irish Catholics in arms do not seem to have been significantly distracted from their primary mission of winning the war. For the young Irish Catholics who had donned khaki or blue, the military censors kept them on course with a “distilled” version of the insurrection. On Friday, 28 April, Corporal Bill O’Brien, a former law student and third-generation Irish Catholic from Peterborough, now bivouacked on the Western Front with the 23rd Battery, Canadian Field Artillery, wrote: “Heard to my great dismay about disgraceful Sinn Fein riot in Dublin on the 24th.” A few days later he was much more animated about his “first open air bath,” which he described as “a dandy.”1 That same day, Father John J. O’Gorman, the beloved priest of Blessed Sacrament Parish in Ottawa, now a chaplain, was preparing to be moved to the 1st Canadian Casualty Clearing Station, unaware that he would soon be responsible for the complete overhaul of the Canadian Chaplaincy Service.2 Young William Meagher, who had enlisted in Manitoba, was finishing his basic training in Bramshott, focused on the days ahead when a trench would be his home. Not so for hockey legend “one-eyed” Lieutenant Frank McGee of Ottawa, grandnephew of the great Irish Canadian politician. In April he was nursing a knee wound that kept him behind the lines and might make him unable to continue playing with the Ottawa Silver Seven on his return home. In Summerside, Prince Edward Island, diminutive Florence Kelly, an army nurse, had just begun her basic training in preparation for her deployment overseas. Cape Bretoner Harry Dunlop was busy studying engineering at Queen’s University, Kingston, still nearly one year away from enlistment. These were the typical faces of the Irish Catholic Canadian war effort – Canadian by birth, Irish by descent – the people committed to serving Canada and the empire, at first without knowledge of the events of Easter 1916 and later, for some, with full knowledge of what was happening in Ireland. This chapter addresses three basic questions about the activities and attitudes of Canada’s Irish Catholics during the First World War. First in importance is the extent of the participation of ordinary Irish Catholics (by migration or descent) in the Canadian war effort, since they can be identified by means of routinely generated

Between King, Kaiser, and Canada

99

records. Second, and perhaps more interesting, is how Irish Catholics came to participate heavily in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and how their interest was maintained, despite the upswing in the domestic labour market and the nagging questions of “race” that perplexed political and military authorities throughout the war. Finally, there is the issue of whether or not the Easter Rising significantly diverted Irish Catholics from their professed loyalty to the British Empire and its war, which leads to the question of Irish Canadians incorporating multiple foci of identity as they addressed domestic and international issues during the Great War. In an effort to formulate responses to these three questions, this study blends the methods and materials of both social and intellectual history. The manuscript collections, ecclesiastical records, and newspapers of the time provide us with a helpful but limited appreciation of how a community responded to the events of 1914–18. While such records are useful for understanding the intellectual and political ruminations of the elites of the Irish Catholic community, they are limited in the manner in which they can identify the actions of the “common Catholics” of these Irish communities. Newspapers have a clearly defined and limited readership, and the private papers of one man are limited in their utility when addressing the complex relationships of region, class, gender, and nativity that help shape Canada’s Irish communities. On the other hand, the examination of clusters of Irish Catholics can inform us about the behaviour of the group but deprives us of any intellectual, political, economic, or cultural constructs that might influence their actions or inaction. Thus, in this preliminary study of the Irish Catholic war effort, I have integrated a variety of source materials; and I have concluded that despite first appearances, Irish Canadian Catholics developed carefully layered opinions toward Ireland, Canada, and the empire as the war ran its course. While between 1914 and 1918 they presented a reasonably solid front, to serve the Crown and destroy the Kaiser, after the war Canada’s Irish Catholics became increasingly adamant that the principles for which they had fought must be applied in Ireland by the same Crown that they had served. It is clear that Irish Catholic participation in the voluntary phases of recruitment for the Canadian Expeditionary Force was strong. While British-born Protestants, most of whom were recent immigrants, were the most pronounced group of young men gathering

100

Mark G. McGowan

at Val Cartier in the autumn of 1914, the subsequent two phases3 of voluntary recruitment, from October 1914 to October 1917, reveal a greater mix of soldiers, by birth, ethnicity, and religion. The personal records and sailing lists of selected battalions from the nine existing provinces (Newfoundland not yet having joined Canada) reveal large numbers of Irish Catholic recruits, many of whom had previous militia or military experience. For young men and women of Irish birth and descent, there had been a strong precedent set more than a decade earlier during the Boer War. In Canada’s first imperial war of the twentieth century, Irish Catholic Canadians had been prominent in their recruitment, particularly in Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, providing at least 9 per cent of the total recruits.4 Supported by the anglophone hierarchy, the Catholic press, and many priests (several of whom volunteered as chaplains), Irish Catholics comprised the largest Catholic group of recruits, standing shoulder to shoulder with Protestant Canadians of English and Scottish descent. By 1914, this was remembered by contemporaries as a time when Irish Catholics had done their bit for Crown and country. The New Freeman of Saint John published Father John J. O’Gorman’s contention that, as in South Africa, Britain’s engagement in the Great War was just and honourable.5 Winnipeg’s Catholic weekly, the Northwest Review, was even more open in its imperial sentiment, claiming that Canadians were “loyal to the Motherland.” It boasted that “the spirit that animated their forefathers a century ago when invasion threatened this infant nation, the spirit which impelled her sons to brave the dangers of the African veldt – that spirit, the surest defence against aggression, animates them still.”6 When the voluntary phases of enlistment ended in the fall of 1917, the Irish Catholic presence was noted throughout the Canadian Corps, in the infantry, among the officers, in the Canadian Army Medical Corps, and in the Canadian Chaplaincy Service. The process of analyzing the size, cultural profile, and social composition of Irish Catholic recruitment during the war is one that is fraught with difficulties. Religious statistics are incomplete in the militia and defence records, when they are included at all. Because cultural, linguistic, and religious tabulations are rarely encountered together, it is extremely difficult to provide a detailed analysis of Irish Catholic recruits. What is known for certain is that near the end of the period of voluntary enlistment in October 1917,

Between King, Kaiser, and Canada

101

approximately 51,426 Catholics were enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, constituting about 14 per cent of the total recruits. Military analysts and some Protestant extremists saw this as ample proof that Canada’s largest denomination, consisting of nearly 40 per cent of the dominion’s population, was not pulling its weight.7 Reports from the Catholic chaplains, however, cast a more discriminating light on these figures and suggest that anglophone Catholic (mostly Irish and Scots) recruitment was consistent with their numbers in the Canadian population. In 1917 Father John J. O’Gorman reported to his superiors that 36,512 of the Catholic recruits were English-speaking (mostly of Irish and Scottish descent), making them the largest Catholic group in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and second only to the Anglicans in their rate of recruitment when considered in proportion to their denomination in Canada.8 What we know about the Irish Catholic contingents is not limited to the several distinctive Irish battalions. This study employs four sample groups comprising 995 men and 82 nurses. The first random sample includes 102 recruits who were raised in 1915 and 1916 for three specialty battalions: the 199th Irish Rangers of Montreal, the 208th Irish Canadian Regiment of Toronto,9 and the 121st Battalion from Vancouver. This study uses a second sample of 356 men derived from infantry battalions from all nine provinces which, when cross-referenced with personnel records, indicates that men of Irish lineage and birth had a significant presence in infantry battalions that were raised because of pre-existing militia units in a given region. One should not be surprised to find that units raised in areas of concentrated Irish Catholic population – Halifax, Saint John, the Miramichi, Montreal, the Ottawa Valley, Toronto, and central Ontario – all witnessed sizable Irish Catholic recruitment, even though they were not “specialty battalions” raised specifically to lure the Irish. On Cape Breton Island, in fact, Irish Catholics from Sydney and the Margaree Valley joined the 85th Nova Scotia Highlanders in great numbers. This study also uses a third sample of 497 men gleaned from parish honour rolls which, when cross-referenced with personnel records, provides a broad portrait of Irish Catholic recruitment from the onset of voluntary enlistment right through the conscription controversy. Together with a fourth sample of 82 Irish Catholic Canadian nurses, these soundings into the personnel records of the combatants help

102

Mark G. McGowan

us to access Irish Catholic participation in different ways, permitting the historian to pose questions germane to each group, while offering flexibility to analyze the distinctiveness of regional battalions and specific Irish units. Anglophone Catholic recruitment in the West, despite the low numbers of Irish Catholics in the region, appears to have been proportional to their representation in the general population, as does recruitment in Ontario. In the provinces east of the Ottawa River, Catholic volunteers accounted for between about 8 to 10 per cent of the total recruits.10 Of course, there were pockets of undeniably strong recruitment. Nine parishes in Toronto, for example, contributed more than 10 per cent of their parish population; their total enlistment came to nearly 3,500, or nearly one-fifth of all Ontario’s Catholic recruits. St Patrick’s Parish in Ottawa boasted that one-quarter of its men of military age had enlisted, and the bishop of Victoria took great pride in the numbers recruited in his cathedral parish.11 By far the largest contribution proportionally came from the Maritime provinces, especially Nova Scotia. At the end of 1916, Military District 6, headquartered in Halifax, had the highest proportion of Catholic recruits of all military districts, with Catholics constituting 27 per cent of the total fighting force. While perhaps as many as 14 per cent of these 8,825 Catholic volunteers were Acadian, some of whom would comprise a distinct Acadian battalion, most were Catholics of Irish and Scottish descent from the three Maritime provinces. In the Diocese of Antigonish alone, more than 4,500 Catholics enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, the American Expeditionary Force, and the Royal Navy.12 In 1915 English-speaking Catholic recruitment across Canada was significant enough to warrant a chaplain for two battalions and to prompt a request from Catholic chaplains for permanent representation in sixteen battalions in each of which Catholics, mostly of Irish descent, numbered more than one hundred. Of particular concern here were the units raised in the Maritimes, eastern Ontario, and Alberta.13 It becomes evident, after a preliminary study of these three samples of male combatants, that Irish Catholic recruitment into the Canadian Expeditionary Force followed many of the same patterns as the population as a whole. When militia units became active in recruiting in late 1914 and early 1915, most Irish Catholic men enlisted where they lived or worked. Given the mobility of the pop-

Between King, Kaiser, and Canada

103

ulation at that time and the need to search for work in the recession of 1913–14, one finds Catholics recruiting in units far from home. Private William Meagher, who enlisted in the 44th Battalion in Sewell, Manitoba, was actually a native of Lindsay, Ontario, and had moved west in order seek employment as a machinist. Henry Dunlop, though from Cape Breton, ended up in a construction unit raised in Ontario because he had just graduated from Queen’s University engineering school. Irish Catholics, like the rest of the Canadian Expeditionary Force recruits, were unmarried, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, and were engaged in bluecollar, skilled trades, or white-collar work. There was no heavy preponderance of unskilled “labourers” in any of the samples, and in fact in the Toronto samples and those of other major cities, Irish Catholics tended to enlist even when there were employment opportunities at home, especially in 1916.14 Where Irish Catholics differed from the general trend and perhaps from popular historical memory was in two characteristics. First, they demonstrated a high level of previous military service, whether in militia units, the regular army, or in short-term militia training that was tied to their being taken on strength by a specific battalion. This previous service suggests perhaps an Irish Catholic engagement with Canadian militia traditions and the patriotic sentiments that accompanied such involvement. Secondly, Irish Catholics were primarily Canadian-born. Upon close examination of the personnel records, one finds that they were the sons, grandsons, daughters, and granddaughters of those Irish migrants who ventured to Canada in the early nineteenth century and during and immediately after the Famine. There were Irish-born men, but they constituted a very small portion of the samples (and of the total immigrant population, for that matter), except when it came to the recruitment of distinctive Irish units, where they appear in greater numbers, obviously attracted by the ethnic character of the unit and its distinctive signs and symbols. The preponderance of Canadian-born Irish Catholic recruits in the sample stood in sharp contrast to the Anglicans and Presbyterians, where the highest proportion of recruits came from the tens of thousands of recently arrived British immigrants, who were now anxious to return to Europe to fight in Britain’s defence. Irish Catholic recruitment was not similar to that of other religious groups with whom they shared high levels of Canadian

104

Mark G. McGowan

nativity. Canadian Methodism, for example, which had a high proportion of Canadian-born adherents, had a strong pacifist minority within the denomination, and was less likely to witness a stampede of its young men to recruiting offices.15 In contrast, Canadian-born Irish Catholics were more likely to enlist. The reasons for this vary; seeking respectability, experiencing unemployment or underemployment, the desire for adventure in another part of the world, the urge to leave home, or a deep sense of the imperial cause – all are likely motivations. As will be demonstrated, the leadership of the Irish Catholic community also pushed them to enlist. If young Irish Catholic Canadian men and women needed any incentive to enlist in the service of the Crown against the Kaiser, they needed only to listen to the chief representatives of their community. The response of Catholic bishops in English Canada to the eruption of war in August 1914 differed little from the statements made by their Protestant neighbours. Prayers for peace, invocations for all Catholics to do their duty as members of the British Empire, and support for the raising of money, food, and men for the war effort were typical of most episcopal statements. Unlike their colleagues in Quebec, who published a joint pastoral letter on the war on 23 September 1914, English-speaking Catholic bishops made individual pronouncements in the first few months of the conflict.16 Bishop Alexander MacDonald of Victoria echoed the sentiments of many of his episcopal colleagues when he wrote: “Canada is a part of the British Empire. Canadians are British subjects; we are all under manifold obligation to the Motherland; the parliament of our country has decided by unanimous vote to discharge, in some measure, our obligation. It is, I conceive, the strict duty of every citizen of Canada to respect that act of our parliament ... The present crisis, to my mind, is emphatically one in which the words of our Blessed Lord find an appropriate application: ‘He that is not for me is against me, and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth.’”17 Likewise Neil McNeil of Toronto, a Cape Bretoner of mixed Scottish and Irish heritage, called for Catholics “to share in the burdens of the Empire” and urged Catholic-Protestant cooperation as a necessary recipe for victory.18 Bishop James Morrison of Antigonish, Archbishop Michael Joseph Spratt of Kingston, Archbishop Alfred Sinnott of Winnipeg, and Archbishop Timothy Casey of Vancouver (formerly of Saint John, New Brunswick) were noted

Between King, Kaiser, and Canada

105

for their pro-recruitment speeches at public meetings and their advocacy of the Canadian Patriotic Fund.19 Bishop Michael F. Fallon of London lifted the stakes of this war to a loftier plane. Held in the balance, he thought, were the peace and security of the empire “that will mean the freedom and welfare of the world.” To this end, he ordered votive masses to be said and, at every benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, a psalm miserere to be sung “for the spiritual strength of those engaged in combat.”20 Throughout the war, bishops actively endorsed recruitment drives, encouraged Catholic participation in specific battalions, loaded the liturgical calendar with special prayers, services, and supplication Sundays, raised funds, recruited chaplains from among their priests, and encouraged the patriotic ventures of such associations as the Knights of Columbus.21 This sustained support for the government’s war initiatives should come as no surprise, given the profile of Canada’s eighteen anglophone Catholic bishops, who were of mixed Irish and Scots descent. By 1915, this branch of the Canadian episcopate was relatively young, relatively fresh to episcopal office, and overwhelmingly Canadian-born and Canadian-educated. At least seven of them had not yet seen their fiftieth birthday, eight had served less than five years in episcopal office, and sixteen had been born in Ontario or the Maritimes. The thought of such men rallying to the imperial cause is not so startling, given that most had identified themselves as British Canadians since childhood; most had been educated in English Canada at close quarters with the Protestant majority; and all were well acquainted with the historical precedent of the Church supporting the Crown in times of crisis.22 In their ongoing support of recruitment and fundraising, the bishops prompted similar efforts among the diocesan clergy who served Canada’s Irish Catholics. In Nova Scotia and Ontario, parochial clergy and priest-professors from Catholic colleges became important players in recruitment drives23 and were highly visible in their efforts to collect for the Canadian Patriotic Fund, the Belgian and Polish Relief funds, and Victory Bonds. In the Archdiocese of Toronto, for example, priests were required to make Patriotic Fund semi-annual donations of forty dollars each;24 and in Walkerton, Bruce County, a rich farming district in the northwestern section of the Diocese of Hamilton, Father J.P. Cummings passionately told a recruitment meeting in the winter of 1916 that all

106

Mark G. McGowan

eligible men ought to act as true Canadian citizens and British subjects and enlist: “We are not fighting any particular people but fighting the world policy of a nation which if carried to its natural conclusion would mean our destruction. With the British Empire overcome, we, a nation of helots, would be used by the German government as a source of supply ... Everything we have we owe to the British Empire. No other people enjoy the same freedom and same justices. We have everything to live for, everything to work for, everything to die for. Our fate is at stake.”25 Similar appeals were made by individual priests in the principal dioceses of Ontario, the Maritimes, and western Canada.26 The most visible manner of priestly support for the war was enlistment in the fledgling Canadian Chaplaincy Service. Although in the early days of the war the military chaplaincy had been hampered by allegations of Orange Protestant bias – and particularly by the anti-Catholic bias of its director, the Reverend R.H. Steacy – by 1915 the Catholic branch of the service was dominated by Irish Catholic priests from across Canada. Father John J. O’Gorman and two of his cousins from the Ottawa Valley and northern Ontario enlisted, as did the blustering editor of the Catholic Register and the Prince Edward Islander, Monsignor Alfred E. Burke. The fearless and beloved Father Peter O’Leary of Quebec City also volunteered, though he had to be discharged because of his physical and mental infirmities; his heroics as an Irish Catholic Canadian chaplain during the Boer War became the rod by which in 1914 all Catholic chaplains were required to measure themselves.27 In 1916 the Canadian bishops selected Bishop Michael Francis Fallon of London and Archbishop Edward McCarthy of Halifax to coordinate the recruitment of priests in their respective regions. Each brigade (four battalions) was allowed one chaplain per thousand men of a specific religion. By war’s end, eighty-five priests had enlisted in the Canadian Chaplaincy Service, sixty of whom were Englishspeaking, primarily of Irish descent. The example of clerical and episcopal support for the Canadian war effort was demonstrated with equal, if not greater, intensity by the Catholic press in Canada. Six of Canada’s major Englishlanguage Catholic weeklies – Antigonish’s Casket, Saint John’s New Freeman, Kingston’s Canadian Freeman, Toronto’s Catholic Register, London’s Catholic Record, and Winnipeg’s Northwest Review – were steadfast in their advocacy of Catholic support. The Register and the

Between King, Kaiser, and Canada

107

Casket, edited by Monsignor Alfred E. Burke and Mr William Donovan, respectively, sounded a particularly imperialistic note whose intensity differed little from the non-Catholic pronouncements. The Casket was unequivocal regarding the twofold duty of Canadians: “We are at war ... The first thought of Canadians will be to do what we can, and as far as necessary to guard our dear old Canada; but besides that, unless the war proves to be a short one and favourable at once to the British Crown, there will doubtless be many thousands of brave young Canadians ere long with Englishmen, Irishmen and Scotchmen, in Belgium, or wheresoever the flag may be unfurled as a battle standard for the integrity of the Empire.”28 Monsignor Burke, the controversial anglophile at the Register, told his 17,000-plus readers that “we as Canadians are Britishers to the core and that Britain’s troubles are our troubles, Britain’s shield, our safety.”29 Each of the six papers contained regular columns of war news and offered detailed reports about local recruitment, which was a challenge for the Northwest Review, given that its readers were spread from Kenora, in northwestern Ontario, to the Rocky Mountains of Alberta. It should be noted that this focus on the war was sustained throughout the conflict and did not wane during the conscription crisis and the dominion election of 1917. In an effort to demonstrate Catholic loyalty, each paper took pains to shed further light on the contributions made by Catholic soldiers from Canada, Belgium, and Ireland, who were united in their fight to defeat the Kaiser.30 In doing so, the journalists writing for Irish Catholic Canadians emerged as some of the most articulate spokespersons against allegations that Catholics were not “doing their bit” throughout the war. With encouragement emanating from the clergy, the hierarchy, and the Catholic press, the English-speaking Catholic laity was able to sustain its support for the war effort well beyond the first few months of the conflict. Apart from actual recruitment in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, English-speaking Catholics made a variety of contributions to the war effort. Leading Catholic laymen of Irish descent, such as Lord Shaughnessy, president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Chief Justice Charles Fitzpatrick, Minister of Justice C.J. Doherty, and Justice F.R. Latchford, gave a conspicuous public face to the Irish Catholic participation in the dominion’s war effort.31 At the parochial level women’s sodalities and clubs prepared packages of clothing, candy, tobacco, literature, and religious

108

Mark G. McGowan

articles for Catholic soldiers overseas. Young women enrolled in nurses’ training programs so that they could serve in military hospitals and casualty clearing stations. Two notable cases were the graduates of St Michael’s Hospital Nursing School in Toronto and the fourteen nursing sisters who volunteered from St Joseph’s Parish in Ottawa.32 Rank-and-file laypersons also made regular contributions to the Canadian Patriotic Fund, the Belgian Relief Fund, government bond drives, and, by the war’s end, to the dominion-wide collection for Knights of Columbus army huts, a network of soldier recreation centres patterned on those of the Young Men’s Christian Association.33 Catholic colleges were also generous in their contributions. St Francis Xavier University in Antigonish supplied the Canadian Expeditionary Force with a stationary hospital, including doctors and nurses recruited locally. Such examples could have inspired Florence Kelly, a middle-aged unmarried nurse from Summerside, Prince Edward Island, to serve the wounded and dying. In Ontario, St Michael’s College, with its sizable Irish Catholic student population, kept pace with its affiliated colleges at the University of Toronto by supplying 275 recruits to the infantry and Royal Flying Corps.34 One of the most telling signs of Irish Catholic adhesion to the British Empire and its ideals came with the pronouncements of Canadian branches of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (aoh), Canada’s most important Irish Catholic fraternal association. Canadian members of the order, which was experiencing numerical decline in some regions for reasons unrelated to the war, grew increasingly uncomfortable with the pro-German and anti-British stance of the American parent body. When the official organ of the American branch of the Hibernians proclaimed that “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity” and pronounced that Britain, not Germany, was the enemy of Ireland, Canadian Hibernians from coast to coast denounced their American cousins. Initially, aoh leaders in Canada requested that the National Hibernian be seized at the border as seditious literature; then, in a bolder move, local aoh executives laid the groundwork for an independent all-Canadian organization.35 In 1916 the councils in Victoria and Vancouver seceded from the aoh, starting a chain reaction from the Pacific to the Atlantic. John H. Barry, a local aoh officer in Fredericton, New Brunswick, announced, “I think the order in Canada is worth saving though not at the tremendous cost of treason to our country.”36 In a similar vein,

Between King, Kaiser, and Canada

109

Father C.J. McLaughlin, the former editor of the New Freeman, brought a delegation of New Brunswick Hibernians to the annual aoh convention in Boston in July 1916. There he faced down the American members with a stirring speech: Hibernian that I am, I am also a British subject. Britain’s flag is our Talisman. The Roman citizen of old gloried in the title of Roman citizenship. Let me sir, assure you today that the Canadian delegates here assembled glory in the title of CanadianBritish citizenship, and indeed sirs, it would be unworthy of the race and the land from which I came if I were to sit here this morning and offer no protest to some of the remarks that I have heard made here ... Let me answer it here by telling you that the hearts of Canadian Irish beat true and that Canadians of all classes, Irish included, are prepared to stand by Britain in this crisis to the last man and the last dollar.37 Months after the Easter Rising, one of the Catholic press’s most identifiable Irish Canadians seemed prepared to stay the course begun in 1914. This leads to the third and perhaps most difficult question: Did the Easter Rising and its aftermath significantly alter the Irish Catholic Canadian outlook toward the war? The late Robin Burns, in his essay on the 199th Montreal Irish Rangers, contended that these events did, and that they may have curtailed Irish Canadian enthusiasm for the war.38 Finding evidence to support this assertion is difficult given the numerous factors that affected recruitment of the entire Canadian Expeditionary Force in middle and late 1916. With the war economy “hot” and with labourers, skilled and unskilled, in demand in practically every region of Canada, there was little incentive for young men to enlist. Moreover, as secular and Catholic newspapers reported the lists of casualties and published the names and photos of the fallen, and as the critically wounded were demobilized to Canada, any notion of war being a grand adventure lost its lustre. In Montreal, the 199th Irish Canadian Rangers was recruited in early and mid 1916, drawing half to one-third its strength from local Irish Catholics.39 However, when specialty units raised by athletic clubs, professions, businesses, or even other ethnic groups, such as the 185th Cape Breton Highlanders, arrived in England, they were broken up to replace the dead and wounded in existing battalions.

110

Mark G. McGowan

Not only did the dismemberment of these new battalions enrage the officers and recruiters of the units (the 199th and 208th Irish, for example), but it served as a disincentive to young men who hoped that they would stay with the same group of lads throughout the war.40 While Irish Catholic recruitment in general appeared to mimic the national trends for all Canadians, one could still find anomalies. In central Ontario, Military District 2, Irish Catholic recruitment continued despite the need of the labour market for the skills possessed of many new recruits.41 Insofar as the Easter Rising was concerned, the Catholic press in Canada denounced Pearse’s actions and those of Sinn Féin, which they mistakenly thought was responsible for the rising. Typical of this sentiment, the Canadian Freeman of Kingston, under the direction of its Irish-born editor, D.A. Casey, referred to the rebels as “cranks,” adding, “It is a pity that circumstances have made it possible for an aggregation of half socialists, half lunatics to work ruin and destruction in the streets of Ireland’s beautiful capital. For Larkin and Company we have no pity.”42 However, Casey and his fellow editors were distressed by the execution of the rebellion’s leaders, wondering why they were executed when the Boer leaders in South Africa and other rebels in the empire had been spared. Casey later commented that there seemed to be one policy for some imperial citizens and another for Irish nationalists.43 Moreover, in the wake of the rising, the Catholic press, Catholic bishops, and Irish Catholic clergy had to counteract public doubt about Irish loyalty, which they did by claiming that Sinn Féin was not typical of Irish attitudes – in Ireland or Canada – toward the war effort. After the rising, there was a mass rally of the Irish in Montreal, at which Irish Canadian leaders expressly distanced themselves from the actions of Sinn Féin. Father McLaughlin told his American aoh cousins that Irish Canadians would remain steadfast to the Empire while upholding the right of Home Rule for Ireland. One by one, Catholic newspapers continued to support the war while keeping an eye on the Irish situation, insisting that justice would be done. It was clear that the Irish situation now complicated the Irish Catholic Canadian war effort. Across the country there appeared to be a reawakened sympathy for Ireland by the children and grandchildren of the diaspora. The Canadian Freeman, for one, openly questioned imperial policies, asking, “Why expect us to

Between King, Kaiser, and Canada

111

believe that the Empire can do no wrong when we have read history?”44 Eventually, Canadian editors came to argue that if Home Rule as it existed in Canada was enacted in Ireland immediately, the Irish situation would not escalate and the Sinn Féin position would be neutralized by the moderate majority in Ireland. Early in 1917 the aoh organized meetings across Canada to pass motions demanding the immediate institution of Home Rule in Ireland. By March, the movement was in full force, drawing to it leading Irish clergy and laymen from Victoria to Moose Jaw, from Winnipeg to Saint John, and at most major centres in between.45 This movement in favour of immediate Home Rule signalled to Canada’s Irish Catholic communities that one could demand justice for Ireland while still being dedicated to winning the war. Perhaps it was the Reverend Captain John J. O’Gorman who best encapsulated the twofold duty of many of Canada’s Irish Catholics. In August 1916, while serving with the 3rd Brigade, O’Gorman had his left arm shattered by bullets and was moved to his native Ottawa for convalescence. There he manoeuvred through the corridors of power and arranged for a wholesale change to the Canadian Chaplaincy Service, which would now have an assistant director exclusively for Roman Catholic padres. But O’Gorman was also concerned by the effect of the Easter Rising on Irish Catholic morale in Canada. In March 1917, at the height of the push for Home Rule, O’Gorman sent out a clear message to his Irish coreligionists about their double duty: “Though we were born in Canada, though our parents were born in Canada,” the culture, traditions, and spirituality of Ireland, he maintained, are “the lifeblood that is in our veins ... He who strikes Ireland, strikes us.” Nevertheless, despite his kindred feelings toward Ireland, O’Gorman was adamant that Irish Catholics were also Canadians and had a duty to win the war: We will scorn the policy of sulk and continue the policy of self-sacrifice ... The interests of Canada, as a nation, as an autonomous part of the British Empire, and as a member of the world’s family of nations, demanded that we enter this war against the Turco-Teutons, and that having entered it, we should prosecute it till we finish it or it finishes us. The few voices that are raised here and there, asking that we should halt till Ireland gets Home Rule, have rightly been disregarded by

112

Mark G. McGowan

the vast majority of Irish Canadians. We do not intend to do wrong that good may come.46 Critical of the Australian anti-conscription movement and the antiEnglish lobby in the United States, O’Gorman re-enlisted. Many of his Canadian countrymen also enlisted after 1 May 1916, as the parish sample (table 3) and unit sample (table 1) attest. O’Gorman’s fears that recruitment might be stymied by the events following the rising do not seem to be sustained by Irish Catholic recruitment patterns. In the samples drawn from parish records, sailing lists, and the Irish specialty battalions, there appears to be no correlation between the Irish troubles and recruitment. Even in the 199th Montreal Irish Rangers, over 50 per cent of the unit’s recruits in the sample enlisted after 1 May 1916; of these, practically all of the Irish-born in the random sample enlisted at that time (See table 1). Similarly, in Toronto, the sample taken from the 208th Battalion indicates that at least 40 per cent of the Irish Catholic recruits came after 1 May 1916. In addition, the sample of 497 Irish Catholic men derived from parish honour rolls, from Halifax to Victoria, shows that one-quarter signed up after the Easter Rising and the execution of its principal leaders, including Pearse (table 4). Even stronger is the high proportion of Irish Catholic women who willingly signed up as nurses when posts were made available after 1915.47 Over 56 per cent of the nurses in the sample enlisted after the Easter Rising, which indicates that there were far more compelling reasons for these women to serve Canada and the empire than to refrain from enlistment out of sympathy with Ireland or outrage in the wake of British reprisals after the rising (table 5). Even when the small number of men conscripted under the Military Service Act are excluded from the sample, between one-fifth and one-quarter of the Irish Catholic recruits (depending on the sample, tables 1 to 3) enlisted in the weeks and months following the rising. Given all the pressures for young men and women to stay in Canada by mid-1916 – economic,48 familial, and psychological – there is no simple answer to explain why so many elected to go to war. Few left any written recollections of why they answered the call by “the King” to fight “the Kaiser.” One might speculate that Canadian Catholics of Irish descent decided to enlist for a variety of reasons. Perhaps they were underemployed; perhaps they had little

Between King, Kaiser, and Canada

113

understanding of the events unfolding in Ireland; perhaps they were still susceptible to social pressure from the families of those men and women who were already in khaki or blue; or perhaps, having heard the words of clergy, editors, and lay leaders, they considered it their patriotic duty. What is clear is that the Easter Rising and its aftermath did not kill Irish Catholic recruitment to the Canadian Expeditionary Force, nor did it dampen the Irish Catholic Canadian resolve to win the war. Making any assessment of Irish Catholic recruitment after the Easter Rising must also take into account the Canadian crisis over conscription in 1917 and the “race question” that divided a majority of anglophone Canadians from French Canadian Catholics, the majority of whom opposed conscription. While clergy and lay leaders continued to back the war effort and voluntary service, the suggestion of conscription threatened to create further havoc among Catholic Canadians by dividing them along French-English linguistic lines and along partisan lines between the Union government and Wilfrid Laurier’s Liberals. Most anglophone Canadian bishops eventually lined up behind conscription as the only means remaining to win the war. Never a stranger to controversy, Bishop Fallon of London not only endorsed conscription but openly supported the Union government (Robert Borden’s Conservatives and renegade Liberals) in its bid for election in December 1917.49 Similarly, the Register, the Catholic Mutual Benefit Association, the Catholic Truth Society, Father Lancelot Minehan of Toronto, and Professor A.B. O’Neill of St Joseph’s College in New Brunswick all publicly endorsed conscription. On the other side, Winnipeg’s Northwest Review and Kingston’s Freeman increasingly sympathized with Sinn Féin and raised doubts over whether or not national unity was worth sacrificing for conscription. The Review eventually saw conscription as “fair,” while the Freeman remained opposed. Likewise, Father Matthew Whelan, the controversial pastor of St Patrick’s Parish, Ottawa, where voluntary recruitment had been so high, opposed conscription, as did the Edmonton-based Jesuit, Father Lewis Drummond, who had already cultivated a reputation of being anti-British.50 An insider at St Augustine’s Seminary in Toronto reported to Archbishop Neil McNeil that there were a few nationalist malcontents among the seminarians. Finally, during the divisive election in Decem ber 1917, two Irish Catholics – Charles Murphy and the recently

114

Mark G. McGowan

demobilized officer Charles “Chubby” Power – successfully won their seats in Russell and Quebec East, respectively, for the anticonscriptionist Liberals. They would not abandon Laurier, “the old man,” for Borden. “The methods of the present Borden Government in Canada,” asserted Murphy, “are precisely the methods that he [the Kaiser] employs in Germany.”51 C.J. Doherty, however, buoyed by Irish Catholic votes in Ste-Anne’s Ward, retained his Montreal seat for the Unionists and in so doing maintained his position as the voice of the Irish in Borden’s cabinet. By 1918, O’Gorman’s idea of double duty for the Irish continued to characterize Irish Catholic Canadian behaviour. Whether the Canadian reinforcement troops were raised voluntarily or through the Military Service Act, few Catholics would disagree that the war had to be won and the empire had to prevail. Nevertheless, neither O’Gorman nor the men and women he served lost a sense that if the war meant anything at all, its principles and ideals would have to be applied by the victors. Britain would have to make certain that it lived up to the civilizing principles for which it had fought, and Ireland was to be the test case. Elsewhere, I have written of the “Waning of the Green” and have come in for some criticism in implying that Canada’s Irish lost their sense of Irishness or were no longer interested in the “homeland.” Such criticism ignores the fact that the Toronto of which I wrote was not, nor is currently, a microcosm of Canada (as much as Torontonians might think it is). The weight of contemporary historiography demonstrates that each Irish community in Canada developed differently and nurtured national feelings and self-identifications shaped by a number of factors: its time of settlement; its region of settlement; relations with its neighbours; the local role, size, and language of the Catholic Church and other Christian neighbours; and a host of other less tangible and measurable things. If anything, the Irish Catholic Canadians, if such a cohesive community really existed, persisted in supporting the war, despite consequences that were sometimes dire. What the survivors of the war and their relatives gained from their experience, perhaps, was a clearer expectation of what the British Empire should do. The principles for which they had fought were the same ones that ought to be applied in Ireland. Far from forgetting Ireland, Canada’s Irish Catholics now held their own empire up to greater scrutiny and demanded for Ireland what Canadians already enjoyed

Between King, Kaiser, and Canada

115

under the Crown. They may also have envisaged a time when they could identify Canada’s role within the empire as distinctive, autonomous, and perhaps not completely synchronized with the politicos at Whitehall. In the end, like most human beings, Irish Catholic Canadians of that time were complex, hard to pigeonhole, and the wearers of many hats; the task at hand for O’Gorman and others like him had been to win the war. Then the empire had to win the “just” peace in Ireland. When the war ended, Father O’Gorman went back to his parish in Ottawa and championed the anglophone cause in the battle over bilingual Catholic schools; he died of a ruptured appendix in 1933. Henry Dunlop won the Military Cross for valour, returned home, resettled in Ontario, and raised a large family. Nurse Florence Kelly, after suffering trauma from what she saw in France, retired to Charlottetown. William Meagher, who had been slightly wounded after he and his mates fooled around with a live German grenade, died near Vimy Ridge in 1917. “One-eyed” Frank McGee of Ottawa was killed in action; his record for the most goals scored in a Stanley Cup final game has never been surpassed. Gunner Bill O’Brien returned to Ontario and became a lawyer, assistant general manager of the Chartered Trust Company, a patron of Catholic charities and the Catholic Children’s Aid Society, and a recipient of the Pope’s Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice medal. When he died in 1943 at the age of fifty-six, his son James suggested that his life was a testament to General A.C. “Batty Mac” Macdonnell’s final order of the day to the demobilized members of the First Canadian Contingent, the “Little Red Patch”: “Remember that we ... stand present for the King.”52

116

Mark G. McGowan

Table 1 Designated Irish Units: Recruitment and Social Analysis 121st Vancouver

199th Montreal

208th Toronto

Total

24 20 4

49 24 25

29 16 13

102 60 42

birth Canada Ireland Britain United States Other

9 7 5 2 1

39 6 2 1 1

22 2 2 2 1

70 15 9 5 3

married

5

7

8

20

occupation Professional Business Clerical/supervisory Skilled worker Semi-skilled Unskilled Agriculture/forestry

1 0 1 4 3 8 7

1 5 11 9 7 16

0 2 7 6 3 11

2 7 19 19 13 35 7

other features Officer Previous service

0 9

0 40

2 8

2 57

sample Attested before 30 April 1916 Attested after 1 May 1916

Table 2 Regional Units: Recruitment and Social Analysis, Irish Catholics, 1914–1918

105th

New Brunswick, 26th & 132nd

Ontario, 38th 77th, 160th, 240th

Ontario, 75th

Manitoba, 100th

Saskatchewan, 68th

57 57 0 na

16 15 1 na

60 60 0 na

109 94 11 4

70 70 0 na

19 19 0 na

25 25 0 na

birth Canada Ireland Britain United States Other

47 2 3 0 5

16 0 0 0 0

52 7 1 0 0

80 11 15 1 2

43 12 12 2 1

9 6 4 0 0

6 11 8 0 0

married

10

0

11

12

2

3

4

occupation Professional Business Clerical/supervisory Skilled worker Semi-skilled Unskilled Agriculture/forestry

0 0 6 3 11 33 4

1 0 2 4 0 0 9

1 3 4 7 5 34 6

12 0 20 20 13 29 15

0 3 9 19 11 27 1

0 1 9 1 0 4 4

0 1 3 1 5 5 10

other features Officer Previous service

0 16

1 13

1 35

3 29

2 27

2 12

1 11

Nova Scotia, 25th & 85th sample Attested before 30 April 1916 Attested after 1 May 1916 msa1 conscript

1 Military Service Act

PEI,

Mark G. McGowan

118

Table 3 Selected Urban Parishes: Recruitment and Social Analysis, Irish Catholics, 1914–1918 Sydney, NS1

sample Attested before 30 April 1916 Attested after 1 May 1916 msa6 conscript Other/Unknown birth Canada Ireland Britain United States Other/unknown married

Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec3 NS2 ON4

Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary,

Victoria,

ON5

MA

AB

BC

40 27

39 32

52 37

115 57

154 121

54 45

32 21

11 7

10

7

11

47

28

9

9

2

1 2

0 0

3 1

11 0

5 0

0 0

2 0

0 2

35 0 0 2 3

38 0 0 0 1

40 5 3 2 2

104 2 7 2 0

116 16 14 6 2

26 12 15 0 1

11 6 8 6 1

5 2 3 0 1

5

11

11

13

39

17

11

1

occupation Professional Business Clerical/ Supervisory Skilled worker Semi skilled Unskilled Agriculture/forestry Other/unknown

4 1 8

0 1 10

3 3 10

22 6 42

4 4 29

0 2 21

3 0 5

2 1 3

8 6 11 0 2

7 8 10 1 2

12 9 14 0 1

14 10 15 5 1

51 23 40 2 1

11 7 9 3 1

6 7 4 7 0

0 0 3 0 2

other features Officer Previous service

2 16

1 20

7 26

16 39

1 40

1 25

3 7

5 7

1 2 3 4 5 6

Holy Redeemer, Sacred Heart, St Mary St Mary’s Cathedral St Patrick St Patrick, St Joseph St Paul, St Helen Military Service Act

Between King, Kaiser, and Canada

119

Table 4 Comparison, All Units: Recruitment and Social Analysis Parish recruitment sample Attested before 30 April 1916 Attested after 1 May 1916 msa3 conscript Unknown

birth Canada

497 347 69.8% 123 24.8% 22 4.4% 5 1.0%

Irish regiments 102 60 58.8% 42 41.2% 0 0

Selected battalions

Total

356 3402 95.5% 12 3.4% 4 1.1% 0

955 747 78.2% 177 18.5% 26 2.7% 5 0.5

92,529

2534 71.1 49 13.8 43 12.1 3 0.8 8

698 73.1 107 11.2 102 10.7 26 2.7 22

36,408 39.4 3,660 4.0 47,455 51.3 2,163 2.3 2,841

Other

375 75.5 43 8.7 50 10.1 18 3.6 11

70 68.6 15 14.7 9 8.8 5 4.9 3

married

108

20

40

168

occupation Professional Business Clerical/supervisory

38 18 128

2 7 19

14 8 53

109 70 106 [285]

19 13 35 [67]

55 45 132 [232]

18 10

7

49

54 33 200 20.9 183 128 273 584 61.1 74 10

36 180

2 57

10 143

Ireland Britain United States

Skilled worker Semi-skilled Unskilled Total blue collar Agriculture/forestry Unknown other features Students Officers Previous service

National figures1

2,462 1,610 12,607 13.6

63,368 68.5 1,120

1,362 48 380

1 Library and Archives Canada, rg24, vol.1249, Occupation and Place of Birth by Infantry Battalions 18th to 85th [c. April 1915]. When the students and professionals are combined, a figure of 3,824 results. My units included students as professionals. All manual labourers are combined regardless of skill level. Total recruits to that date amounted to 92,529. 2 All sample battalions were recruited before April 1916. 3 Military Service Act 4 Early cef recruitment included higher proportions of British- and Irish-born volunteers.

120

Mark G. McGowan

Table 5 Irish Catholic Canadian Nurses: Recruitment and Social Analysis, 1914–1918 Number

Per cent

sample Attestation before 30 April 1916 Attestation after 1 May 1916

82 36 46

100.0 43.9 56.1

birth Canada Ireland Britain United States Other

73 6 1 1 1

89.1 7.3 1.2 1.2 1.2

0

0.0

occupation Nurse Other

82 0

100.0 0.0

province of birth Nova Scotia New Brunswick pei Quebec Ontario Manitoba Saskatchewan Alberta British Columbia previous service

15 10 1 3 44 0 0 0 0 48

100.0 20.6 13.7 1.4 4.1 60.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 58.5

married

ss Reaction

6 Canadian Catholic Press Reaction to the Irish Crisis, 1916–1921 frederick j. mcevoy From the 1880s onward, the status of Ireland was an important issue in the Canadian political and intellectual world. Events in Ireland, from the campaign for Home Rule to the Easter Rising, the guerrilla war, and the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, generated heated discussion in the Canadian religious and secular press. In the growing historiography on this question there is debate on how this issue played out in the Irish Canadian community. In his seminal study of the Irish in Toronto, Mark McGowan postulates that the city’s Irish became increasingly Canadianized, with a consequent waning of their fervour for the old country and its concerns. This same conclusion was reached by David Shanahan in his doctoral thesis. On the other hand, Robert McLaughlin, in his doctoral dissertation, asserts that the Irish in Canada remained strongly involved with the affairs of Ireland even until quite recent times.1 This chapter examines, within the context of that debate, the changing attitude of two of the leading English-language Catholic newspapers in Ontario, from the Easter Rising to the Anglo-Irish Treaty. The Catholic Record of London and the Catholic Register and Canadian Extension of Toronto devoted much attention to the Irish situation during this crucial period. Much space was given to the reprinting of material from the Irish, British, and American press, as well as to copious, often passionate, editorial comment. The Register, formed in 1892 by the amalgamation of two Catholic papers, was bought by the Catholic Church Extension Society, an immigrant and frontier aid society, in 1908, giving it a national audience. By 1921 it had a circulation of 16,500, which did not include copies sold at church doors and did not reflect the number

122

Frederick J. McEvoy

of individuals who read an issue.2 The editor from 1915 to 1918 was Joseph A. Wall, a lawyer from Antigonish, Nova Scotia, who had previously edited the Antigonish diocesan paper, the Casket.3 Between 1918 and 1922, the Register was edited by Monsignor Thomas O’Donnell, who had moved from Ireland to Canada at the age of eight and remained passionately involved in Irish affairs.4 The Record had a nationwide audience and claimed to be “the only national Catholic weekly in Canada.” In 1921 its circulation of nearly 33,000 was twice that of the Register.5 Founded in 1878, it concentrated on Ontario dioceses outside Toronto. By 1915 it had readers in the Maritimes and Newfoundland, and even in the United States. The Record was an open supporter of the Liberal Party under the aegis of its longtime proprietor, Thomas Coffey, who had been made a senator by Sir Wilfrid Laurier in 1903. An “ardent supporter” of Home Rule, Coffey had been born in County Limerick and came to Canada as a child. After his death in 1914, his policies were maintained under the editorship of Father J.T. Foley, who had been born in Ontario of Irish descent.6 Both papers were staunch supporters of the policy of John Redmond’s Irish Parliamentary Party (ipp), which had negotiated a Home Rule agreement with the British government in 1914, although its implementation was suspended with the onset of the war. The Easter Rising came as a complete shock; the immediate reaction of both papers was utter condemnation. In an editorial bluntly titled “The Insane Folly of the Sinn Feiners,” the Record denounced the rebels as “the bitter, unscrupulous and vituperative enemies of Redmond’s constitutional Home Rule movement and policy.” Quoting the remarks of several Irish bishops, it also dismissed Sinn Féin as “not less unscrupulously hostile to the religious sentiment of Catholic Ireland.” The Sinn Feiners, it said, had “plunged their misguided dupes into sinful and insane rebellion which, silly, ridiculous, and easily suppressed though it be, may be fraught with tragic consequences for Ireland.”7 The Register was no less firm in its response: “It would be difficult to conceive of an act of revolt more utterly unjustified and unjustifiable. Irishmen have no just cause to doubt the wisdom and sagacity of the political leaders who have so ably conducted her affairs to the very verge of that self-government for which she has been striving, and for the ultimate triumph of which they could well trust to

Canadian Catholic Press Reaction

123

their own determined solidarity and the good-will of the British masses which that wisdom and sagacity had won.” In the view of the Register, the British had governed Ireland fairly well for the last twenty-five years – “barring a few minor but irritating blunders” – and had gone a good way toward resolving Irish grievances. However, it was not difficult to understand that men who had before them the defiant example of Sir Edward Carson and his Ulster supporters would feel justified in taking up arms.8 It had been Carson’s threat of armed resistance to any attempt to force Home Rule on Ulster that first “militarized” the Irish situation,9 a point that would frequently be stressed by the Catholic press. Having condemned the rising, the Record set out its understanding of the Sinn Féin movement. Its founders were “men of letters closely identified with the Gaelic revival” who were opposed to physical force. However, the outbreak of the war had led “all the malcontents, socialists and shirkers into the ranks of Sinn Fein.” Nor was it to be wondered at that honest men should be misled by the agitators. “The old rankling sense of injustice had been revived by the events of the Carson campaign in Ulster,” argued the Record. It was now up to Carson to make “the great act of statesmanship which would make ‘The United Kingdom’ a reality.” Ireland could no longer be governed other than on the basis of Home Rule.10 The Record surprisingly had little to say about the execution of the rebel leaders, despite its importance in changing Irish public opinion, though the paper did condemn the murder of the Irish pacifist Francis Sheehy Skeffington.11 The Register, while agreeing that the rebels had “committed a very heinous crime” and were responsible for the loss of life, compared their treatment to that of the “archtraitor” Carson, appointed to the king’s Privy Council: “By that act a premium was put upon treason and armed resistance to lawful authority ... Under these circumstances the severity displayed is likely to rankle deeply in the breasts of many who have been loudest in condemnation of the criminal folly of the rebels.”12 A follow-up editorial was more condemnatory: “Fourteen men shot after condemnation by courts-martial sitting in secret in the height of excitement and passion, is, in the year 1916, something to startle and appal. It is safe to say that it could not have happened in any other part of the British Empire. It is only too evidently the outcome of the sad legacy of hate of the dominant class for the victims of its oppression, as the rising itself was of the hate which this

124

Frederick J. McEvoy

had engendered in return, and which, though now happily exorcised so far as the great body of the Irish people is concerned, still rankles in the breasts of a comparative few.”13 The obduracy of Carson and his followers, the Register believed, made any negotiated settlement of the “Irish Question” next to impossible. “They want,” it stated, “the perpetuation of that ascendancy which they have hitherto enjoyed, and nothing short of that will satisfy them. The power to keep their Catholic fellow-citizens under their heel they will not consent to relinquish.”14 Both papers continued to stress the folly of the rising and the need to rally around the ipp which, in the exaggerated opinion of the Record, had “achieved the greatest triumphs in the parliamentary history of the world.”15 The Register asserted that the ipp’s support for the war effort had gone a long way toward convincing the British that Ireland could be trusted with self-government.16 The two papers shared the ipp’s goal of a self-governing Ireland within the British Empire, a position analogous to that of Canada, which made it possible to be a Canadian or an Irish patriot and an imperial patriot at the same time; it was not necessary to choose between country and empire. In the summer of 1916, Prime Minister Asquith gave Lloyd George the task of negotiating an Irish settlement. A Home Rule agreement based on the exclusion of six counties in Ulster was proposed; two of these had strong nationalist majorities, and their exclusion had been bitterly opposed by the ipp in 1914. Their exclusion now, the Register claimed, showed that the Nationalists were prepared to make sacrifices for the sake of the empire. It scorned the rumour that Lloyd George had given the Ulster Unionists a written guarantee that the exclusion of the six counties would be permanent. However, that was precisely what he had done.17 The Register supported the proposed agreement because the current situation was intolerable and the exclusion would be temporary; there could be no doubt that “almost the whole of the excluded territory will before many years be included, by the desire of its own people, with the rest of self-governing Ireland.”18 When the negotiations broke down, the Register immediately placed the blame on Carson and asserted that the ipp had emerged “with untarnished honour, with enhanced reputation as real Impe-

Canadian Catholic Press Reaction

125

rial patriots willing to make a sacrifice for the cause of the Empire and of civilization.” Such an argument only demonstrated how little the paper understood nationalist opinion in Ireland, where the ipp leaders were scorned for their gullibility and were demoralized by their failure.19 Nor was the Record any more insightful. Unaware of his duplicity, it praised Lloyd George and expressed the certainty that “the present pain is but the birth-pang of a new era of justice, good-will and mutual understanding.”20 Against the backdrop of these failed negotiations lay rumours that conscription would be imposed on Ireland. Both papers vehemently opposed such an action. The Register denied that Irish opposition to it was anti-British in nature, but went on to cite the centuries of British oppression of the Irish and the “brutal” British reaction to the rising as justification for Irish opposition to conscription.21 The Record welcomed the British government’s announcement in October 1916 that the measure would not be implemented and hoped that this marked an end to “the pernicious, unpatriotic and unscrupulous agitation for Conscription which, had it been successful, would have had tragic consequences.”22 Answering a correspondent who asked why there was so much opposition in Ireland to conscription, the Record cited “the long centuries of diabolical tyranny compared with which present day German atrocities in Belgium are but mild measures of benevolent rulers.” It also, for the first time, made what would be a key point in arguing for Irish self-government, namely, that Britain was denying Ireland what it claimed to be fighting for: “the rights of small nations, a war for liberty and democracy.”23 By the end of 1916, both papers continued to believe that the Irish situation could be settled satisfactorily if the British government would only show common sense and generosity in its Irish policy. The Register believed that the ipp was “pursuing the only practical and sane method of securing Irish self-government.”24 The Record looked toward the end of the war, when the relationship between Britain and the self-governing dominions would have to be readjusted, and it foresaw some form of imperial federation under which Ireland “would get a much more satisfactory measure of Home Rule than that now on the statute books.”25 However, Sinn Féin was gaining ground on the ipp and was on the verge of becoming the dominant nationalist party in Ireland.26

126

Frederick J. McEvoy

The first sign of this seismic change was the victory of Sinn Féin in three by-elections in the first half of 1917. Both papers saw this success as arising from the malign influence of the Ulsterites and their diehard English allies on British policy, exemplified by Lloyd George’s declaration of an Ulster veto on any Home Rule settlement. On St Patrick’s Day, 1917, the Record bitterly complained: In the midst of the struggle of democracy and liberty against junkerdom and despotism, while the greatest of Wars is being waged for the rights of small nationalities against brutal imperialism, England’s radical Prime Minister and central figure of the War tells the House of Commons, tells Ireland and the world, that the Irish Self-Government Act, which has been approved over and over again by a majority of the people of Great Britain as well as of Ireland, which has received the royal assent and bears the King’s signature is only “a scrap of paper,” until the petted Irish tools and dupes of the feudal classes consent to its adoption!27 The election in May 1917 of Joe McGuinness, an interned prisoner, showed, in the eyes of the Record, that the Irish people were “done with constitutional methods.” The blame for this lay with “the sordid and selfish interests of the parasitical ascendancy class”; it was “unbearable and indefensible” to give such a minority “the right to thwart the will of the people.”28 The Register agreed that Sinn Féin had been given “whatever life it has in Ireland” by the treachery of Lloyd George in announcing that Home Rule was subject to a veto by “Carson’s Covenanters, backed by the English irreconcilables.”29 Particularly serious was the triumph of the recently released Eamon de Valera in the East Clare by-election in July 1917. These results were victories for “the advocates of complete separation from the Empire,” which the Register believed was “not within the realm of practical politics.” Once again, blame was placed on the power of the Ulster minority and the brutality of the British response to the rising.30 Eamon de Valera’s landslide victory in East Clare was particularly unfortunate for the ipp, coming as it did on the eve of the meeting of the Irish Convention. Called by Lloyd George, who had become prime minister in December 1916, it was meant to bring all factions together in the hope of hammering out an agreement that

Canadian Catholic Press Reaction

127

was acceptable to all. Although the convention lost all credibility with the refusal of Sinn Féin to participate,31 the Record believed that it had the potential to undermine revolutionary nationalism: “We regard what is called Sinn Feinism in its later manifestations as merely an expression of resentment, disappointment and unrest,” it wrote. “In the face of the serious business of the Convention, it will shrink to insignificant proportions, but it will doubtless receive much more notoriety than it deserves.”32 In August 1917 the newspaper expressed the opinion that “Irish statesmanship will score a signal triumph” by producing a constitution that would allow the Irish to govern themselves. But it warned that failure would “chill like a dead hand the warm enthusiasm of all who believe in constitutional methods of reform.”33 The following month, the Record asserted that the Ulster delegates had accepted the inevitability of Home Rule.34 Even in December, as the convention wore on, the newspaper expressed the belief that “the chief stumbling block in the way of a real and final settlement of the ancient quarrel is on a fair way of being removed.” This stumbling block was “the ascendancy faction aided and abetted by stupid and reckless English Toryism,” it wrote. “Remove that factor and the Irish problem solves itself.”35 The Register was far less sanguine. It reasoned that because Lloyd George had already assured Ulster Protestants that they would not be forced into Home Rule, they would have no incentive to compromise. But the paper praised what it saw as the conciliatory approach of John Redmond and hoped against hope that his party would prevail over Sinn Féin and the Ulster Unionists. Would not Britain’s release of the remaining political prisoners create an atmosphere of good will? And would not the death in the trenches of John Redmond’s brother have a “softening effect” on the Unionists in the convention? The answers turned out to be no; with neither side willing or able to budge on the question of partition, the convention ground to a halt in the spring of 1918.36 By that time, the Irish situation had reached a new crisis point over the question of conscription. The British government was desperate for manpower following Russia’s withdrawal from the war, which had released a million German troops for service on the Western Front. Despite warnings from all sides of the consequences in Ireland, the government introduced a Military Service Bill that could be

128

Frederick J. McEvoy

extended to Ireland and was linked to a new Home Rule initiative. The reaction in Ireland, according to historian Michael Laffan, “surpassed the fears of the pessimists in the cabinet.”37 In Canada, the Record was torn between support for the war effort and for Irish self-government. On the one hand, it wanted to see all Irishmen fighting side by side with Britain; on the other, it believed that conscription without the consent of the Irish people would only fan the flame of “Irish distrust, discontent and resentment.” The paper continued to criticize Sinn Féin for trying to hold Ireland apart from “the mighty world struggle in which the future of civilization is involved,” and it continued to attack Ulster Unionists for using the threat of rebellion against democracy in Ireland. At the same time, it leaned toward interpreting the British action as an attempt to force all factions, Irish and English, together “in order to create such a situation as would make both Home Rule and conscription (or the object of conscription) a matter of consent all round.” If that was indeed the case, commented the Record, it was “a piece of marvellously shrewd politics intended to subserve the highest statesmanship.”38 The Register lamented that so many Irish now considered the war to be England’s war; even so, it was “sheer madness to attempt to take Irishmen by force and make them fight.”39 The paper placed the blame squarely on the British government. Ireland had originally responded to Redmond’s call to support the war effort, but “that great opportunity was lost. It was lost not merely by inaction, but by stupid and malevolent opposition, which gave to forces in Ireland whose action we cannot defend and have no desire to defend, the chance to revive bitter memories that might have been buried, and to stir up serious opposition to the war.” However, opposition to conscription was supported by nationalists of all stripes who feared the consequences that were “sure to follow any attempt to enforce conscription in Ireland.”40 Both papers defended opponents of conscription, including the Irish bishops, against charges that they were aiding the enemy, and both sought to enlighten those who argued that Ireland was not doing her duty for the war effort. Opposition to conscription was inevitable, asserted the Register; but constitutional nationalists were trying to direct that opposition into peaceful channels and to avoid the outbreak of civil war.41 The Record pointed out that those who were horrified by Irishmen pledging opposition to conscription

Canadian Catholic Press Reaction

129

had supported Ulster Unionists in their defiance of “King and Parliament.” In the circumstances, it continued, “to force Irishmen to fight for liberties denied to Ireland is in the words of the Manchester Guardian ‘an inhuman and immoral act.’ It is at least intelligible that Irishmen should agree in that view.”42 In May 1918 the British government, alleging the discovery of a plot between Sinn Féin and Germany, arrested more than seventy of the leading members of Sinn Féin. No such plot existed, although Lloyd George apparently believed in it.43 The Register scathingly observed that Carson and his followers had turned to Germany for help in defying the government, but “not an Orangeman was ever arrested” for it. “Are all the arrests, imprisonments and executions to be always on the one side,” the paper asked, “and what love for the law will that side have if this be the case?”44 The British government, realizing that conscription would be counterproductive, did not extend the Military Service Act to Ireland – but neither did it formally revoke its policy.45 The Record was thankful, if somewhat mistaken, in arguing that the “insane policy” of conscription had been “definitely abandoned,” while adding the caveat that “it is not easy to have unlimited faith in the sanity, good will and sense of justice on the part of a Government where the bad old anti-Irish influences have been able to exert such influence in the past.”46 Although the Register opposed conscription in Ireland, it supported conscription in Canada. With the future of both civilization and Canada at stake, the newspaper contended, conscription in Canada was an “absolute necessity.” In contrast, the Record, with its ties to Laurier’s Liberal Party, expressed its concern that conscription in Canada would lead to political and religious conflict, a position that was more consistent with its attitude to conscription in Ireland.47 Central to the views of both newspapers on the question of war, empire, and Irish Home Rule was the belief that the Allies were fighting for democracy and the rights of small nations. As the Record put it as early as February 1917, “In the light of her [England’s] objects in this War as proclaimed in the face of the world, in the light of her appeal to the conscience of the world, Ireland denied self-government would be a Banquo’s ghost at the coming peace conference when those principles for which England pro-

130

Frederick J. McEvoy

fessedly stands will become the basis of discussion.”48 Not surprisingly, given this outlook, the Record placed great faith in Woodrow Wilson’s statement that “no people must be forced under a sovereignty under which it does not wish to live.” Although Wilson made no mention of Ireland, the newspaper contended that he had “specifically voiced the overwhelming American conviction that to deny self-government to Ireland would be a flagrant and shameful inconsistency with the principles for which we are waging war.”49 The “only hope of Celtic Ireland,” the Register declared at the end of the war, lay with the United States and its president.50 This conviction was brought into still sharper focus by Sinn Féin’s landslide election victory in December 1918; both the ipp and its policy of Home Rule were decisively rejected by the Irish Catholic electorate. To the Register, this outcome was the inevitable result of Britain’s misguided policies; Ireland may have been denied a place at the peace conference, but “the vision of a disturbed and discontented Ireland” would enter “to trouble the dreams of the world’s law-makers.”51 According to the Record, the ipp had suffered the fate of all parties too long in power; its machinery had atrophied, and it had lost touch with the people. But the newspaper continued to believe that most Irish people would settle for Home Rule; Sinn Féin’s demand for an independent republic, it asserted, would willingly be given up in return for dominion status within the empire.52 Nevertheless, the victory of Sinn Féin, coupled with the inability of the ipp to gain Home Rule by constitutional means, led to more radical thinking by these Catholic papers. The Record defended Sinn Féin’s establishment of an Irish parliament, Dáil Éireann, on the grounds that the party represented “the people of Ireland”; it also described the Dáil as “a concrete assertion” of the principles proclaimed by President Wilson. Sinn Féin, for so long denounced by the paper, was now seen as “the deliberate expression of Ireland’s will.” Speaking in the name of Canadians “who love Ireland as the land of their fathers,” the Record directly addressed the Dáil: “More power to you; and may God have you in His holy keeping while you battle in the way it seems to you best in the sacred cause of Irish liberty.”53 As St Patrick’s Day 1919 approached, both papers were optimistic for Ireland’s future, pinning their hopes on Wilson and the peace conference.54 Yet these hopes were soon to be dashed amid

Canadian Catholic Press Reaction

131

charges that Lloyd George had forced Wilson to abandon his principles.55 In fact, Wilson never had any sympathy for Irish nationalism and considered the issue – without the need of prompting by Lloyd George – a domestic British matter.56 The sense of betrayal was palpable. The Register declared that Wilson was “a mediocre politician, a weak man.” It exclaimed, “How lamentably and miserably he failed in the execution of all these high and noble principles history now records. He has come back from the Peace Conference a beaten and discredited man, not because of any flaw in the principles he carried there with him, but because of the inherent personal weakness and unworthiness that made him fail in standing up to them!”57 Meanwhile, the situation in Ireland shifted ominously toward violence as the more radical elements of the republican movement increasingly resorted to arms. The beginning of what came to be known as the Anglo-Irish War is often taken to be 21 January 1919 (coincidentally the same day that the Dáil first met), when two members of the Royal Irish Constabulary were killed in an ambush. However, sporadic acts of violence had previously occurred, and they continued to occur throughout the rest of the year. There was no concerted plan for war at the beginning of 1919, but a militant minority within the Dáil – including Michael Collins – were preparing the ground for a guerrilla campaign.58 The outbreak of violence and the repression with which it was met by the British government pushed both papers toward outright support for Sinn Féin and the establishment of an Irish republic. The Register reacted with indignation when Ireland was described as crime-ridden, a description it felt was not justified by “a few conflicts between the people and the police in Ireland, in which men were killed and wounded.” It claimed that the people of Ireland were “the most crimeless in the world,” owing to the teachings of the Catholic Church, which were “unquestioningly obeyed there.” Charges to the contrary were English propaganda meant “to justify their highhanded Prussianism in Ireland today.”59 Just as republican violence was played down, British repression was accentuated. Both papers criticized what the Record termed “holding Ireland in subjection by an army of occupation, with its tanks, armoured motor cars, barbed wire entanglements, artillery and other paraphernalia of war.”60 As the conflict intensified, the

132

Frederick J. McEvoy

papers focused their attention on British reprisals, such as the sacking of Fermoy after the killing of a British soldier.61 To the Register, the government was “going the best way about disturbing a country they pretend to seek to pacify.”62 The British were reviving the methods of “bloody Balfour” but were bound to fail; it was no longer possible “to govern any people by force of Prussianism and military law.”63 To the Record, the British were returning to “the days of coercion”; it denounced “the nauseating pharissism [sic] of the War-time professions of love of liberty and justice and the rights of small nations to which these devotees of brute force in Ireland pretend to subscribe!”64 “Irishmen,” it affirmed, “know how to suffer and to die for Ireland. The folly and futility of attempting to crush the national spirit by brute force will become evident.”65 Against this background, Lloyd George’s coalition government announced that a new Home Rule bill would be introduced in 1920, providing for separate parliaments for a six-county Ulster and for the rest of Ireland, with what one historian has termed “a more shadowy federal dimension in the form of a Council of Ireland.”66 The Record took a wait-and-see attitude toward the bill, though describing it as “emasculated.”67 The Register also thought it best to wait for the bill to be introduced, but criticized the fact that the two parliaments would be equally represented in the Council of Ireland, which it saw as continuing to place Catholics “in a position of civic inequality.”68 A separate parliament for Ulster, it continued, was grounded on the assumption that Catholics could not be trusted to treat the Protestant minority fairly, and was connected to Protestant fears that a Catholic majority would treat Protestants the same way they had treated Catholics. If Catholics accepted this division of Ireland along religious lines, they would be acknowledging that they “cannot be trusted to provide due safeguards and protection for a minority of a different religion.”69 The Register also argued that the powers devolved to the two legislatures fell far short of the powers exercised by the dominions. Lloyd George’s bill, it concluded, was “a gross insult to the Irish nation and the Irish people.”70 As the atrocities mounted on both sides, the Record came to the defence of Sinn Féin, arguing that Sinn Féin outrages were the inventions of British propaganda, and describing British outrages as “blunders and crimes and murders of ruthless and irresponsible military government in Ireland, where all safeguards of British lib-

Canadian Catholic Press Reaction

133

erty are removed.”71 Had something akin to the murder of Tomás MacCurtain, the Lord Mayor of Cork, occurred in Belgium during the German occupation, it “would have rung round the world as one more instance of the incredible brutality of Prussianism,” the paper averred.72 Adopting a conspiratorial stance, the Record insisted that the government was deliberately goading the Irish into full-scale rebellion “to furnish the needed excuse for turning all the engines of modern warfare, manned by the army of occupation, on an unarmed and defenceless population.”73 While both papers excoriated the British, they virtually ignored the equally brutal acts of the republican side, which also was inclined to use assassination and the coercion of the civilian population.74 In January 1920 the authorities, implementing a new internment policy, made a number of arrests. When the prisoners went on a hunger strike, the government backed down and released them in April.75 The Record hailed “the victory of a few unarmed, imprisoned, weak and dying men, over imperial might brutally employed to break their spirit.” Before their unwavering willingness to die for their cause “the bully cowered, fled,” it wrote.76 There was no discussion of Catholic teaching on the morality of hunger strikes, which could be considered as suicide. This was not the case with the hunger strike of MacCurtain’s successor, Terence MacSwiney. After considering the arguments on both sides of the question, the Record came down unequivocally on MacSwiney’s side: “Whilst England persists in spiriting away Ireland’s sons and allowing them to languish in prison on the merest suspicion, there is no doubt but that Irishmen will avail themselves of this efficient political weapon of hunger-striking, in their effort to shame the Government into granting Ireland her freedom.”77 MacSwiney was “the symbol of the Gaelic people, weak in physical power but invincible in the strong things of the spirit.”78 He was both a symbol of and an inspiration for “the unquenchable spirit of Irish nationality and Ireland’s valiant fight for freedom.”79 After MacSwiney’s death the paper returned to the moral issue. It drew a distinction between the intended and unintended consequences of an action. MacSwiney’s intention was to “force the attention of the English people and of the world not so much on himself as through him on the barbarities of English rule in Ireland.” Death was the unintended consequence, one that he did not deliberately seek. “He used,” the Record concluded, “the only

134

Frederick J. McEvoy

weapon possible in the circumstances for him to use and died a soldier’s and a hero’s death.”80 The feelings generated by MacSwiney’s hunger strike were intensified by the escalating guerrilla war and by the British use of the infamous Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries – hastily recruited troops who were both poorly trained and poorly disciplined. Atrocities mounted on both sides, but predictably it was those of the British that drew the most attention. The Record, while admitting that outrages had been committed by “sympathizers of the Republican party,” asserted that the murder of police officers was “the result of the example set by the military and police themselves.” It criticized British propaganda for focusing on the murder of policemen but forgetting the murder of civilians, the arrests and deportations, and the sacking of towns and villages, which were “some of the causes of present lawlessness and violence and explain the collapse of English law in Ireland.”81 The Register, seeing Ireland at the mercy of 80,000 undisciplined troops, compared the actions of British soldiers with “the lust and rape and murder and pillage the like of which took place in Belgium and among the Armenians at the mercy of Turkish soldiery.”82 Both papers, however, made a point of distinguishing between the British government and the British people who, according to the Record, had been the victims of propaganda. Because the people had been “deliberately and with malice aforethought misinformed,” they knew nothing about British atrocities in Ireland; once aware of the truth, the paper asserted, they would be horrified at the actions of their leaders.83 The Register perceived a growing sympathy for Ireland among “the intellectual classes, the literati, and among those whose sense of justice has not been blunted or totally deadened by bigotry, national hate and materialism.”84 Both papers quoted copious extracts from the British press that were critical of the government and reported the views of government critics such as G.K. Chesterton.85 As 1920 drew to a close, the Record began to raise difficult questions about Sinn Féin’s contribution to the “Irish Impasse.” How realistic was the goal of securing a separate Irish republic? And to what extent did Sinn Féin voters support that goal? The answers pointed in the direction of compromise. Church teaching held that rebellion could only be justified if it had a reasonable chance of success;

Canadian Catholic Press Reaction

135

but to “hold that Ireland in armed rebellion has a reasonable chance to succeed against the might of the British Empire is criminal folly.” In any case, the paper argued, many people had voted for Sinn Féin because they rejected Redmond’s position of Home Rule with partition and not because they wanted a republic. “The vast majority of the Irish people would accept Dominion Home Rule as a satisfactory and permanent settlement,” it asserted, “provided Ireland be given complete fiscal autonomy without which Home Rule would be illusory.”86 But the situation remained bleak, at least in the short run. The Register despaired that the English government was showing to the world “an exhibition of savagery ... the like of which has not been witnessed in a civilized country since the days of blood-thirsty Attila and his brutal hordes.”87 Continuing arrests, including those of Arthur Griffith and Eoin MacNeill, showed that the British had learned nothing. Previous arrests had only “strengthened convictions and fired others with the same impassioned spirit.”88 The paper prayed that “English hearts be turned away from all thought of tyranny and Irish hearts from revenge,” but saw little prospect of this happening.89 Nevertheless, in the long run, Ireland’s liberation “from her centuries of servitude was assured,” it proclaimed. “Ireland exemplifies Right, strenuously opposing Might.”90 The prospect that “Right” might triumph appeared closer with the establishment of a truce in July. Although a series of British military successes had weakened the republican forces, the British government was faced with increased domestic opposition to continuing coercion. Neither side would get all it wanted. It was clear that the British would never accept a republic, and the very act of entering negotiations meant that Sinn Féin would have to settle for something less. On the other side, the British had been forced to negotiate with men they had so frequently denounced as murderers.91 The Register was hopeful that the negotiations marked “the beginning of the end of that most barbarous and disgraceful oppression of a small Christian nation by a mighty empire,” but asserted that any settlement must be based on justice or it would be “spurned” by Irishmen.92 It placed little confidence in the integrity of Lloyd George, “an opportunist governed by the exigencies of the moment.” However, it thought that this very characteristic might, “under present weighty circumstances ... compel him to

136

Frederick J. McEvoy

walk straight.”93 The signing of the truce had “brought to an end an epochal struggle in which a half-armed peasantry forced terms of truce upon their mighty oppressors.” Irish arms had won the day, the Register believed, not realizing that the republican forces were themselves in a weakened state.94 For its part, the Record remained cautious. The Irish had been duped before, it argued, and might be again. The attitude of those who opposed Irish nationalism was “so prejudiced as to make the work of altering it almost superhuman,” militating against the “honorable peace ... laid on a broad and solid foundation” that was required.95 And the rumours that Britain would offer Ireland dominion Home Rule along Canadian lines were not exactly reassuring, since Ireland would not be able to conduct “a foreign policy of her own” – something that the dominions were beginning to demand. De Valera, it believed, would accept full dominion status “as a partner in a commonwealth of free nations” but would not settle for anything less.96 There was no doubt that Ireland could more than hold its own as an independent state within such a commonwealth. It had not only the material resources to govern itself but also “the moral right to freedom based upon an ancient nationality and a distinctive culture, language and tradition.”97 Renouncing the republic in name, the Record felt, “might not be too dear a price to pay for Irish unity.” However, true dominion status had not yet been offered, and the Irish people had “gone too far to turn back” and were “unwilling to accept anything except the undisguisedly free existence of their country, so plainly and forcibly enunciated by President de Valera.”98 The paper pronounced itself “invincibly optimistic as to the outcome.” England’s standing in the world had been damaged by “the utterly stupid and futile as well as utterly barbarous Black and Tan policy in Ireland”; it was now ready to “pay the price for peace with Ireland.”99 When news circulated that the negotiations might break down over the question of members of the Dáil taking an oath of allegiance to the Crown, the Record supported the right of the Irish delegates to hesitate over this issue. The weight of Irish history militated against any affection for the British monarchy; besides, Ireland had already renounced such allegiance, which had been the justification for “armed resistance to armed oppression.” Should the conference break down, the Irish delegates did not want enforcement of the oath of allegiance to serve as a pretext for

Canadian Catholic Press Reaction

137

Britain’s reinstituting “Black and Tanism” in Ireland. The paper believed this issue could be settled by making the king responsible only to his Irish ministers when dealing with Irish affairs.100 When the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed on 6 December 1921, both the Register and the Record welcomed it with open arms.101 “The agonizing cry that had gone up to heaven for seven long centuries and that stirred humanity’s soul to its very depths adown the ages” was finally answered, exulted the Register. As for the terms, if Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith were satisfied, then the paper was as well. And the fact that Unionists in Canada condemned the treaty as a surrender to Sinn Féin was another reason for supporting it.102 The Record believed that Ireland had become a republic in all but name and maintained that the reunion of the country would soon follow. Northern Unionists, it added, would be “treated with proverbial Irish generosity and given a caed mille failte home.”103 Given these benefits, the Record had no sympathy for de Valera’s opposition to the treaty. While in no way impugning “the sincerity of his patriotism or the purity of his intentions,” it dismissed him as having “the Woodrow Wilson type of mind. When he becomes obsessed with an idea he is impervious to reason and lost to the sense of realities.”104 Both papers welcomed the birth of a new Ireland, which they envisaged as being, above all else, Catholic. “The Irish people,” the Register wrote, “live by Catholic Faith as the body lives by the soul; ... the religion of Christ lies over them like an all-embracing heavenly canopy, like an atmosphere and life-element, interpenetrating their whole lives.” It was this faith that explained why seven hundred years of “terror of every kind” had been unable “to quench their aspirations or destroy their soul.”105 Not only Catholic, but Celtic: “The Irish now know that when the language of their country is Irish, the heart will be Irish! That an Irish-speaking Ireland will be free forever. For the language of a people is the soul of their nation. It is the genius of the people, it represents and preserves their beliefs and traditions, their type of mind and of heart, and these in turn survive in and through it. It is the key to national history, beliefs and psychology.”106 Ireland, “a great and self-ruling country when England was a country of painted savages,”107 had finally regained its lost nationhood and stood on the cusp of a brilliant future. While acknowledging that there was some

138

Frederick J. McEvoy

dissatisfaction with the treaty, neither paper realized that Ireland actually stood on the brink of civil war. They were also naive in their attitude toward Protestant Ulster, which would hardly have embraced the caed mille failte of Catholic Ireland. Both papers too readily assumed that a separate Ulster could not survive on its own and would quickly re-enter a Catholic Gaelic Ireland, where the rights of the Protestant minority would be “scrupulously and generously observed.”108 Protestants would be better treated, the Register asserted, than the Catholic minority in the north, 30,000 of whom had been “brutally driven out of Belfast.”109 The Record believed that “the men of brains and of substance” among northern Unionists realized that their prosperity was dependent upon economic union with the rest of the country; the problem lay with “the unreasoning prejudice of the dupes of Carsonism.”110 Such views were hopelessly unrealistic. There remains the question of how these papers reconciled their loyalty to Canada and the empire with their support of Irish freedom. First of all, they asserted that England’s actions in Ireland hurt the imperial cause, “bringing nothing but enmity, distrust and contempt to the British Empire.”111 In opposing this policy, the papers regarded themselves as the true upholders of British values, unlike the “grovelling” imperialists in Canada who were “wearing Carson’s cast- off clothes.”112 Secondly, they insisted that the British people were generally not to blame for the policies of their government; the real villains were Carson and his “dupes” and the British government, especially Lloyd George. It was possible to oppose their policies without being disloyal, as did many Britons such as Chesterton and imperialists such as General Smuts of South Africa. In The Waning of the Green, Mark McGowan concludes that by 1922 Irish Canadians in Toronto had progressed to middle-class status; their loyalty was to Canada, not Ireland, and they were “less distinguishable from their Protestant neighbours.” The Catholic press, including the Register and Record, he argues, were more concerned with Canadian issues and allotted far less space to Ireland than in the past; even after 1916 they “intellectualized the fight for self-government in terms of Wilsonian principles as distinguished from mounting passionate pleas for the ‘motherland.’”113 In fact they did both. While they appealed to the British government to apply the principle of self-determination to Ireland, they

Canadian Catholic Press Reaction

139

also denounced that government in the most vitriolic language, regularly referring to seven hundred years of injustice in Ireland and describing the motherland in the most sentimental terms. Although support for their stance was not unanimous, the amount of space they devoted to the Irish situation over a six-year period indicates that they were not out of sympathy with the view of the majority of their readership.114 In terms of identity, the increasing attachment of Irish Canadians to Canada and their closer integration into Canadian society did not necessarily mean a concomitant loss of their sense of Irishness. Idealized as their picture of Ireland might be, it was still the homeland to many, a dual loyalty that for them was not the least problematic.

to Terry Fenian

7 From Terry Finnegan to Terry Fenian: The Truncated Literary Career of James McCarroll michael peterman This is the story of a man who has largely been forgotten today but who was a major literary figure in pre-Confederation Canada – the Irish-born and Leitrim-raised James McCarroll (1814–92). It is the story of a man who was regarded by others as possessing an “unmistakable stamp of genius”1 and who with good reason saw himself as having “an undoubted status in literature and music.”2 As well, it is the story of an Irish Canadian Protestant who may well have been an Orangeman in his youth but who undoubtedly became a Fenian later in life.3 The forty-two-year-old James McCarroll arrived in the flourishing provincial hub of Toronto in 1856, having resided in Canada since 1831. The decade to follow would prove both the pinnacle of his burgeoning literary career and the workshop out of which he shifted his allegiance from the prospects of the Canadian colony to the Fenian cause. A salaried employee of Her Majesty’s Customs since 1849, he had served in Cobourg, Port Stanford (near Niagara Falls), and Port Credit before being promoted to the Port of Toronto as the city’s outdoor surveyor.4 He had gained his customs position by means of a patronage appointment. His benefactor was Francis Hincks,5 who had admired and appreciated McCarroll’s strong and tough support of the Reform cause in his paper, the Peterborough Chronicle (1843–46), and in other local newspapers in which he was subsequently involved.6 McCarroll of course had vigorously courted that appointment.

From Terry Finnegan to Terry Fenian

141

The move to Toronto was much desired. Here, among a populace of some fifty thousand, he could enjoy access to theatre and music, and form friendships with influential city figures, particularly those of Irish birth.7 By 1857 he was well settled in the city with his wife and four daughters, drawing a comfortable salary and taking daily advantage of cultural and social opportunities he had long desired.8 Despite the demands of his customs position, he was able to devote plenty of time to writing for city newspapers and magazines, exercising his skills as journalist, poet, humorist, musician, music and theatre reviewer, and story writer. From 1853 to 1865, close to a hundred of McCarroll’s poems appeared in the Toronto (Daily) Leader, owned by a successful Irish businessman, James Beaty.9 In these, McCarroll revealed himself to be a lyrical poet of many moods, celebrating important public events, tracing the highs and lows of his emotions, and sharing amusing vernacular verses from his “Irish Anthology.” Other McCarroll poems and stories appeared in the Anglo-American Magazine, the Home Journal, and the British North-American Magazine, while several were reprinted in provincial newspapers.10 In Selections from Canadian Poets (1864), the first anthology to be undertaken in the colony, the Rev. Edward H. Dewart included six McCarroll poems, describing him as “long and favourably known to the Canadian public as a writer of verse.”11 Not surprisingly, given his position as an Irish journalist and poet in Canada, McCarroll formed in Toronto a close literary connection with Thomas D’Arcy McGee, the former Young Ireland rebel who had become an Irish American ultramontanist and who moved to Canada in 1857. McGee published McCarroll’s poem “Madeline” in his Montreal newspaper, the New Era, commenting that this “fine poem [is] from the pen of a man of true genius.”12 On at least two occasions, McCarroll was a member of the platform party that welcomed McGee when he spoke in Toronto.13 It was McGee’s growing public prominence that led McCarroll in 1861 to invent the character Terry Finnegan, McGee’s “lovin cousin” – and to begin to publish the satirical Terry Finnegan letters that became so popular in pre-Confederation Canada. Figures like Terry had a long pedigree in English drama and Irish fiction before McCarroll created his cheerful Toronto version of the talkative “stage Irishman.” For decades, popular Irish writers had been

142

Michael Peterman

transforming the English stock character into a positive Irish force. Gerald Griffin, John Banim, William Carleton, and Samuel Lover,14 among others, gave to “Paddy” the gift of the gab, an agreeable personality, and a positive presence in their (usually) rural communities. Other examples of the genre, such as John Jackson’s Terry Driscoll letters, originally appearing in the Dublin Warder, had been republished in Canadian newspapers during the 1840s and 1850s,15 and McCarroll himself had experimented with the form as early as 1851 in the Cobourg Star.16 Maureen Waters has identified four types of the comic Irishman in her book of the same title: the rustic clown or omadhaun; the rogue or outlaw; the stage Irishman; and the comic hero.17 Cleverly, McCarroll drew upon elements of each. In his hands the caricature became neither fool nor reprobate; rather, Terry was a breezy and opinionated Torontonian, rough edged, perceptive, warm hearted, and well connected. Regularly, he waxed nostalgic about “Ould Ireland,” celebrating “rale Celtic blood” and “the janius of the anshent Irish,” even as he offered observations on Toronto social life and the complexities of Canadian politics.18 Satirical in purpose and marked by verbal flourishes and performative excesses, the Terry Finnegan letters found their outlet in a series of experimental comic papers that surfaced in Toronto in the early 1860s, usually to fail within a few months – papers such as Momus in 1861, which began with an extravagant advertising campaign and collapsed after about ten issues.19 But with the emergence of Erastus Wiman and John Ross Robertson’s satirical weekly, the Grumbler, which proved more substantial and durable, the letters found a regular home.20 The first series of letters, numbering thirty-eight, were organized into book form by McCarroll in the fall of 1863 and published in Toronto by the Toronto News Company as The Letters of Terry Finnegan (1864). As McGee’s flamboyant “cousin,” Terry Finnegan inhabited the lowly Stanley Street in Toronto – a working-class Irish area with a reputation for hard drinking, brawling, and prostitution, which existed in ironic counterpoint to McGee’s middle-class and respectable milieu.21 From this angle, and viewing Irish Canadian life through “the right sort of goggles,” Terry provided a comic and subversive take on current political rhetoric and posturing as well as on prevailing standards of genteel behaviour as he observed them in Toronto (letter 35).

From Terry Finnegan to Terry Fenian

143

The notoriety of “Stanly Street” did not bother Terry in the least; on the contrary, it was home to him. His letters offer frequent accounts of local “donnybrooks” in which he had been inadvertently involved; he also mentions his long-suffering wife Biddie and some of their mutual friends and relatives, and sometimes begs Darcy to send him more (free) government stationery to use in his writing. Still, Terry had plenty of freedom and creative energy and was not lacking in strong opinion: he had the run of the city and the ear of leading figures such as Ogle Gowan and James Moylan (as McCarroll himself certainly did); he was always ready to comment on the doings of Parliament and the behaviour of Irish politicians such as Michael Foley, who shared with McGee a reputation for capacious drinking.22 In effect, Terry was McCarroll’s savvy jeu d’esprit, his comic means of highlighting his concern for the Irish in Canada. He paid close attention to the situations in which McGee, as an elected politician, found himself, regularly advising him to keep free of compromising arrangements and narrow alliances and to attend specifically to Irish interests. “We can’t afford to keep you out of the [H]ouse, if it was only for the pleasure of hearin you talk,” he wrote in June 1861 (letter 7). “Sorra thank you!” he offered in another letter, “for you’ve not only got the gift of the gab, but the nack of usin’ it to advantage” (letter 10). Of course, Terry shared a similar gift with his cousin. The pleasure of his letters lies in their expressiveness, the melodic and charming interplay of vernacular phrasing spiced with astute observations and an occasional, penetrating insight. In 1861 Terry chided McGee for aligning himself with George Brown, the Scottish-born founder of the Globe and a politician who feared the growing power of Catholicism in Canada. “You can’t work the Pope and John Knox wid the same sthring,” Terry wrote. “Be indepindent, as they say ... That’s the way to make money. Always keep one leg loose on the flure” (letter 1). In the sharkinfested waters of Canadian politics, McGee needed to be adaptive, alert, and opportunistic; he had to “look to number one, even at the expinse of a few summersets” (letter 24). Terry advised him to be a tumbler: “Rouse yourself, mavourneen, and step into office with the agility of a mountebank” (letter 8). Such was the continual essence of Terry’s advice: Look out for yourself and be agile. It was never high minded or moralistic, except in its devotion to Ireland. Above all, Terry urged McGee to “beware of principle and

144

Michael Peterman

consistency; for a divil a two worse brickbats a man ever carried in his hat” (letter 14). In literary terms, Terry’s voice allowed McCarroll to celebrate Irish “janius” and spontaneity and to criticize then-prominent Canadian poets such as Alexander McLachlan as dull, stodgy, and moralistic; he caustically dismissed McLachlan as a poet who “lies a very Lazarus at the gates of true poesy” (letter 8). Having offered McGee a spontaneously written poem, “Peggy Morin,” in the Irish vernacular, he added, “Och! me darlin! there’s a sthrake of the bog dale in me that lights like a candle whin the time comes; and that’s the raison I know that I don’t belong to that unfortshunate class of ferrits that are forever berried up to their eyes in an idaya-burrow, and bringin to the surface every thin that even a pawnbroker could minshun, except the rale rabbit itself” (letter 15). The letters reflect McCarroll’s abiding interests in music and poetry, in performance and mood, in subversive humour and social commentary – “the rale rabbit” that he found in the mood, cadence, and musicality of “Tommy” Moore but rarely found among his “Canadian” contemporaries.23 In fact, Terry did not hesitate to criticize McGee himself who, he claimed, had little ear for music: “[D]on’t attempt to sing, for pon my sowl, you have a voice like a corn-crake, and poet and all as you are, you have no more idaya of music than a steam-whishel.”24 At the same time, Terry (and McCarroll) intuited that “a sthrange fatality follows the Irish, no matther how exalted their position.”25 This sense of fatality haunted both McGee and McCarroll and, at least in McCarroll’s case, involved a double or multiple sense of identity. “It’s the thruth I’m tellin you,” Terry wrote. “Nearly all male persons are double – a blaggard and a gintleman – the latter bein the husk and the former, in most cases, the kernel; and begorra sometimes I feel it in myself; although, like the rest of thim, I’m always inclined to put the best fut foremost and keep, if possible, the wake ankled lad in the back grounds” (letter 24). While Terry cheerfully wrote that a real Irishman “couldn’t behave himself for a single quarther of an hour if he even had a whole townland in Paradise to himself” (letter 28), he argued in practical terms that one should maintain a goodhumoured perspective and keep up both face and outlook, regardless of the circumstances. Such advice would soon prove impossible for McCarroll to follow. Indeed, the weight of untoward events

From Terry Finnegan to Terry Fenian

145

would strain the elasticity of his personal good humour and perspective and undermine his creative energies. In fact, neither Terry nor his ventriloquist was as tranquil and easygoing as they appeared. Terry’s evaluation of particular politicians altered markedly over time as did his views on the United States (then deeply involved in its Civil War) and the uncertain future of Canada: “Sure, alannah, as long as it’s English and Frinch and Frinch and English,” he told McGee, “yez will niver get along; Jean Baptiste will niver play succond fiddle to yez or us up here durin secula seculorum.” While he could admire “the rale, prime republican sintiment that can dispense wid yer ould counthry nonsinse” (letter 17), he deplored the fratricidal war, the fact of slavery, and the attitudinizing of both the North and the South during the conflict. Throughout the First Series of the letters he reveals himself as a monarchist rather than a republican and as a Reformer now schooled to think in conservative terms.26 In letter 29 (7 August 1863) Terry wrote, “There’s no other way of savin this same counthry except through the thorough establishment and recognition of the monarchical prenciple. It is this alone that can tighten us up to the friendly skirts of England and save us from the open maw of the neighborin Republic” (69). Still, Terry, like McGee, maintained a residual hostility to those “friendly skirts,” a hostility that in McCarroll’s case was now susceptible to quick expression. A man of many opinions and voices, McCarroll also had an eclectic range of journalistic friendships and political connections; somehow, he managed simultaneously to be on good terms with Charles Lindsay, the former Reform journalist and editor of the Leader, Ogle Gowan, the founder of the Orange Order in Canada, and James Moylan, the conservative Catholic editor of the Canadian Freeman – the latter two were hardly political bedfellows. Yet there was always the risk that McCarroll’s satiric thrusts would make him some dangerous enemies, particularly when his hits were directed against Scottish and English politicians in influential government positions. Take, for example, his depiction of co-premier John Sandfield Macdonald, in the poem “Three Loaded Dice”: Shrivel’d ugly and hard—sharp, repulsive and thin; With no body without, and no spirit within; With the face of a fox, and a heart made of ice, Every number he throws is with three loaded dice.27

146

Michael Peterman

Given that Sandfield Macdonald had the power to remove McCarroll from the customs service, this was not exactly a clever career move. The axe fell in September 1863, when McCarroll was fired, probably at Sandfield Macdonald’s behest.28 Significantly, the men who rushed to his assistance were two of the leading Fenians in Toronto – Michael Murphy, founder of the Hibernian Benevolent Society and head centre of the Fenian Brotherhood in Canada, and Patrick Boyle, editor of the pro-Fenian Irish Canadian.29 In fact, McCarroll had been involved with the Irish Canadian right from the start and likely served as its initial editor; his poem “Resurgam,” praising the heroic Celts who fought to the death for Ireland, appeared in the paper’s first issue and supplied its motto.30 In the summer of 1863, perhaps because of a temporary break with the owners of the Irish Canadian, he had started up his own weekly satirical newspaper, the Latch-Key, where he published several Terry Finnegan letters and launched criticisms of the customs investigators, whom he would also blame for his dismissal. The Latch-Key was probably undercapitalized and lasted only a couple of months.31 For the next two and a half years, McCarroll continued to write poems and comic letters for Canadian newspapers, undertook various journalistic assignments with a political purpose, performed on his flute at various charity concerts in Toronto, and in 1865 set out upon a whole new initiative, a comic and musical one-man show that he hoped would capitalize on his Finnegan fame and draw large audiences in search of amusement. The challenge was great; he knew how difficult it was to eke out a living as a freelance writer and musician in mid-nineteenth-century Toronto, and he was soon aware of the problems of organizing and promoting such a tour across Canada West, from Ottawa to Chatham. At the same time he remained deeply embittered by the circumstances of his dismissal. An article in the Irish Canadian, probably written by McCarroll himself, described his case as a typical example of antiIrish prejudice in Canada; its title was the increasingly familiar “No Irish Need Apply.”32 McCarroll’s belief that he had been the victim of anti-Irish discrimination, along with the precariousness of his financial situation and his connection with Michael Murphy and Patrick Boyle, suggest that he could easily move in the direction of Fenianism. However, he was not completely alienated from the Canadian political system or his creative outlets in Toronto; against

From Terry Finnegan to Terry Fenian

147

increasing evidence to the contrary, he remained confident that his friend John A. Macdonald would soon find him a suitable position. Indeed, by March 1864, John A. Macdonald’s Liberal-Conservative government was back in power, with D’Arcy McGee as the minister of agriculture, immigration, and statistics. Against this background, McCarroll presented himself as Macdonald’s adviser about Toronto Irish politics and as the man who could help to build a political alliance between Macdonald’s Liberal-Conservatives and Murphy’s Hibernians. The central task, McCarroll informed Macdonald, was to get McGee to stop writing letters against “Fenianism or the Hibernian Society,” since they only produced an anti-government backlash. McCarroll explained that he had been using his influence with the Irish Canadian to prevent it from supporting Sandfield Macdonald’s previous government but that the prospect of drawing the newspaper into the Liberal-Conservative fold was remote as long as McGee kept up his attacks. Even though he was a Protestant, McCarroll continued, he had the ear and the trust of the city’s Irish Catholics, and he knew that “an under current of feeling runs, to some extent, through the united mass, which is secretly unfriendly to the doctrines propounded by Mr. McGee in relation to Irish affairs.” “In whatever I have done for the paper,” McCarroll wrote of the Irish Canadian, “I have always endeavoured to keep within constitutional bounds, and to smooth down the asperities existing between the Catholic, and the Orange body. I have done much in that direction; but I can’t do anything more, if the Hibernians are to be denounced as rebels. I am no member of their Association; nor do I sympathize with their existence; but there is a large number of them here who are voters, and I want to see them right when the time comes.” If McGee would do his part by “letting the Hibernians alone,” McCarroll would do his best to bring them into the government’s camp.33 In a letter a few months later, McCarroll urged Macdonald to address his own situation – to reinstate him in the customs service, find him a new government position at a similar level, compensate him with a year’s back pay, or lend him some money. He had been impoverished and “humiliated” by his political enemies, and he feared that he might have made himself “so obnoxious to men who are now supporting you, that you might find it unpleasant to thrust me upon them at this particular juncture.”34 He continually

148

Michael Peterman

reminded Macdonald of his services to the Liberal-Conservatives – his attacks on Sandfield Macdonald in the Irish Canadian, for example, under the title of “The Thugs” (which John A. Macdonald had welcomed), and the way in which he “manipulated” the leading articles in the Canadian Freeman in John A. Macdonald’s favour.35 During the summer of 1864, a restless and frustrated McCarroll started a new satirical newspaper, the Growler, which lasted for only four issues (22 July to 19 August); it was followed by a reincarnated Latch-Key, which was almost equally short-lived, beginning in September and folding in November. Containing a characteristic mix of comic poems, dialogues or playlets, silly puns, and deliberately bad jokes, both papers continued McCarroll’s campaign to undermine the credibility of the customs investigators, to reassert his own worthiness, and to support the Great Coalition between Macdonald and Brown. Although the papers failed, McCarroll maintained his small Toronto printing office, which continued to be useful in his struggle to make something of a living. “It was with this little office that I fought the battles of the Hon. Mr. McGee when Sandfield cut his [McGee’s] throat,” he reminded Macdonald. “It was from this little office that ‘Three Loaded Dice’ was issued when you were on the Opposition Benches.”36 McCarroll had good reason to hope that Macdonald would finally reward him for his services. The two men had been drinking companions in 1862, and Macdonald had promised in several letters to do what he could for him when the time was right.37 And indeed, Macdonald had twice privately assured William McDonnell in December 1864 that McCarroll was “a good fellow” and that he would “take care of him.”38 Yet by the spring of 1865, after Macdonald had been in power for a year, nothing had happened – despite his assurances and despite McCarroll’s begging letters and his support for the government. An enervating cloud of frustration began to set in; McCarroll’s family was suffering increasing privations, and his nerves were becoming frayed. Frustration gradually turned to anger, and anger gradually turned into a sense of betrayal. From McCarroll’s perspective, all his efforts had run up against a stone wall of ingratitude: Canada appeared to be a country that was dominated by Anglo-Saxons, aided and abetted by Scots, where Irishmen like himself suffered discrimination and injustice without restitution.39 He could summon up little confidence in the prospect of “this great confederashun job,” for it

From Terry Finnegan to Terry Fenian

149

would serve only to confirm the anti-Irish prejudices he saw all around him.40 In these circumstances, McCarroll increasingly identified with Toronto’s Fenians – with men such as Michael Murphy, who had helped him when he was down (unlike Macdonald, who had offered only empty promises), men who had railed against English and Scottish domination of Canada West and articulated the grievances of Irishmen who had endured oppression and discrimination at home and abroad. During the spring of 1865, a frustrated James McCarroll transformed “Terry Finnegan” into “Terry Fenian,” author of a poem, “A New Song,” that was a clarion call for an Irish revolution. It demanded “a just liquidation” of old woes and an end to the “degrading, vile fetters” and mean servility imposed on the Irish by the Saxons. And it called to arms a “half million men,” who would use rifles and pikes to “redress all the wrongs of our down-trodden People.”41 The context of the struggle remained Ireland, however, rather than Canada. In effect, under the pseudonym, McCarroll stepped forward as the poet of Canadian Fenianism. He was wearying of the demands of the one-man show he had set up in Toronto in December 1864 and taken across the province during 1865. Probably, the show itself increasingly became a vehicle not only for Terry’s usual satirical commentary on Canadian politics but also for the cause of Irish revolutionary nationalism. On tour in September 1865 in Keenansville, a village northwest of Toronto, he penned a poem entitled “The Fenian’s Vow,” which looked forward to the liberation of Ireland through physical force: The Great O’Connell sought in vain Our rights, by peaceful Agitation: What did that mighty Chief obtain? Naught but a mock Emancipation. The poor disfranchised by the Act, The rich to office elevated; But the Fenian’s [sic] now proclaim the fact That Ireland must be liberated. That Gallant Tribune, we confess, By peaceful means and strong persuasion, Sought long our grievance to redress –

150

Michael Peterman

Alas, ’twas all hallucination. The Saxon sneered at honest Dan, His “moral force” and peace orations; But the Fenians boldly now tell “John” That Ireland’s rank must be with Nations. Some worthy men oppose our cause, Whilst other knaves, for place and pension, Will eulogize the British Laws, But Ireland’s wrongs they seldom mention. Let such, their country’s cause desert, Leave her in woe and degradation, But the Fenians fearlessly assert, That Ireland soon must be a Nation. We’re well aware of Britain’s power, Her wealth and strength and vast resources; But we’re prepared at any hour, With will and might, to meet her forces. Our Isle has been, for centuries long, The scene of blood and desolation; But the Fenians vow to avenge the wrong, And swear their Isle must be a Nation.42 Such views were hardly in the mainstream tradition of loyalist English-speaking Canada; McCarroll had become increasingly alienated from Canadian politics, just as he had become marginalized economically. In desperation, he tried another tack with Macdonald, asking him in January 1866 for a loan of a hundred dollars to finance a trip to Boston, where he hoped to find a publisher for a couple of his book-length manuscripts.43 Neither the loan nor the publishing contract was forthcoming. From Buffalo in March, he penned his last letter to Macdonald, complaining about the “shameful manner in which I have been treated,” recognizing that he had been cut adrift by Canadian politicians, and declaring that “the mission of my life is to seek redress by honorable means.” “I shall shortly be in a position to command attention on this head,” he added, “not only through the press of Canada but that of this country with which I will soon be identified intimately.”44

From Terry Finnegan to Terry Fenian

151

By this time, McCarroll had decided to leave Canada and forsake his adopted country for good. In early February he had travelled to Buffalo, ostensibly to perform his one-man show and visit friends; he never returned. In announcing his visit to Buffalo, the Irish Canadian described him as “one of the few Protestant Irishmen, with whom we meet in these distant parts, who have not yet forgotten the land of their birth” – in other words, one who supported the Fenian movement.45 After a brief interval, McCarroll chose to link himself, perhaps according to a prior plan, to Patrick O’Dea, an auctioneer who was one of Buffalo’s leading and most outspoken Fenians. O’Dea was an active supporter of the Senate Wing’s strategy of liberating Ireland by invading Canada, and helped to bring Fenian guns and ammunition to the Canadian border. According to the evidence available, it was only at this point that McCarroll’s commitment to Irish nationalism shifted from an Irish to a North American focus. There is no evidence that McCarroll took part in the Fenian invasion attempt of May–June 1866 – although, as we shall see, his later novel on the subject shows that he was among its strongest supporters and was privy to much detail. By the autumn of 1866, McCarroll was editing O’Dea’s Buffalo Globe and writing impassioned Irish nationalist poetry under the pen name Irish Wolfdog. One such poem was “National Music,” a ghoulish and melodramatic metaphor representing the agonies of the “decent poor” in a famineracked and foreign-owned Ireland, and contrasting the starving Celts with the dancing Saxons: In a mansion built with the mould’ring bones Of those who died from the want of bread, There’s a festive throng though the nation groans With the weight of its dying and its dead. Grim skulls are the lamps that hang around, Their oil is the widow’s silent tear; And the heart of the orphan paves the ground That is floored with the houseless wanderer’s bier. But is not the music sad and wild? It falls on the ear like a smothered shriek.

152

Michael Peterman

The alto’s sung by a hungry child With a scalding tear on its withered cheek. And the tenor’s raved in a mother’s prayer, As she wildly clings to her starving boy, While angels weep o’er the ragged pair Who have never tasted a moment’s joy. And the bass is an old man’s feeble moan, Who had toiled through a life of sighs and tears, For a piece of a coarse brown loaf alone, Till bowed to the dust of four score years. And the treble’s sobbed by the decent poor Who tried to conceal their hapless state, Till the landlord drove them to the door And bared to the world their wretched fate. And the chorus bursts in wild despair, From the bloodless lips of a famished throng, While a heartstring breaking here and there Beats sullen time to the mournful song. But the dancers still sweep gaily by, Or turn to the pale and ragged band, To ask who it is that dares to sigh When they sing for the great of the Saxon land.46 Likely, such poems appeared in the Buffalo Globe alongside complaints about the Canadian customs service and attacks on Canadian politicians and the Confederation agenda – providing a gauge of the depth and intensity of McCarroll’s continuing anger. But although he mailed copies of the paper to friends and editorial colleagues in Canada, his writings commanded little attention north of the border; in fact, they were probably of diminishing interest to his readers in Buffalo. No record has been found to verify when and why the Buffalo Globe ceased to appear. Buffalo already had a Fenian paper, the Courier, and the Globe no doubt struggled to develop a sufficient number of subscribers. Whatever the case, it folded, and in 1868

From Terry Finnegan to Terry Fenian

153

McCarroll was again Patrick O’Dea’s choice to edit his second Fenian newspaper, the Fenian Volunteer. As with the Globe, copies found their way to the desks of some Canadian editors. By now, however, McCarroll was viewed by many in Canada as a traitor to his adopted country. He was a dangerous enough figure that Canadian border detectives under Gilbert McMicken kept close watch on his movements. It was reported that he bragged about having vital information concerning vulnerabilities along the Canadian border as a result of his lengthy experience as a customs officer.47 Predictably, McCarroll’s Fenianism generated a few sharp reactions in the Canadian press. From his editorial perch at the Canadian Freeman, James Moylan kept watch on McCarroll’s writing for the Buffalo Globe and passed material on to John A. Macdonald. In November 1866 Moylan quoted from editorials mocking McCarroll in the Montreal Gazette and Toronto Leader (McCarroll’s old home base). However, he also printed a letter written in support of McCarroll as a writer and musician. Despite great mistrust, there remained in Moylan a residual admiration for the man. The supporter, named Sacerdos (priest), wrote that although McCarroll had laid himself open “to animadversion on the part of the super-loyal papers of this province,” the fact remained that he was “an accomplished flautist, and a classical English writer” whose “purity of diction – vigor of style and loftiness of sentiment” far exceeded those of the writers who ridiculed him.48 By early 1867, Moylan had turned completely against McCarroll. If he tried to return to Canada, Moylan wrote, he would probably be tarred and feathered. It was not only a matter of McCarroll’s connection with O’Dea’s “firebrand Fenian sheet,” bad enough as that was; it was also because his “wanton and undeserved attacks upon the public and private character of the Hon. J.A. Macdonald” had “rendered the name of Terry Finnegan, alias James McCarroll, odious and contemptible throughout the Province.” What Moylan had once viewed as McCarroll’s justified claim on the government and John A. Macdonald had now become a “contemptible” species of ingratitude.49 Moylan’s anger became even more intense after the assassination of his much-admired friend, D’Arcy McGee, in April 1868. Unfortunately, like most of McCarroll’s Buffalo writing, his remarks in the Fenian Volunteer about the assassination are no longer extant; whatever he wrote, though, was enough to drive Moylan into

154

Michael Peterman

paroxysms of fury. McCarroll, he fumed, had committed “the heinous and unnatural offence of libelling and dishonouring the dead,” and his sentiments were “the most atrocious and diabolical that we ever saw published.” The rest of Moylan’s attack is worth reproducing at length: There is no subject too sacred, no personage too venerable or exalted ... to escape the coarse and defamatory malevolence of the lewd and dissolute creature, who – after having made Canada too hot for himself by debauchery and every species of rascality – now so worthily fills the editorial chair of the Fenian Volunteer. This person, after having assigned reasons for the murder of Mr. McGee, which have no other foundation than the promptings of his own filthy and impure mind, enters upon a vindication of Whalen [sic] ... It is with reluctance and loathing we refer to this alleged apostate Catholic, this ex-secretary of the Peterborough Orange Lodge, this rampant Tory whilst living on the good things in Canada. He is now the dastardly defamer of Thomas D’Arcy McGee in his grave; and, to our knowledge, and to that of hundreds in Toronto, this self same “Terry Finnegan” was the most abject sycophant and toady to the late member for Montreal West until all hope of being reinstated in office died away in his breast.50 Moylan warned all readers of the Fenian Volunteer to mistrust its editor and to reject anything he wrote. Curiously, but perhaps accurately, he also labelled his former friend “an extreme anti-Fenian, whilst a resident in Canada,” a reflection of his sense of McCarroll when he knew him in Toronto.51 It is a disturbing portrait and one that requires clarification. To see McCarroll as “a violent Tory partisan” or an abject “toady” to McGee is patently absurd. He was a Reformer at heart, albeit more conservatively inclined in the 1860s, and it was in Macdonald, not in McGee, that he had placed his hopes for professional restitution. McCarroll was certainly obsessive in his belief that patronage would save him, that he had “cause” to await such help, and that he deserved an opportunity to avenge himself on those responsible for his dismissal. In this obsession lay his real weakness, for in his single-mindedness he forsook a commitment to his genuinely liter-

From Terry Finnegan to Terry Fenian

155

ary gifts, his imagination, and his sense of humour. It was his disappointment and anger that propelled him toward Fenianism, which in turn became the first step in pursuit of his new identity as an Irish American writer and journalist. The final stage in McCarroll’s Canadian saga and the initiation of his new writing life in America came with the publication of Ridgeway, An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada (1868) – a novel that presented a justification of the abortive Fenian raid into Canada in 1866. In the process, McCarroll drew on his knowledge of the Battle of Ridgeway, the organizational structure of the Fenians of Buffalo and western New York, the politics of pre-Confederation Canada, and his own roots in County Leitrim, which he made the childhood home of his abducted heroine, Kate McCarthy. Mostly written before D’Arcy McGee’s death but published afterwards, it has much more to do with McCarroll’s continuing anger with John A. Macdonald than with McGee; indeed, McGee is scarcely mentioned in the novel.52 Thus, although it records the events of the invasion and battle (30 May to 2 June 1866), it is set in 1868 when the new Dominion of Canada was an established political fact and, against the logic of McCarroll’s Fenian outlook, a country in which a fresh sense of national identity was beginning to find expression. Even so, it constituted his final indictment of his former country and the friends he had counted on to minister to his cause. In using the Celtic pen name Scian Dubh, (black knife), he offered a suggestive guide to his personal motivation.53 It is likely that McCarroll was paid to write the “romance” by Fenian friends in Buffalo, for although it seeks in some ways to present a balanced report on the invasion, it reads generally as a Fenian tract and a congratulatory acknowledgment of prominent individuals involved in the brotherhood. Using his own printing press, McCarroll published the novel from his office, “M’Carroll & Co. Publishers, corner of Swan and Pearl Streets in Buffalo,” and marketed it through the American News Company in New York City. For many months he ran an advertisement in the Irish Canadian offering a paperback or “People’s edition” at fifty cents and a “Library (hardcover) edition” for a dollar.54 The only review of note – in the Irish Canadian – is remarkably bland; it offered a plot summary that stressed a tried and true theme: “a very commendable trait of Irish peasant life, namely, the

156

Michael Peterman

constancy of Irish affection in humble circumstances.” As well, it described “M’Carroll” as being “well known in this city [Buffalo] and ... ever deemed a patriotic Irishman.”55 In fact, he was involved in various cultural activities in Buffalo, including the dedicatory celebration of the city’s new concert hall (for which he wrote a commemorative song), and the organization of its first ymca. The novel’s eighteen-page introduction rehearses the long suffering of the Irish under British rule. With unremitting rhetorical flourish, its beginning echoes its epigraph from Thomas Moore – “On our side is virtue and Erin; On theirs is the Saxon and guilt”: In the dark, English crucible of seven hundred years of famine, fire and sword, the children of Ireland have been tested to an intensity unknown in the annals of any other people. From the days of the second Henry down to those of the last of the Georges, every device that human ingenuity could encompass or the most diabolical spirit entertain, was brought to bear upon them, not only with a view to insuring their speedy degradation, but with the further design of accomplishing ultimately the utter extinction of their race. (iii) In his history lesson, McCarroll took special aim at “the satanic spirit” of “that lewd monster, Elizabeth, [who] disgraced her sex and the age” in initiating the Laws of the Pale and various “modes of extermination” (vii). Like McGee in his earlier days, he cited chapter and verse from the annals of English imperialism in order to create empathy for his downtrodden people; at one time or another both men yearned “for yet another Clontarf” and were, on behalf of their countrymen, “hoarse with the pent-up vengeance of centuries” (iii). Praising the generosity and humanity of the Irish character and the free spirit of the American people (“the day-star of freedom on this continent” [46]), the introduction predicts the dawning of a new day when “the vast army of the Irish Republic” would amass itself along the American border. At that time, the ancient cultural legacy of the Irish – “learned, philosophic, and chivalrous” (iv) – would be reasserted and a suffering people rewarded for their long enslavement. The only faults McCarroll was willing to attribute to his people were a tendency to knight-errantry and a lack of homogeneity, “without which a nation must always remain powerless” (iv).

From Terry Finnegan to Terry Fenian

157

Nevertheless, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he asserted that the time of Irish unity had at last arrived. In his monomaniacal assertiveness, McCarroll predicted that the fighting spirit he so admired in his countrymen would finally exert itself victoriously. The novel plays out its theme of Irish constancy and affection on North American soil, offering commentary on the Canadian political situation in the wake of Confederation and the Fenian plan to rescue Canadians from themselves by relieving them of the new version of Anglo-Saxon government under which they currently suffered. The narrative proposes a hopeful but preposterous union of Irish goodwill and aspiration with American political leadership, one that would have made little sense to the complex amalgam of ethnoreligious groups that comprised Canada in 1867–68. In McCarroll’s view, the Fenian movement was helping to spread “the cause of liberty and of republican institutions” (27) to the benighted subjects of Britain in Ireland and Canada – something that would surely be supported by the American government and people. After all, the annexation of Canada to the United States corresponded with “the fixed impression of every true American that the Canadas belonged of right to the great people who ruled the continent” (127). Annexation would be welcomed by the Canadian people themselves, he believed, because in Canada, as he wanted to see it, England had “no secure footing in the hearts of the masses” (29). The possibility that Canadians might not be willing to exchange one form of imperialism for another simply to enjoy better material advantages was not a matter of consideration. He had in fact forgotten his old view that monarchical institutions offered the best form of governance in the New World. McCarroll’s new enthusiasm for America is striking. He had finally given himself over to “the stars and stripes” that he and Terry Finnegan had resisted on various grounds for years. Home was the busy and Irish-rich city of Buffalo (149) and “the glorious Republic before which all the nations now bow” (125). By contrast, the “New Dominion” of Canada had only a “partial life” in a cold climate (“Lying in a strip against the North pole” [144]), watched over by a government that was “the most wretched that could possibly be found among a people professing to be free” (144–5). The utter failure of the invasion and the inability of the Fenian leaders to reinforce their troops in Canada were awkward facts that McCarroll skated lightly over (150–1).

158

Michael Peterman

The novel ends by taking solace in the “happily ever after” of its bland and melodramatic romance, although McCarroll could not resist including his fiery Fenian poem, “The Irish Wolf,” as one element of his conclusion: Seek music in the wolf’s fierce howl, Or pity in his blood-shot eye, When hunger drives him out to prowl Beneath a rayless, northern sky. But seek not that we shall forgive The hand that strikes us to the heart, And yet, in mock’ry, bids us live To count our stars as they depart. We’ve fed the tyrant with our blood, – Won all her battles! – built her throne! – Established her on land and flood, And sought her glory, next our own. We raised her up from low estate And plucked her pagan soul from hell, And led her up to heaven’s own gate, Till she, for gold, like Judas, fell. And when, in one, long, soulless night She lay, unknown to wealth or fame, We gave her empire – riches – light, And taught her how to spell her name. But, now, ungenerous and unjust, Forgetful of our old renown, She bows us to the very dust, But wears our jewels in her Crown!56 Henceforth, McCarroll would identify himself with the American empire; in contributing to that empire, and by trying to extend its reach to Canada, the Irish would receive the generous and just rewards that had been denied them under the British Crown – or so he believed. Having taken this position, he became a non-

From Terry Finnegan to Terry Fenian

159

person in the country where he had struggled mightily, produced his best imaginative work, and developed his literary fame as a poet and as the “inimitable” Terry Finnegan.57 When Nicholas Flood Davin published his comprehensive The Irishman in Canada in 1878, a book that dropped so many names that its readers needed hard hats, James McCarroll was conspicuously absent. This deliberate omission has had a lasting effect. Just as Thomas D’Arcy McGee has been written out of Irish history because he was deemed to be “unsound on the national question,” McCarroll has been written out of Canadian literary history because he was deemed to be an ungrateful apostate.

he National Question

8 Irish Canadians and the National Question in Canada garth stevenson The at times uneasy relationship between “English” and “French” Canadians, sometimes referred to as the national question, has long been recognized as the dominant fact in Canadian political life and Canadian history. Lord Durham, perhaps the first observer to make a systematic study of the subject, memorably described the relationship in 1839 as one of “two nations warring in the bosom of a single state.” The French social scientist André Siegfried, who visited Canada early in the twentieth century, entitled his study of the country Le Canada: Les Deux Races. Although his visit occurred in calmer times than that of Lord Durham, Siegfried also emphasized the seemingly inevitable conflict between the two founding peoples. Unlike Lord Durham, Siegfried, a French Protestant, was deeply interested in the sociology of religion, and his book emphasized the contrast between the Catholicism of the French Canadians and the Protestantism of “English” Canadians as a factor that reinforced the conflict that seemed to characterize the relationship. Several decades after Siegfried, and a century after Durham, Hugh MacLennan published his novel Two Solitudes, the title of which quickly became one of the most overworked clichés in Canadian discourse. Like Siegfried, although to a lesser extent, MacLennan suggested that religion reinforced the fundamental cleavage between the two linguistic communities in Canada, and particularly in Quebec, where the action of the novel takes place. Spanning a century in which the world underwent more changes than in any comparable period of history, the English politician, the French academic, and the Nova Scotian novelist appear to have arrived at a consensus on the fundamental fact of Canadian life.

Irish Canadians and the National Question

161

Amid all of this gloom and doom it is reasonable to ask how and why Canada, and specifically Quebec, has experienced internal peace and democratic stability for so long a period of time – from Durham’s era to the present – and why the two linguistic groups have not, at least so far, decided to terminate the political relationship between them. Much of the credit no doubt can be attributed to institutional arrangements. Federalism has given the one predominantly francophone province, as well as the other provinces, a significant though frequently contested degree of political autonomy as well as some influence over government at the federal level.1 Within Quebec, at least for a century after Confederation, a system of consociational power sharing, largely maintained by convention rather than entrenched in law, helped to maintain the peace between the two peoples.2 However, both federalism and consociationalism, separately or in combination, have been tried in other parts of the world where different nationalities coexist within a single state, and have by no means always been successful. Is there some other, sociological factor that has contributed to their success in Canada and Quebec? Political scientists and sociologists have at times used the concept of “cross-cutting cleavages” as an explanation for democratic stability.3 If a community is divided along two different axes of division – for example, religion and language – the theory suggests that it will be more stable the more the two axes fail to coincide. For example, if religions a and b exist within the same state, along with languages e and f, instability and conflict will be high when everyone of religion a speaks language e and everyone of religion b speaks language f. On the other hand, if all four possible combinations (ae, af, be, and bf) are found in significant numbers, conflict and instability will be reduced because the different sources of conflict pull people in different directions rather than reinforcing one another. Switzerland, a remarkably stable and democratic state, has been cited as evidence of this proposition, since members of its French-speaking minority group may be either Catholic or Protestant in roughly equal proportions, and the same is true of its German-speaking majority group. Siegfried in particular suggested that this happy circumstance was lacking in Canada, since French Canadians were almost entirely Catholic and “English” Canadians were predominantly Protestant. Certainly, some of the political issues that were relatively recent at

162

Garth Stevenson

the time he wrote, such as the disputes over the Jesuit Estates Act in Quebec and the abolition of separate schools in Manitoba, seemed to illustrate the mutually reinforcing effect of ethnolinguistic and religious differences. It was also in Siegfried’s era that Henri Bourassa famously proclaimed la langue, gardienne de la foi. Francophone Protestants, then as now, were admittedly rare in Canada, although it may be noted that one of them, Henri Joly de Lotbinière, had been premier of Quebec in 1878–79 and was still living when Siegfried’s book was published. Siegfried did note that there were some English-speaking Catholics in Canada, including what he called “the Irish element, which is somewhat numerous,” but he apparently attached little importance to them.4 Is it possible that he overlooked something? Did Canadian Irish Catholics, sharing a language with one of the “solitudes” and a religious affiliation with the other, help to lessen the polarization that Siegfried saw as the main characteristic of Canadian society? In the only complete sentence that he wrote about Irish Canadians, Siegfried seems to dismiss this possibility without really exploring it: “The Irish as a rule carry away with them into the new countries in which they establish themselves only a feeling of hatred for their oppressors; but in Canada their attitude is somewhat exceptional, and out of jealousy of the French they are moved sometimes to take sides with the English and Scots. It may be said, then, that the mother country stands well in the affections of the British [sic] in Canada.”5 Siegfried was a shrewd but not an infallible observer, and he provided no real evidence to support the assertion quoted above. A conclusive answer to the questions posed in the preceding paragraph would require extensive archival research, which has not been done by anyone to this author’s knowledge. However, this chapter will attempt to explore the question in an admittedly impressionistic manner, which may inspire others to undertake more systematic research at a later date. We are interested in exploring whether Irish, and specifically Irish Catholic, Canadians had greater rapport with and more sympathy for French Canadians than the remainder of the anglophone population in Canada did. The theory of cross-cutting cleavages suggests that this may be so, since they shared a common religious affiliation even though they spoke different languages. At the very least, Irish Catholics would have lacked the anti-Catholic sentiments that were widespread among Protestants of British ancestry

Irish Canadians and the National Question

163

in Canada and elsewhere, and that seem to have influenced the attitudes of many anglophone Canadians toward their francophone compatriots. Also, religion made intermarriage with francophones more likely on the part of Irish Catholics than on the part of Protestants, as indicated by the many Irish surnames among francophones and the partly Irish ancestry of some prominent Canadians with French surnames (e.g., Louis St Laurent, whose mother was Irish). On the other hand, common membership in the Roman Catholic Church may itself have been a source of conflict, within the clerical hierarchy as well as the laity. For example, the issue of French-language education divided the Catholic hierarchy along ethnic lines in Ontario, with bishops of Irish origin (the majority) being unsympathetic to demands for education in French. (Interestingly, the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland, itself under British rule, gave little or no support to the movement to preserve the Irish language.) Greater rapport and sympathy of Irish Catholic Canadians for French Canadians may also result from similarity of socio-economic status, as opposed to the more affluent (for whatever reason) and socially advantaged Protestants. This, however, is problematic, since similar socio-economic status can enhance competition for jobs and other economic advantages, which may lead to mutual hostility rather than mutual sympathy. The “jealousy of the French” to which Siegfried refers may be attributed to this cause. Finally, and of particular relevance to the political arena, it might be expected that Irish Catholic Canadians would understand and sympathize with the desire of French Canadians to preserve their culture and way of life, to protect the autonomy of Quebec against a federal government dominated by anglophone Protestants, and to reduce the influence of the British Empire on Canada’s external relations, given the somewhat similar experience of Ireland and French Canada as conquered colonies of that empire. French Canadian nationalists such as Honoré Mercier and Henri Bourassa were sympathetic toward Irish nationalism, in a sense repaying the sympathy that Daniel O’Connell had earlier expressed for the French Canadians.6 Irish Catholic Canadians might be expected to reciprocate, at least in part. Of course, not all Irish Canadians are Catholics; in fact the majority are not. To what extent, if any, can we include Irish Protestants in these generalizations? The stereotypical Orangeman, with

164

Garth Stevenson

his pro-British and anti-Catholic conservative mindset, played a real part in Canadian history, but Irish Protestantism has another side, which is not sectarian, conservative, or anti-nationalist. In a Canadian context we can cite the examples of Francis Hincks and Robert Baldwin, whose collaboration with Louis Hippolyte LaFontaine brought responsible government to central Canada, and Edward Blake who, after serving as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, sat for several years in the House of Commons at Westminster as an Irish Nationalist. (Gladstone’s second Home Rule bill, an improvement over his first, benefited significantly from Blake’s advice.) Hincks was an Irish-born Protestant, as were the parents of both Baldwin and Blake. However, it must be conceded that the Orange stereotype is somewhat more typical of the Irish Protestant contribution to Canadian politics, particularly in Ontario, where Irish Protestants were most numerous and influential, comprising in the late nineteenth century about one-quarter of the province’s population. The remainder of this chapter will concentrate on the role of Irish Catholics in Canadian politics. Before exploring this role, some presentation of religious and ethnic data, and some clarification of categories in which they are organized, is appropriate. Siegfried was not the last observer to include the Irish among the “British.” The Canadian census continues to do so today, using the term “British Isles,” an expression that is rightly considered objectionable in Ireland itself but seems to pass without comment in this country. However, the census does (usually) subdivide the “British Isles origin” population into English, Scottish, and Irish. (The Welsh, for some reason, have never been enumerated separately; presumably, they are included with the English.) Since 1986, the census allows respondents to specify more than one origin, which is realistic but makes it impossible to compare the data with those from earlier censuses. More recently, the census has recognized “Canadian” as an ethnic origin, an option that is now selected by almost 40 per cent of the respondents. All of this makes the data, particularly of recent years, rather hard to interpret and of limited usefulness. For what it is worth, in the 2001 census almost four million persons in Canada were deemed to be at least partly Irish, of whom almost half a million were entirely Irish, according to themselves. For Quebec only, the numbers were 291,545 partly Irish, including 53,435 entirely so.

Irish Canadians and the National Question

165

(All numbers are projections based on the 20 per cent who received the longer version of the questionnaire.) The Canadian census does not usually cross-tabulate ethnic origin and religion, but the censuses of 1931 and 1941 did so, both for Canada as a whole and for each province. (The 1951 and 1961 censuses also did so, but the cross-tabulations in those years did not break down the “British Isles” ethnic category into English, Irish, and Scottish.) The cross tabulation in the 1931 census reveals that most Irish Canadians (slightly more than two-thirds) were Protestant. In fact, the largest single religious affiliation within the Irish ethnic group was the then recently formed United Church, which seems to have absorbed a far larger proportion of the Irish Presbyterians than of the Scottish Presbyterians. However, there were significant regional variations in the religious affiliations of Irish Canadians. In Quebec, 64.3 per cent of them were Catholic (69,654 out of 108,312), while in the rest of Canada only 28.1 per cent were (315,262 out of 1,122,892). In Ontario and the western provinces the Irish were overwhelmingly Protestant, while in the Maritime provinces a slight majority of them were Catholic. The 1941 census revealed little change over the decade, with the Irish Catholic population having increased slightly to 72,175 in Quebec and 332,053 in the rest of Canada. For the census years before 1931, it is possible to form rough estimates of both Canada’s and Quebec’s Irish Catholic population by subtracting the number of persons whose ethnic origin makes a Catholic affiliation highly probable (e.g., French or Italian) from the total number of Catholics. This methodology leads to the conclusion that Quebec’s, although not Canada’s, Irish population was always predominantly Catholic and that the number of Irish Catholics in Quebec apparently reached its post-Confederation peak in 1911, when it was more than 100,000. Thus, at the end of the Laurier era, Irish Catholics would have comprised about 5 per cent of Quebec’s population and just under one-third of its anglophone population. For an earlier year, 1871, Ronald Rudin has estimated that 29 per cent of Quebec anglophones were Catholic; the great majority of these would have been Irish Catholics, who thus would have been about 6 per cent of Quebec’s total population at that time.7 By 1931, however, Irish Catholics were only about 16 per cent of the province’s anglophone population, assuming (unrealis-

166

Garth Stevenson

tically) that all were anglophones, and were less than 3 per cent of the total population of Quebec. The 1941 census breaks down the Irish ethnic population by mother tongue and suggests that about 11 per cent of the Irish in Quebec (12,329 out of 109,894) actually had French as their mother tongue. The latter data do not distinguish Irish Catholics from Irish Protestants, but it seems likely that most of the Irish with French as their mother tongue were Catholic, since a shared religion made it easier to intermarry with the French ethnic population. The lack of continuity in the questions and categories from one census to another is frustrating, but the general picture that emerges is one of a substantial Irish Catholic community in Quebec that reached its peak in numbers at the end of the Laurier era and declined afterwards. The relative and, after 1911, even absolute decline in the number of Irish Catholics in Quebec was probably the combined result of migration to other provinces, migration to the United States, and absorption into the French ethnic population through intermarriage, bearing in mind that census respondents were only allowed to specify one ethnic origin prior to 1986. To summarize all of these data, it appears that Quebec always had a substantial Irish Catholic population, though the relative importance of that population gradually declined after Confederation. Although smaller than the Protestant population of British ancestry, the Irish Catholic population in Quebec was large enough in relation to that group, and even in relation to the French Catholic majority, to have some political weight in the province, particularly in earlier years. After the French and the British Protestants, it was clearly the third largest group in Quebec’s population, a position it retained well into the twentieth century. 8 Although it lacked the numbers of the French and the economic power of the Protestants, the community was recognized as a significant and distinctive component of Quebec society. In Canada as a whole the Irish Catholics formed roughly the same percentage of the total population as in Quebec. There were 384,916 Irish Catholics in Canada in 1931, or almost 4 per cent of the population. If we assume that the same percentage of Irish Canadians were Catholic in 1871 as in 1931, Irish Catholics would then have numbered 8 per cent of Canada’s population. However, the multicultural nature of anglophone Canada (even before the word was invented) made them only one of many ethnic communi-

Irish Canadians and the National Question

167

ties, rather than a recognized third force as they were in Quebec. In particular, they were greatly outnumbered by the Irish Protestants and also by the Scots, making them less politically significant at the federal level than they were at the provincial level in Quebec. It is thus understandable that Siegfried, who was apparently more interested in federal politics than in provincial (including Quebec) politics, discounted their importance. Nonetheless, prominent Irish Catholic politicians from Quebec and elsewhere were by no means unknown in federal politics. John A. Macdonald considered it essential to include an Irish Catholic among the twelve ministers in his first cabinet, perhaps in part because Fenianism and the anti-Fenian rhetoric of Confederation had left that community somewhat alienated from the new federal state. Thomas D’Arcy McGee, mp for Montreal West, was the obvious choice. However, he was excluded, in part because there was room for only one anglophone from Quebec, but also because his hostility to the Fenians had reduced his influence and popularity in the Irish community.9 As it turned out, Quebec’s Irish Catholic community would not be represented in a federal cabinet until the Laurier era after 1896. As a sort of consolation prize, one of Quebec’s Senate seats, the one ostensibly representing the senatorial district of Victoria (the western half of Montreal Island), was reserved for an Irish Catholic, a practice that lasted without interruption until 1983. During that long period of time, eight Irish Catholics in succession occupied the seat. The Irish representative in the first federal cabinet, Senator Edward Kenny of Nova Scotia, was not one of Macdonald’s better choices and served without distinction for only three years. (His main claim to fame is that he subsequently became the first Canadian senator to have his stipend reduced as a penalty for infrequent attendance.)10 Not long after Kenny’s departure from the cabinet John O’Connor, the only Irish Catholic mp from Ontario, was appointed to replace him and served until Macdonald resigned in 1873. During the Liberal interlude under Alexander Mackenzie, the Irish Catholic community was represented in cabinet by Senator Richard Scott, from Ottawa, who is best remembered for the Canada Temperance Act. At the same time Timothy Anglin, an Irish-born Catholic from New Brunswick who had opposed Confederation, became speaker of the House of Commons. With the return of the Conservatives in 1878, O’Connor again became a

168

Garth Stevenson

minister, serving until 1882. On his departure, two Irish Catholics were added, John Costigan from New Brunswick and Senator Frank Smith from Ontario, both of whom served until the Conservatives left office in 1896. (Smith was a prominent businessman, the owner of the Toronto Street Railway.) Senator Scott was then reappointed to the cabinet by Laurier and served for twelve more years. In 1908 he was replaced as secretary of state by another Irish Catholic from Ottawa, Charles Murphy, who was apparently close to Laurier. Murphy subsequently served in Mackenzie King’s first government as postmaster general. None of these ministers held a major portfolio for very long, apart from Murphy as postmaster general, although Smith held Public Works for five months in 1891–92. Generally, they were given offices more honorific than powerful, such as secretary of state or president of the Privy Council, suggesting that their presence was desired more to represent their ethnic and religious community than to make major contributions to public policy and administration. In their representative capacity they defended Catholic interests as well as specifically Irish ones, particularly with regard to the controversial issue of Catholic education. Costigan, as a backbench member, had intervened unsuccessfully on behalf of separate schools in New Brunswick in 1873 by introducing a motion that the legislation abolishing them be disallowed.11 Scott, who had been instrumental in bringing separate schools to Canada West (Ontario) before Confederation, helped Laurier to resolve the Manitoba Schools Question with a compromise.12 On a more specifically Irish issue, Smith (who had been appointed to the Senate in 1871) apparently persuaded Macdonald in 1872 to release some Fenian prisoners who had been incarcerated for their participation in the invasion attempt of 1866.13 In April 1882, a month before his appointment to the cabinet, Costigan moved a resolution, which was adopted by the Canadian House of Commons, calling on Queen Victoria to grant Home Rule to Ireland and to release some Irish political prisoners.14 None of the ministers mentioned above seems to have taken a major interest in anglophone-francophone relations or the specific needs of Quebec, though some were from areas with substantial francophone populations. Costigan’s county of Victoria was more than half French (Acadian), according to the 1881 census, and Russell County, which O’Connor represented during his second

Irish Canadians and the National Question

169

and longer stint as a minister, was about 38 per cent French, with the French slightly outnumbering the Irish. Scott’s and Murphy’s political stronghold of Ottawa was almost entirely French and Irish, in roughly equal proportions. It must be remembered, however, that francophone minorities in other provinces had relatively few ties with Quebec at that time, and that ministers were expected to look after their own provinces or counties and not intrude on those of other ministers. It appears, therefore, that if we seek Irish Catholic politicians who attempted to bridge the gap between the famous “two solitudes,” we must find them in Quebec itself, where the subject understandably preoccupied politicians more than it did elsewhere. In fact, we find that since the 1920s the most important, prominent, and successful Irish Catholic politicians at the federal level have been from Quebec, while in earlier years they were from Ontario or the Maritimes, as noted above. This fact probably reflects changes in demography and in the arithmetical and representational parameters of forming a cabinet. First and most obviously, cabinets tended to become larger, so the arithmetical problem that contributed to the exclusion of D’Arcy McGee no longer existed. Second, as Ontario became more multicultural, its Irish Catholic element, which was not growing rapidly, no longer seemed to merit inclusion in the cabinet as regularly as before, if indeed it did so at all. Third, as Quebec’s British Protestant community, especially in the Eastern Townships and the celebrated “Square Mile,” declined in importance, it was no longer deemed essential that Quebec’s principal (or only) anglophone representative be a Protestant. It may also be that the growing tension between anglophones and francophones, and between Quebec and the federal government, over the course of the twentieth century led prime ministers consciously to seek colleagues who might bridge the gap, and Irish Catholic Quebecers seemed most likely to have the necessary qualifications. In fact, the Irish-French alliance had some rather deep roots in Quebec’s history. Some of the French settlers who arrived before the Conquest are believed to have had Irish ancestry, and a number of surnames that are considered French in Canada reflect this fact – for example, Bourque (Burke), Sylvain (Sullivan), and Riel (O’Reilly).15 Irish immigrants of more recent vintage also played a prominent role in the Patriote movement and in the Rebellions of

170

Garth Stevenson

1837–38, despite Lord Durham’s comments about two nations. The most prominent of these, Edmund B. O’Callaghan, was a native of County Cork who emigrated to Quebec City in 1823 and moved to Montreal a decade later. He became fully bilingual, and according to his entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, “he seems to have devoted all his efforts to reconciling the Irish and the party of LouisJoseph Papineau” and “was in fact Papineau’s right-hand man.”16 He participated in the armed rebellion in the Richelieu Valley and then fled to the United States. Unlike many of the prominent Patriotes, including Papineau himself, O’Callaghan never returned to Canada. He became the archivist of New York State and wrote a lengthy history of that state before his death in 1880. The ill-fated McGee also deserves mention, since he chose Montreal as his home when he came to Canada in 1857 and since he received significant support from francophone voters throughout his career in Canadian politics. In fact, in his last election, when many of the Irish had turned against him because of his anti- Fenian stance, it was the French Canadian voters who gave him the narrow margin of victory over his more pro-Fenian opponent, Bernard Devlin.17 McGee emphasized in his speeches, as did Cartier, the importance of Confederation as a union of different cultural and religious communities, so he can be seen as a precursor of bonne entente and bilingual Canadian nationalism. Even before Confederation, in 1858, he had urged “Anglo- Saxon” Canadians to view French Canadians with greater sympathy and had suggested that Scottish and Irish Canadians, whose ancestors had been allies of France, should act as mediators between the two dominant groups.18 The first representative of Quebec’s Irish Catholic community appointed to a federal cabinet was Charles Fitzpatrick, who became Laurier’s solicitor general in 1896 and assumed the more important office of minister of justice in 1902. In 1906 he was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada as chief justice, and after retiring from that position, he served as lieutenant-governor of Quebec. Fitzpatrick’s parents were both Irish and he was raised as an anglophone, but he attended a French-language classical college and become fluently bilingual. He subsequently earned a degree in civil law from Laval University, whose Faculty of Law has served as a point of entry for a number of Irish Quebecers into a francophone milieu. As a lawyer, Fitzpatrick defended both Louis Riel, at his trial

Irish Canadians and the National Question

171

in 1885, and Honoré Mercier, who was tried on charges arising out of the Baie des Chaleurs Railway scandal in 1892. 19 Fitzpatrick has been described as “an active, effective, and influential minister of justice.”20 Laurier was reluctant to lose him as a cabinet colleague by appointing him to the Supreme Court, but Fitzpatrick apparently preferred a seat on the bench to one in the cabinet. Nonetheless, he remained active in politics to an extent that would nowadays be considered inappropriate for a judge. His involvement continued, strangely enough, after Laurier’s defeat in 1911. The new Conservative prime minister, Robert Borden, consulted Fitzpatrick about Quebec, where Borden’s party had little strength, and used him as a liaison with the Quebec wing of the party, despite Fitzpatrick’s Liberal background. Fitzpatrick was even allowed to distribute patronage in the Quebec City region in 1913. He also spoke both publicly and privately in support of francophone minorities outside Quebec. It was Borden who appointed Fitzpatrick as lieutenant-governor in 1918.21 Despite his reliance on Fitzpatrick for political advice, Borden appointed another Irish Catholic, Charles Doherty, as his minister of justice. Doherty represented Ste-Anne, the traditionally Irish riding in Montreal. His legal training was at McGill, which possibly gave him less rapport than Fitzpatrick with francophone Quebec. However, he was a director of the Banque Provinciale and had served as a Quebec judge.22 According to John English, Doherty was the only anglophone minister who did not oppose Frederick Monk’s suggestion of a plebiscite on the issue of financial contributions to the Royal Navy, a Conservative policy that was deeply resented by French Canadians.23 He remained in the coalition government after 1917 and accompanied Borden to the Paris Peace Conference. Mackenzie King’s government from 1925 to 1930 included an Irish Catholic from Quebec, Lucien Cannon, as solicitor general. This office in those days did not automatically entitle its holder to membership in the cabinet, but according to Blair Neatby, “the convivial Lucien Cannon” was made a privy councillor after the 1926 election “at the insistence of his French Canadian colleagues.”24 Lucien Cannon’s brother, Arthur Lawrence Cannon, married Fitzpatrick’s daughter and was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1930, shortly before the Liberals lost office in the election that year.

172

Garth Stevenson

When Mackenzie King returned as prime minister in 1935, he appointed Lucien Cannon’s law partner and former classmate at Laval, Charles “Chubby” Power, to his cabinet. Lucien Cannon and Chubby Power were the grandfathers of Lawrence Cannon, who became minister of transport and infrastructure in Stephen Harper’s government.25 Lawrence Cannon’s parliamentary constituency is Pontiac, which is now the most Irish riding in Quebec and the only Quebec riding outside Montreal Island without a francophone majority. It was selected not because of any ties with the candidate but because at the time it seemed the most likely (or least unlikely) Quebec riding to elect a Conservative. In his informative memoirs, Chubby Power wrote, “After my graduation from the distinctly English-speaking Loyola College, it was considered the part of wisdom for me to study law at the ultraFrench Laval University in Quebec City.”26 Whatever its source, this was sound advice for an aspiring politician in Quebec. He also states in the memoirs that he lacked fluency in French at the time he entered Laval, though he acquired it later. Cannon, whose mother was a francophone, did not suffer from this handicap, which may explain in part why he entered the cabinet a decade before Power, though he was only a year older. Power inherited the traditionally Irish (though increasingly French) riding of Quebec South, known until 1914 as Quebec West, from his father and eventually passed it on to his son. Although he volunteered for the Canadian army in 1914 and was wounded in action two years later, he opposed conscription in 1917, when he was elected to the House of Commons, as he would do again in 1944. In his memoirs he denied that his anti-conscription stance had anything to do with his Irish background, attributing it to his dislike of coercion and his admiration for Laurier.27 It obviously did him no harm in a riding that was mainly French Canadian by the time he was elected there. In 1923 he reinforced his popularity with that electorate by introducing a resolution that Canada should not enter any war until Canada’s Parliament voted to do so. (This has in fact been the practice ever since.) After holding two other portfolios, Power became minister of defence for air in 1940. During the debate on the proposed conscription referendum in June 1942, he followed Mackenzie King’s example and avoided taking a clear position on the issue, but he

Irish Canadians and the National Question

173

indicated that he might have to resign his seat if he no longer represented the views of his electorate. When conscription was finally introduced in 1944, Power resigned from the cabinet – though not from the Liberal caucus in the House of Commons – on the grounds that the Liberals, by imposing conscription, had abandoned their mission of maintaining national unity. He predicted that this would lead to the rise of a Quebec nationalist party in federal politics.28 Power subsequently ran for the Liberal leadership in 1948 and was appointed to the Senate in 1955. Among Quebec politicians of Irish ancestry the most important is obviously Brian Mulroney, prime minister of Canada from 1984 until 1993. While the legacy of his prime ministership is still controversial, even Mulroney’s critics must concede that he was politically talented and unusually successful as a politician, at least for a time. Like Fitzpatrick and Power, he was an anglophone from outside Montreal who perfected his French and began to develop his network of political contacts as a law student at Laval. He probably developed a greater rapport with Quebec’s francophone voters than any other anglophone politician before or since, and the sharp decline in his popularity in anglophone Canada after 1988 was not really replicated in Quebec, where his record in office is still viewed quite favourably. With good reason, he chose to settle in Montreal after his retirement. Mulroney was by nature a rassembleur, like most successful Canadian prime ministers. He was able to incorporate both right-wing western Canadians and Quebec nationalists into his party, in much the same way that John A. Macdonald had incorporated both Orangemen and ultramontane Catholics in his. Mulroney promised his party that he would end its estrangement from Quebec, which he did at least temporarily. He also promised Quebec that he would try to modify the Constitution in ways that Quebec could accept “with honour and enthusiasm” after the fiasco of Trudeau’s constitutional revolution without Quebec’s consent. Mulroney’s most audacious initiative and greatest failure, the Meech Lake Accord, was designed for this purpose and for a time seemed destined to succeed, but it was defeated by the intervention of Trudeau and the mobilization of assorted special interest groups that had been patronized by the Liberals. Mulroney tried again with the Charlottetown Accord, which offered less to Quebec and was thus

174

Garth Stevenson

rejected there. The Charlottetown Accord was also rejected in anglophone Canada for a variety of reasons, one of which was disgruntlement over the gst, an entirely unrelated issue. The Irish ability to bridge the gap between anglophone and francophone Canadians has also been apparent at the provincial level of Quebec politics, at least from time to time. From Confederation until 1944 there was usually an anglophone Irish Catholic in the provincial cabinet, whichever party was in office, along with one or two anglophone Protestants. There have also been a few since. Most were from Montreal or Quebec City, with several representing the traditional Irish stronghold of Ste-Anne ward in the former city. Most were ministers without portfolio, since the most important portfolios given to anglophones usually went to Protestants, either from Montreal or the Eastern Townships. The minister of finance was almost always an anglophone Protestant until 1944, but in Honoré Mercier’s nationalist government the portfolio was held by an Irish Catholic, Joseph Shehyn, since no Protestant was willing to serve under Mercier. 29 Shehyn was the son of an Irish immigrant, though his mother was French Canadian, and was born in Quebec City, where he became a successful businessman and president of the Board of Trade. As Mercier’s minister of finance he persuaded a major French bank, the Crédit Lyonnais, to make two large loans to the province, thus ending for a time the stranglehold of the Montreal anglophone elite and the Bank of Montreal over Quebec’s finances.30 Mercier and Shehyn were less successful when they tried to refinance the province’s existing debt at a lower rate of interest. John A. Macdonald was so outraged by this action that he contemplated disallowing it or even asking the imperial government in London to do so, which would have been clearly unconstitutional.31 In the end, the Legislative Council amended the measure to make the reconversion voluntary, so a confrontation was avoided. The episode nonetheless illustrates the tendency of Irish Catholics to view French Canadian or Quebec nationalism with more sympathy than British Protestants do. It also rather eerily foreshadows a similar and more successful episode in which Eric Kierans was involved three-quarters of a century later, which is described below. Perhaps the most colourful and interesting of the Irish Quebec ministers was Charles Ramsay Devlin, whose father had emigrated

Irish Canadians and the National Question

175

from Ireland in 1843, fifteen years before his birth. Devlin’s uncle was Bernard Devlin, who came close to defeating D’Arcy McGee in the federal election of 1867. Charles Devlin was educated in French and married a French Canadian, and according to Alexander Reford, “he moved easily within Quebec’s Irish and French Catholic communities.”32 He was elected to the House of Commons as a Liberal in 1891, with the assistance of his friend Henri Bourassa, but in 1896 he voted against Laurier’s compromise on the question of Catholic schools in Manitoba, saying that he was a Catholic before he was a Liberal. Laurier nonetheless appointed him to the new position of Canadian commissioner in Ireland in 1897. While there, he resigned his post to run for election to Westminster as an Irish Nationalist and was elected to represent the city of Galway in 1906, but he resigned less than a year later and was elected again to the Canadian House of Commons as a Liberal. In 1907 he resigned that seat also and was elected to the Quebec Legislative Assembly. He was appointed minister of colonization, mines, and fisheries under Premier Lomer Gouin and served in that office until his death in 1914, encouraging settlement of French Canadians in the northern regions of the province. The most important Irish Canadian in Quebec’s provincial politics, however, was arguably Eric Kierans, Irish on his father’s side and German on his mother’s, who rose to prominence during the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. René Lévesque, who remained a close friend even after their disagreement over the sovereignty issue led them in different directions, later praised Kierans as “the first highly placed Anglophone to associate with the mood of ’60–’63.”33 Like Chubby Power, Kierans was a graduate of Loyola College, but he did not go on to study law. Instead he became an entrepreneur, a professor of commerce at McGill and president of the Montreal Stock Exchange, in which role he tried to make the exchange more open to francophones in various ways, including publishing its newsletter in French. In 1963 Premier Lesage recruited him, after some hesitation because of Kierans’s less than fluent French, to replace the unilingual minister of revenue, Paul Earl, who had died in office. This portfolio was a sinecure for anglophone ministers to reassure the business community, in that the minister of revenue was supposed to restrain the spending of his francophone colleagues – as Lesage frankly explained to Kierans at their initial interview.

176

Garth Stevenson

Despite representing the mainly anglophone and middle-class riding of Notre-Dame-de-Grace, Kierans declined to play the traditional role and instead became the ally of the Liberal government’s left wing, particularly René Lévesque. He helped Jacques Parizeau, then a civil servant, deprive the Bank of Montreal and its allies of their stranglehold over Quebec’s debt, a feat reminiscent of Shehyn’s efforts in the Mercier era but one that proved to be more lastingly effective. When a cabinet shuffle made Kierans minister of health in 1965, he assisted Lévesque, now the minister of family and social welfare, in defending Quebec’s control over social programs against federal interference and in demanding relief from what would later be called the fiscal imbalance.34 Kierans’s sympathy for Quebec nationalism obviously had its limits, as his refusal to support his close friend’s proposal for sovereignty-association eventually revealed, but it was genuine, and he helped to convince some nationalists that not all anglophones had sinister motives, as well as reconciling most Montreal anglophones, for a time at least, to the Quiet Revolution. A brief and unhappy stint in Trudeau’s federal cabinet from 1968 to 1970 reinforced his view that provincial autonomy, Quebec’s in particular, deserved more respect than it was receiving. Finally, while he never held any ministerial office, I cannot resist mentioning the legendary Frank Hanley, who died in 2006 at the age of ninety-six. Hanley represented the historic riding of Montreal Ste-Anne as an independent mna from 1948 until 1970 and served on Montreal’s municipal council for an even longer period. During the Duplessis era he tacitly supported the Union Nationale, but in later years he sometimes supported the Liberals and even had a brief flirtation with the Quebec version of Social Credit. While he enjoyed playing the stereotypical role of an Irish politician as depicted in Edwin O’Connor’s novel The Last Hurrah, he was actually a serious, as well as fluently bilingual person who understood, and largely accepted, the changes that occurred in Quebec during his long life. He was the only anglophone member who publicly and bravely defended the decision to rename the Legislative Assembly the National Assembly in 1968.35 As suggested earlier in this chapter, there is still much research that could be done about the role of the Irish Catholic minority in both Quebec and Canadian politics. Ireland has not been a significant source of immigrants for many years, and the long decline of

Irish Canadians and the National Question

177

the minority, relative to the Canadian or Quebec population as a whole, will accelerate in the years to come. Its importance in Canadian and Quebec politics has inevitably declined as well. Yet there is some evidence to support the proposition that it helped to maintain both unity in Canada and social peace in Quebec by serving as a bridge between what have been called the two founding peoples, both of whom Irish Catholics may have understood better than they understood one another.

oking son Around

9 Stepping Back and Looking Around donald harman akenson

What does it all mean, this Irish nationalism business? Once in a while, we all need to step back, breathe deeply, and consider the various contexts into which our work fits. None of us contemplating the Canadian scene needs to be reminded that there exists a rich historical and historiographic literature on the myriad strands of Irish nationalism in the home country. And, equally, no one is unaware that entire libraries are filled with philosophic, linguistic, and (most prolifically) political-scientific analyses of nationalism as a ubiquitous feature, albeit not universal, of human societies. Necessary as an awareness of these two literatures must be for anyone studying Irish nationalism in Canada, neither seems to address adequately the need for a taxonomy and a morphology that show us where Canada and Irish nationalism, considered as a worldwide phenomenon, fit together. The last thing one would suggest is that we need a Big Bang theory of everything, but it would be nice to know how to describe the pieces of the puzzle and where we fit. In everyday scholarly life, I think most of us who deal with any of the various tendrils of Irish history face two problems – or seductions, really – and these are matters we deal with reflexively and intuitively rather than consciously. The first of these is the seduction of institutionalized parochialism. We are well rewarded for burrowing energetically in small areas. This is easy to buy into, for there is a wonderfully addictive quality about small-topic historical work. And, besides, it is great fun to be the world’s expert on something, even if it is only a Ruritanian intellectual satrapy. The second seduction is that provided by the lush and labyrinthian corridors of what is loosely called Cultural Studies. Particularly in the Irish

Stepping Back and Looking Around

179

homeland, this field – or really, it is more of a Wal-Mart parking lot than a field – often invites the shrugging off of historical context, the replacement of evidence with prejudice, and the displacement of history by “heritage.” When adopted by historians, usually under a gaudy canopy of a meretricious and ill-defined epistemology, this mode becomes the ultimate in Sherry Bottle History: no need to work in the archives, for they are all mere constructs. Lately, I have been reading with profit the works of Franco Moretti, who I suspect will be seen as the first really radical major figure in twenty-first-century literary criticism. The Italian-born, polylingual Moretti is the Danily C. and Laura Louise Bell Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. His selfappointed brief is to plant the beginnings of a rational and replicable concept of world literature. His particular segment of this undertaking is found (among other places) in his atlas of the European novel, his lectures on the use of models from the sciences and social sciences as the basis for literary theory, and his immense multivolume cooperative work on the novel, worldwide.1 Given my admiration for Moretti’s strength of argument and courage of assertion, I should make it clear that when he does his own empirical work he frequently falls into the sort of errors made by young students in the social sciences. For instance, he does not seem to have the vaguest idea of what a null hypothesis is. Still, his macrosystemic thinking is what one admires. Moretti is an attractive figure within the context of our present concern with the history of Irish nationalism because he deals, in his own area, with the two problems that I mentioned earlier. His answer to the seduction of soft-headed cultural studies is simply to ignore them and instead to insist upon the usefulness of evidence and pattern as one (not the only, but one) of the best ways of understanding human cultural and social experience. This might sound like mindless empiricism among the literature set, but Moretti is in fact nostalgic for the best work in the tradition of the Marxian historians of the sixties: scholars who operated on the belief that there was some useful correspondence – and, indeed, some sort of reality – as between evidence of historical experience and large historical patterns. (In our field, a good example would be the work of E.P. Thompson.) And, at heart, I think Moretti believes (as I do) that learning to understand these patterns will actually make the world a slightly better place. Very unfashionable, that.

180

Donald Harman Akenson

Implicitly, this Marxian heritage points also to an antidote to the seductions of institutional parochialism. Moretti, in his approach to the novel, demonstrates that the novel is in fact part of a global literary system. Thus, his graphs, maps, and genetic trees not only indicate a way out of the reductive self-reification of Cultural Studies but also suggest that our institutional parochialism can be overcome without our having to abandon its comforts entirely. So, by analogy, we might well profit by suggesting that our collective mission should be to chart Irish nationalism as a small, but not insignificant, global cultural and social system. Note that this is not simply a comparative exercise, but rather a mandate for observing how a cross-cultural system forms, operates, transmutes, and eventually dissolves. Accepting this assignment would imply the conscious development of three habits of mind and behaviour, each of which we already admire even if we do not embrace it as closely as we might. First, any attempt at global system-building necessarily must be cooperative. I am not here endorsing the bogus cooperation engendered by the United Kingdom’s sad and self-defeating Research Assessment Exercise, which every five years produces a flood of multi-authored and multi-editored books, held together by nothing more than a cheap binding and the desperate need to get some pages into print. Rather, an international cooperative venture, based on a central temporarily agreed-upon interrogative grid is necessary and certainly is feasible. Secondly, we will need to learn to read differently. Just as the literary world of the second half of the twentieth century became locked into “close reading,” so the historical profession became fixed on tight-focus reading. Both intellectual areas lost the benison provided by peripheral vision. If Franco Moretti’s answer for literary criticism is to acquire the skill of “distant reading” (the opposite, but complementary, skill to “close reading”), our answer as historians is to learn the skill of big-frame reading. This is not a mere piety: I am appalled not only at how little most professional historians read outside their own field but how distrusted such intellectual journeys are. So, to be clear, I am not suggesting the abandonment of our own specialities. Rather, on the analog of an old-fashioned theatre spotlight, we can use the same amount of energy, but vary its focus from highintensity, tight-focus research to the big-frame, low-intensity work that spreads the light out in a wider, if softer, fashion. Thirdly – and this is the hard one to sell to most historians of Irish nationalism –

Stepping Back and Looking Around

181

if we are thinking in the form of a global system, then we must necessarily employ systematic, typological, and quantitative information more than we usually enjoy doing. I will return to this latter point in just a moment. Here, however, let us break the abstract solemnity with a set of stories. These are of the Four Men in a Tub, and their tale is both metaphoric and metonymic. The story should be instructive but not at all threatening to students of Irish nationalism in Canada, because I shall not let the tale touch the British North America arena, not even once. The tub is the appositely named Swift. It is sailing from the United Kingdom to Australia, a journey that takes most of the months of July through October 1849. On board are four crystalclear, heroic martyrs for Irish nationalism, four men who have been sentenced to be hanged and drawn for their part in the abortive Young Ireland revolution of 1848. Cunningly reprieved by the uk government, they are being exiled not as common criminals but as state prisoners, which means that they are political prisoners. Among enthusiastic American Irish nationalists, they are already being publicized as the “1848 Exiles.” A responsibility hangs on their shoulders, for they are expected to merge two narratives that are heavily presold. By being exiled from their sacred homeland, they are to re-enact the Egyptian bondage of the Chosen People. They are to suffer in Egypt and then to escape. Their escape is required to have not only biblical qualities; it must be a prelude to an Arthurian quest, the search for the Holy Grail of Irish national redemption. Quite a lot of responsibility. Fortunately, they have time to reflect. The four state prisoners each has a private cabin, with lockers for his personal belongings. (They bring along a backgammon set and a lot of sport-fishing gear.) These four private cabins open into a twelve-foot-square common room. The resemblance to one of the better sets of rooms in an Oxford college is unmistakable. In their common room they meet several times daily, sharing their meat-meals, two glasses of government-provided wine with each, and they have a smoke and talk deep thoughts. These four 1848 Exiles are Terence Bellew MacManus, Irishborn, a tough and successful Liverpool businessman, who had been willing to torch the Liverpool docks if a real rising occurred

182

Donald Harman Akenson

in Ireland; Thomas Francis Meagher, a lawyer by way of Clongowes Wood and Stoneyhurst colleges and the Dublin Inns of Court, who already, at age twenty-five, is known as Meagher of the Sword, not for any fighting he has done but for an incandescent speech he gave; Patrick O’Donoghue, a Dublin law clerk, who, alone in this group, is not a person of independent financial means; and the elder statesman of the group, William Smith O’Brien, of Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, a former Member of Parliament and the holder of a landed estate in his own right. Each man-in-the-tub knows that he must work out his escape from the Egyptian Bondage. Mind you, Van Diemen’s Land in 1849 is not that of the 1820s, where they would have faced being strapped to a large triangle and scourged to within an inch of their lives. That Christological opportunity to spill their own blood has been removed from the prisoners’ war kit by the diabolical British. Thomas Meagher is at first imprisoned in a hotel in Campbell Town, one run by a Mrs Kierney, who lines the hostelry walls with pictures of Daniel O’Connell, Brian Boru, and various saints, and this gets up Meagher’s nose. Since he is required to live within a 500-square-mile penal area, he moves to a hamlet down the road and there rooms in a hotel run by a devout Wesleyan couple and comes to the conclusion that the Bastard British are trying to bore him to death. Terence Bellew MacManus settles in rather better, mostly because he drinks a lot, any amount of alcohol being permitted so long as it comes out of his personal fortune. Patrick O’Donoghue, because of his straitened financial means, must make a living, so he starts a newspaper in Hobart. It is called the Irish Exile, and its content probably would have been suppressed in Dublin. As for William Smith O’Brien, he quickly makes one attempt at escape and then is sent to Maria Island, off the coast of Van Diemen’s Land, where he is given his own cottage and garden and for the first time in his life has to make his own bed and wash his own dishes. To be fair, though, a servant cleans O’Brien’s boots, but only once a week. After two months of semi-solitary confinement, he is allowed visits by the superintendent’s thirteen-year-old daughter. These continue until his warders discover that the prisoner has been spending an excessive amount of time with his hands up the wee girl’s skirts, for which O’Brien chivalrously apologizes. Confusing, this Egyptian Bondage, but it has to be escaped; the more so because there is the continual danger that the imperial

Stepping Back and Looking Around

183

authorities will simply pardon the whole lot of them, and then – bang – the story line will be aborted. The first to take off is Terence Bellew MacManus. He does a simple runner and arrives in San Francisco in June 1851. It is a good time to be met by the mayor of San Francisco and patriotic Irish Americans, for lots of gold wealth is to hand. MacManus is honoured by dozens of Ireland-forever dinners and has a fifty-bed local doss house named after him: the MacManus Rest. Strangely, for a once-successful businessman, he cannot make a go of the various business and ranching ventures he tries, and in January 1861 he dies in near poverty. His corpse is sent east, where it is given a funeral in St Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, the memorial sermon being preached by Archbishop Hughes on the theme of the right of oppressed people to struggle for liberation. Then, MacManus’s body is shipped to Dublin, where the newly formed Fenian Brotherhood uses him as a patriotic talisman. The procession behind his coffin as it is taken to Glasnevin cemetery stretches for miles. Next, in January 1852, Thomas Francis Meagher hands in his temporary parole (no cheating on escapes is permitted, according to the Arthurian rules) and scarpers. His task is a bit tougher than MacManus’s, for Meagher has acquired a déclassé wife, the daughter of a common criminal, and he has to make arrangements for her to be taken from Australia to his family’s care in Waterford. (Meagher’s father is a former mp and a former lord mayor of Waterford.) Meagher becomes a major hero among the New York Irish in the 1850s, a transition that is made easier by his convictacquired young wife having the decency to die in Waterford in 1854, leaving Meagher free to marry an American woman of wealth. Almost alone among the several heroes of 1848, Meagher becomes passionately devoted both to the cause of the North and to that of slave emancipation. He becomes a genuinely competent and heroic Union military leader. Named secretary and subsequently acting-governor of the Montana Territory after the Civil War, Meagher dies mysteriously, sliding from a river steamer into the muddy waters of the Missouri River. Patrick O’Donoghue, the Hobart newspaper editor, is the next to escape. This he accomplishes by way of Melbourne harbour. Irish patriot friends ship him on an American barque to San Francisco, and from there he works his way to Boston. Alas, the American Irish patriotic world is too competitive for him to find a niche.

184

Donald Harman Akenson

He is just too working class to make the sort of classy hero that is required at the moment. He rolls eventually to New York City, where he dies of alcoholism, a nervous breakdown, and diarrhea. The gallant William Smith O’Brien – he had insisted on shaking hands with each of the policemen to whom he had surrendered after the battle of Widow McCormack’s Cabbage Patch – was granted a conditional pardon in 1854. Supporters of the 1848 Exiles were frequently obliged to point out that neither O’Brien nor several other pardoned comrades had petitioned for their pardons: the imperial government had granted them, viciously. Allowed to return to Ireland in 1856 (he had been forced to stay in Paris for a year and a half by the terms of his conditional pardon), O’Brien returns under absolute pardon. When he visits his estate, Cahirmoyle, he is treated as a returned lunatic by his children. He had placed control of the estate in his eldest son’s hands and cannot wrest it back. So the old gentleman accepts a £2,000-a-year pension from his family and then, until his death in 1864, lives at Killiney, watching the sea and wondering why patriotism is such an expensive business. There. In their careers, the Four Men in the Tub illustrate, or touch tangentially, perhaps a dozen distinct variations of Irish nationalism and also at least two of the meta-narratives that enhull Irish nationalist thought. They have as close to a common point of origin as it is possible to have, yet diverge noticeably. Using them as parable, an obvious point is that if we wish to proceed cooperatively to uncover the contours of Irish nationalism – or, perhaps, Irish nationalisms – worldwide, we require a rational categorization of the forms. The arrogant simplicity of William Butler Yeats’s famous Nobel speech, wherein he categorized all Irish nationalism as political (meaning Parnell and his predecessors), low-cultural (the Gaelic Athletic Association, etc.), and true highcultural (with Yeats himself as the Wise Prince), is too heliocentric to be useful. And the convenient way that we explain things to our undergraduates – physical force vs home rule – is not fine enough in its gradations to reveal much of interest in a global system. The typology put forward by Stephen Howe in his brilliant Ireland and Empire: Colonial Legacies in Irish History and Culture is the best foundation suggestion that I have encountered.2 His scale requires elaboration and adumbration, but he is absolutely correct in demanding

Stepping Back and Looking Around

185

that rational categorization has to be the start of anything approaching an understanding of Irish nationalism as a system. A complementary point that derives from my midrash on the Four Men in a Tub is that distance counts. As Roy Foster once noted, “It is, of course, easier to sustain an old-fashioned and unquestioning belief in Irish history as an apostolic succession of national liberators if you do not live in the country itself.” He added, “This might be drawn to the attention of some English and American fellow-travellers.”3 However, if distance from Ireland has historically made the heart of some Irish nationalists grow fonder, I suspect that in many more instances it has titrated intensity of faith downward. In any case, a global understanding of Irish nationalism will require that any typology of variant forms be cross-celled both with intensity and with matters of geography. At the risk of sounding very obvious, I would like to see a mapping of the flow and ebb tides of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, Home Rule party membership, and Gaelic Athletic Association participation, and to see these charted like long-term weather patterns. Sometimes specific geographic factors (the Australian gold rush, for instance) will be seen to have produced an acceleration of Irish nationalism in a form that circulated all the way to the homeland. These patterns must necessarily be charted on a globe, not on a two-dimensional surface. This implies that as part of our cooperative exercise, we should occasionally decentre our analytic perspective. Undeniably, Irish nationalism most often and most profitably will be viewed by standing on the Hill of Howth and looking seaward. Remember, however, how a globe works: any point on the surface of our sphere is the centre; the horizon is infinite, and lines of vision all reticulate back to the same point. So useful breaks from the conventional wisdom can be obtained by consciously and temporarily setting Montreal, Wellington, Melbourne, Liverpool, or Philadelphia as the centre of the Irish nationalist world. By observing how the system operated from any of those points of perspective, we may learn things that are obscured by our too often acting as if everything in Irish nationalist history is a function of the history of nationalism in Ireland. From what I have just said, it should be clear that there is no necessary clash between tight-focus sociocultural history and bigframe research. Neither works without the other. And since we are accustomed to dealing with Canada and its regional jurisdictions and localized cultural patterns, I am not worried that the

186

Donald Harman Akenson

geographic designators of global distribution will be confused with the boundaries of nation-states. We know how to disaggregate constitutional units into their demographic and cultural components. Now, it is time for some guesses. What form might a world history of Irish nationalism assume if it were a history based on rational categories, verifiable units of behaviour and cultural expression, and the charting of times and geographic variables (national, regional, and local subcultural)? Assuming that the history of Irish nationalism can only be understood within the larger demography of the Irish diaspora, the most salient crossruffing of the several forms of Irish nationalism will be dependent on how the entire Irish-descended population was configured in all its ecological niches around the world. However, conceptually, I would guess that a single back-curtain will be needed to highlight these differences, and that curtain is the fact that Irish nationalism, like the Irish diaspora in general, was the bastard child of imperialism. That is an old-fashioned word, “imperialism,” but it is coming back into usage because in everyday life we see it occurring around us. In the Irish case, the manifest point is that had it not been English/British state imperialism in the homeland, there would have been no direct need for Irish nationalism. (Whether or not there might have been a spontaneous development of cultural nationalism is an interesting hypothetical question.) The more salient, but latent, point is that the spread and evolution of Irish nationalism as a global system was largely dependent upon the existence of two expansive empires: that of the United Kingdom and that of the United States. The former was obvious, the latter was formative. The efflorescence of Irish nationalism in a global context depended upon the displacement, if not genocide, of indigenous populations and upon the continual conquest of territories that had previously been “empty” or controlled by peoples who were so thin on the ground that they could be slapped aside. Paradoxically, this back-curtain of Irish nationalism – the imperialism of the Big Guys – can be conceptualized in terms that give it a visual polarity antithetical to imperialism. Namely, instead of viewing the development of Irish nationalism as occurring against the backcloth of imperialism, one might instead see it as occurring against the background of freedom-making market capitalism. It is uncontested that the particular stage of capitalist development influences social and governmental structures, and these in turn

Stepping Back and Looking Around

187

influence all social movements; and since capitalism developed unevenly in its various uk and us colonies, this should explain a great deal about the variant nature of Irish nationalism. Whether one views expanding market capitalism as a good thing or not will be markedly different if one is a fan of Stephen Harper and George Bush or of John Lennon and Vladimir Lenin. Either way, the several forms of Irish nationalism were not independent of their economic setting. That said, I think it more productive to use a market-economy mindset to analyze the several strands of Irish nationalism as competing consumer goods. Each form was fighting for financial resources and for emotional adherence in a limited market. Think of them as competing brands, each having to redefine itself in each new market in order to gain resources and thus to survive. Just recall Eamon de Valera’s vying with the adherents of Judge Daniel Cohalan during De Valera’s 1919 fundraising trip to the United States, and one realizes how cutthroat the competition between nationalist “brands” could be and how necessary it was to cut the cloth to suit the market. In suggesting that one deals with the variants of Irish nationalism as mutually competitive international products, I am bringing us gently to a distant view of where I hope we will eventually arrive. If the competition among various Irish nationalist products was unremittingly Darwinian, then a morphological model will ultimately be most revealing. A phylogenetic tree, like the “family trees” employed by paleobiologists and geneticists, should emerge. It will be a massive candelabra and will indicate origin, descent, adaptation, survival or fossilization, and by virtue of our having defined carefully the various environmental variables, it will explain why, for instance, Isaac Butt’s federalism had a short half-life but the Irish Republican Brotherhood went on evolving unto the present day. The final product will, I believe, be elegant. It will not resemble anything we now see as pattern in the jagged and isolated shards of scholarship we encounter when we survey the present literature on Irish nationalism the world around.

This page intentionally left blank

Notes

wilson: introduction 1 The central figure in modern Irish Canadian historiography is Donald Harman Akenson; see, in particular, his “Ontario: Whatever Happened to the Irish?” in Canadian Papers in Rural History, vol. 3 (Gananoque, on: Langdale Press 1982): 204–56; The Irish in Ontario: A Study in Rural History (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 1984); and Being Had: Historians, Evidence, and the Irish in North America (Toronto: P.D. Meany 1985). Akenson’s work was influenced by Gordon Darroch and Michael Ornstein, “Ethnicity and Occupational Structure in Canada in 1871: The Vertical Mosaic in Historical Perspective,” Canadian Historical Review 61, no. 3 (1980): 305–33. For an early challenge to Akenson’s interpretation, see Peter M. Toner, “Lifting the Mist: Recent Studies on the Scots and Irish in Canada,” Acadiensis 18, no. 1 (1988): 215–26, and “Occupation and Ethnicity: The Irish in New Brunswick,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 20 (1988): 155–65. Gordon Darroch revisited the issue in his “Half Empty or Half Full? Images and Interpretations of the Catholic Irish in Nineteenth-Century Canada,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 25 (1993): 1–8. Other important studies are Cecil J. Houston and William J. Smyth, Irish Emigration and Canadian Settlement: Patterns, Links & Letters (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1990); Mark G. McGowan, “Irish Catholics,” in Encyclopedia of Canada’s Peoples, ed. Paul Robert Magocsi (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1999), 734–63; Brian Clarke, “Irish Protestants,” in ibid., 763–83; and Mark G. McGowan, The Waning of the Green: Catholics, the Irish, and Identity in Toronto, 1887–1922 (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 1999).

190

Notes to pages 3–8

2 Cecil J. Houston and William J. Smyth, The Sash Canada Wore: A Historical Geography of the Orange Order in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1980). A rather different interpretation can be found in Scott See, Riots in New Brunswick: Orange Nativism and Social Violence in the 1840s (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1993). See also David A. Wilson, ed., The Orange Order in Canada (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2007). 3 Within the vast literature on this subject, the towering studies are Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1985), and Kevin Kenny, The American Irish: A History (Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education 2000). 4 See, for example, C.P. Stacey, “Fenianism and the Rise of National Feeling in Canada at the Time of Confederation,” Canadian Historical Review 12 (1931): 238–61. W.S. Neidhardt, Fenianism in North America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press 1975), and Hereward Senior, The Fenians and Canada (Toronto: Macmillan 1978), both emphasized Fenianism as an external threat, although they recognized the existence and importance of internal Canadian Fenianism. 5 C.P. Stacey, “A Fenian Interlude: The Story of Michael Murphy,” Canadian Historical Review 15 (1934): 133–54. 6 The headline in the Globe and Mail of Wesley Wark’s review of Peter Edwards, Delusion: The True Story of Victorian Superspy Henri Le Caron (Toronto: Key Porter Books 2008), referred to “the dastardly Fenians.” See Globe and Mail, 2 August 2008. Wesley Wark, it must be added, was not responsible for the headline. 7 Peter M. Toner, “The Rise of Irish Nationalism in Canada, 1858–1884,” (phd dissertation, National University of Ireland, Galway 1974). 8 Richard J. Jensen, “‘No Irish Need Apply’: A Myth of Urban Victimization,” Journal of Social History 36 (2002): 405–29; Reginald Byron, Irish America (New York: Oxford University Press 1999). 9 Globe, 13 May 1868. 10 Thomas D’Arcy McGee, “The Irish Position in British and in Republican North America,” Canadian Freeman, 15 March 1866. 11 Canadian Freeman, 14 April 1864. 12 On Macdonald and the suspension of habeas corpus, see David A. Wilson, “The D’Arcy McGee Affair and the Suspension of Habeas Corpus,” in Canadian State Trials, vol. 3, ed. Susan Binnie and Barry Wright (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2009), 85–120. 13 Robert Grace, “The Irish in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Canada and the Case of Quebec: Immigration and Settlement in a Catholic City” (phd dissertation, Université Laval 1999); Simon Jolivet, “Les deux questions

Notes to pages 8–22

191

irlandaises du Québec, 1898–1921: des considérations canadiennesfrançaises et irlando-catholiques” (phd dissertation, Concordia University 2008). 14 James Jackson, “The Radicalization of the Montreal Irish: The Role of the Vindicator,” Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 31, no.1 (2005): 90–7; Mary Haslam, “Ireland and Quebec 1822–1839: Rapprochement and Ambiguity,” Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 33, no.1 (2007): 75–81; Mark G. McGowan, Creating Canadian Historical Memory: The Case of the Famine Migration of 1847 (Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association 2006); Peter M. Toner, “The Military Organization of the Canadian Fenians, 1866–70,” Irish Sword 10, no. 38 (1971): 26–37; D.C. Lyne and Peter M. Toner, “Fenianism in Canada, 1874–1884,” Studia Hibernica 12 (1972): 27–76; Peter M. Toner, “‘The Green Ghost’: Canada’s Fenians and the Raids,” Éire-Ireland 16, no. 4 (1981): 27–47; Jeff Keshen, “Cloak and Dagger: Canada West’s Secret Police, 1864–1867,” Ontario History (Dec. 1987): 353–81; Gregory S. Kealey, “The Empire Strikes Back: The Nineteenth-Century Origins of the Canadian Secret Service,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, vol. 10 (1999): 3–18; Michael Cottrell, “St. Patrick’s Day Parades in Nineteenth-Century Toronto: A Study of Immigrant Adjustment and Elite Control,” Histoire sociale/Social History 25 (1992): 57–73; Rosalyn Trigger, “Irish Politics on Parade: The Clergy, National Societies, and St Patrick’s Day Processions in NineteenthCentury Montreal and Toronto,” Histoire sociale/Social History 37 (2004): 159–99. 15 Montreal Herald, 9 August 1867. 16 McGee, “Four Letters to a Friend” (1859), Letter One, 4, O’Gorman Papers, Library and Archives Canada, mg30 d20, folder 10.

farrell: using the grand turk for ireland 1 For recent examples, see Kevin James, “Dynamics of Ethnic Associational Culture in a Nineteenth-Century City: Saint Patrick’s Society of Montreal, 1834–56,” Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 26, no. 1 (2000): 47–67; James Jackson, “The Radicalization of the Montreal Irish: The Role of The Vindicator,” Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 31, no. 1 (2005): 90–7; Jason King, “‘A Stranger to Our Sympathy’: Radical Romanticism and the Image of the Native American in Adam Kidd’s The Huron Chief and The Vindicator,” Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 33, no. 1 (2007): 82–90. 2 For interesting reflections on this trend within recent Quebec historiography, see Bettina Bradbury and Tamara Myers, “Introduction,”

192

3

4

5

6 7

8 9

Notes to pages 23–5

Negotiating Identities in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Montreal, ed. Bradbury and Myers (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press 2005), 3–10. Joseph Lennon, Irish Orientalism: A Literary and Intellectual History (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press 2004), xxvii. For other insightful mediations of these issues, see Stephen Howe, Ireland and Empire: Colonial Legacies in Irish History and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000): 47–55, and Kevin Kenny, “Ireland and the British Empire: An Introduction,” in Ireland and the British Empire, ed. Kenny (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2004), 1–25. Irish Vindicator and Canada Advertiser, 5 and 19 May 1829. Tracey reported that passengers aboard an emigrant ship leaving Dublin demanded to be returned to Ireland when they heard that Catholic Relief had been passed, “willingly forgetting their passage money, [to be returned to] scenes of their former life, and the expected happiness to be derived from the liberation of their native land” (ibid., 16 June 1829). Recent scholarship has not been kind to George Canning, reversing a traditional Whiggish consensus view that positively contrasted Canning’s vision with the reactionary policies of Castlereagh. See Loyal Cowles, “The Failure to Restrain Russia: Canning, Nesselrode, and the Greek Question 1825–7,” International History Review 12 (1990): 688–720. For a solid overview of British foreign policy in the era, see John Clarke, British Diplomacy and Foreign Policy, 1782–1865 (London: Unwin Hyman 1989). Finally, for a fascinating examination of Byron, British liberalism, and Greece, see Frederick Rosen, Bentham, Byron, and Greece: Constitutionalism, Nationalism, and Early Liberal Political Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1992). Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1923 (New York: Basic Books 2006), 432. While the English-language literature is limited, a broad overview of efforts to modernize Ottoman military and political structures – Sultan Selim iii’s New Order reforms of the 1800s and Mahmoud II’s Tanzimat – can be found in ibid., 384–446. For a more detailed assessment of the “re-ordering,” see Avigdor Levy, “The Ottoman Ulema and the Military Reforms of Sultan Mahmud II,” Asian and African Studies 7 (1971): 13–39. Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, www.biographi.ca (accessed 19 February 2007). Irish Vindicator and Canada Advertiser, 14 July 1829.

Notes to pages 26–31

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18

19

20 21 22 23

24 25

193

Ibid., 2 June and 10 November 1829. Ibid., 28 July 1829. Vindicator and Canada Advertiser, 4 September 1829. Ibid., 15 September and 2 October 1829. Ibid., 1 September 1829. Ibid., 15 September 1829. Ibid., 25 August 1829. Reinhold Schiffer, Oriental Panorama: British Travellers in 19th Century Turkey (Amsterdam: Rodopi 1999). For all his critique of Said, there are many ways in which Schiffer’s examination of the shifting sands of oriental representation converge with Said’s work. See Jeffrey Auerbach’s thoughtful review in Victorian Studies 43, no. 4 (2001): 682–4. For Said, see Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books 1979). The Greek epigraph itself triggered a petty newspaper controversy in September 1829, when the editor of the conservative Quebec Official Gazette accused the Vindicator of supporting Canadian independence à la Greece. See the Vindicator and Canada Advertiser, 1 September 1829. Vindicator and Canada Advertiser, 15 September 1829. Madden’s fascination with the Ottoman Empire did not end here; he later published The Mussulman (1830) and Egypt and Muhammad Ali: Illustrative of the Conditions of the Slaves and the Subjects (1841). As the latter title implies, Madden’s fascination with the Middle East was at least partially driven by his involvement in the anti-slavery movement. For this, see Gera Burton, “Liberty’s Call: Richard Robert Madden’s Voice in the Anti-Slavery Movement (1833–1842),” Irish Migration Studies in Latin America 5, no. 3 (2007): 199–206. Vindicator and Canada Advertiser, 15 September 1829. Schiffer, Oriental Panorama, 288. Vindicator and Canada Advertiser, 15 September 1829. Among a plethora of recent works, see Kathleen Wilson, The Island Race: Englishness, Empire, and Gender in the Eighteenth Century (London: Routledge 2002); Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The “Manly Englishman” and the “Effeminate Bengali” (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1995); Antoinette Burton, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865–1915 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1994). Vindicator and Canada Advertiser, 29 September 1829. Irish Vindicator and Canada Advertiser, 31 July 1829. Among many other examples, see ibid., 1 May 1829, particularly Tracey’s celebration of both the Catholic Association – “the most extraordinary coalition” in world

194

26 27

28 29

30

31 32

Notes to pages 31–4

history – and the beneficial impact of educational reforms being implemented in Trois-Rivières, Boucherville, and Quebec. Schiffer, Oriental Panorama, 255. Kevin Whelan, “The Green Atlantic: Radical Reciprocities between Ireland and America in the Long Eighteenth Century,” in A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity, and Modernity in Britain and the Empire 1660–1840 ed. Kathleen Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004): 231–8; Luke Gibbons, “‘The Return of the Native’: The United Irishmen, Culture, and Colonialism,” in 1798: A Bicentenary Perspective, ed. Thomas Bartlett et al. (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2004), 52–74. Gibbons, “‘The Return of the Native,’” 74. David A. Wilson, “Comment: Whiteness and Irish Experience in North America,” Journal of British Studies 44 (Jan. 2005): 155–6. For the most sophisticated argument about whiteness and Irish emigrant experience in North America, see David Roediger, Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, 2nd edn. (New York: Verso 1999). Donald Harman Akenson, If the Irish Ran the World: Montserrat, 1630–1750 (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 1997); David Gleeson, The Irish in the South, 1815–1877 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 2002). Howe, Ireland and Empire, 45–9. See Timothy G. McMahon, “‘Dash and Daring’: Imperial Violence and Irish Ambiguity,” in Shadows of the Gunmen: Violence and Culture in Modern Ireland, ed. Danine Farquharson and Sean Farrell (Cork: Cork University Press 2007); Paul A. Townend, “Between Two Worlds: Irish Nationalists and Imperial Crisis, 1878–1880,” Past and Present 194, no.1 (2007): 139–74.

toner: the fanatic heart of the north 1 Dublin Irishman, 13 March 1869. This and similar articles in the newspaper were undoubtedly extracted from John Savage, Fenian Heroes and Martyrs (Boston 1868). Savage was the head centre of the remnant of the original Fenian Brotherhood at the time and did little other than this attempt to immortalize men such as Condon. This chapter is based on my phd dissertation, “The Rise of Irish Nationalism in Canada, 1858–1884” (National University of Ireland, Galway 1974). I hope that the ideas presented here have matured somewhat since then. 2 General sources related to Fenianism are copious and wide-ranging, both in terms of content and interpretation, depending on whether the

Notes to pages 34–5

3

4

5

6

195

locus is Ireland or the overseas Irish. The original and still useful work on American Fenianism is William D’Arcy, “The Fenian Movement in the United States, 1858–1886,” (phd dissertation, Catholic University of America 1947). The later phases were covered in T.N. Brown, Irish American Nationalism, 1870–1890 (New York: Lippincott 1966). The Canadian dimension was outlined in Hereward Senior, The Fenians and Canada (Toronto: Macmillan 1978). C.P. Stacey, “A Fenian Interlude: The Story of Michael Murphy,” Canadian Historical Review 15, no. 2 (1934). This article is still a “must read” for anyone interested in Fenianism in Canada, as is Stacey’s earlier “Fenianism and the Rise of National Feeling at the Time of Confederation,” Canadian Historical Review 12, no. 3 (1931). Even after reliable literature became available, authors of general works preferred to skip over Fenianism with little thought. A check on survey texts now in print will confirm this. This is not a problem restricted to Canada but has been prevalent in the United Kingdom as well. For an entertaining as well as informative examination of this, see Patrick J. Quinlivan, “Hunting the Fenians: Problems in the Historiography of a Secret Organization,” in The Irish World Wide: History, Heritage, Identity, vol. 3, ed. Patrick O’Sullivan (London: Leicester University Press 1994), 133–53. The literature related to McGee’s brief career in Canada is voluminous and mainly flattering. The reader could start with Josephine Phelan, The Ardent Exile (Toronto: Macmillan 1951), but better work was to follow by Robin Burns and lately by David Wilson. Burns’s phd dissertation, “Thomas D’Arcy McGee: A Biography” (McGill University, 1976), is another of those works that must be read. Burns’s McGee was far more complex than earlier historians had depicted. See also David A. Wilson, Thomas D’Arcy McGee: Passion, Reason, and Politics, 1825–1857, vol. 1 (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 2008), and Thomas D’Arcy McGee: The Extreme Moderate, 1857–1868, vol. 2 (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, forthcoming). I have not yet been convinced about either Whelan’s guilt or his alleged connections with organized Fenianism but am willing to become educated on both matters. See T.P. Slattery, The Assassination of D’Arcy McGee (Toronto: Doubleday 1968), and its sequel, They Got to Find Mee Guilty Yet (Toronto: Doubleday 1972). A close read of Slattery gives the tantalizing impression that he was inspired by “underground” oral traditions. He nevertheless adhered strictly to the documentary evidence, perhaps unfortunately.

196

Notes to pages 36–8

7 One good and overdue example of this is William M. Baker, Timothy Warren Anglin, 1822–96: Irish Catholic Canadian (Toronto 1877). Anglin’s close personal connections with Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, and his blood relationship to John Warren, a leading Boston Fenian, might modify views of his loyalty. See Margaret O’Donovan Rossa, My Father and Mother Were Irish (New York: Devin-Adair 1939). Although Baker presented Anglin as an “alternative” to McGee, he represented his subject’s virtues as if they were drawn from the same reservoir into which the admirers of McGee had already dipped. Probably Anglin never had any formal links with the Fenian movement at any stage, and he was steadfast in his opposition to the policy of raiding British North America, but the diligent historical detective will labour in vain to find an outright condemnation of the objectives of that movement. 8 A dramatic American view of this plan and the reaction to it is contained in George Potter, To the Golden Door (Boston: Little, Brown 1960). 9 A serviceable account of Murphy’s career is W.S. Neidhardt’s contribution in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 9:587–9. 10 P.J. Power to the editor, nd, Crown Briefs, Business papers seized in the office of the Irish People, National Archives of Ireland (nai), box 5, envelope 18, p. 3; Power to the editor, 28 July 1865, Crown Briefs, nai, box 2, envelope 4. This is the earliest known membership list for a Fenian circle in Canada. Many of those named subsequently appear in evidence related to activities associated with Fenianism, real or alleged. See also nai, Chief Secretary’s Numbered Files, a70, a financial statement of the Fenian Brotherhood that cites contributions from this circle and also those in Toronto and Montreal. 11 A recent and very detailed account of the raid on New Brunswick is Robert L. Dallison, Turning Back the Fenians: New Brunswick’s Last Colonial Campaign (Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions 2006). The author used previously unstudied papers related to the response of the Charlotte County militia, and thus this work supersedes all prior writings related to that raid. As the title implies, Dallison presented a military narrative, and it is scarcely sympathetic to the Fenians. 12 Notebook kept by John Devoy, nai, ms9824, p. 3. This records the fact that Murphy organized d3, one of the very first circles of the United Brotherhood. The casual note and a variety of other evidence give the impression that Murphy had a good reputation amongst American Fenians even after his death. He deserves further and fuller historical investigation – and a biography.

Notes to pages 38–40

197

13 An exception is the detailed account contained in W.S. Neidhardt’s Fenianism in North America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press 1975). Despite its title, this work is mainly useful as a narrative of the raids. 14 Peter M. Toner, “The ‘Green Ghost’: Canada’s Fenians and the Raids,” Éire-Ireland 16, no. 4 (1981). 15 He published a pamphlet, An Account of the Attempts to Establish Fenianism in Montreal (Montreal 1867). The details contained are sufficiently accurate that one is led to believe this was based on information obtained by the government by one means or another, and this in turn means that McGee was used as a government spokesman on the subject. 16 Henry Boylan, A Dictionary of Irish Biography (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan 1978), 205. MacManus’s funeral in Glasnevin, like the later funeral of O’Donovan Rossa, served as a vehicle for “nationalist” propaganda. MacManus had relatives, including a namesake, living in New Brunswick at the time. 17 Peter M. Toner, “The Military Organization of the ‘Canadian’ Fenians,” Irish Sword 10, no. 38 (1971). 18 Henri Le Caron, Twenty-Five Years in the Secret Service (London 1892). Originally, Beach called himself “Le Caron” to become a surgeon in the Union Army, but he continued his surgical practice after the war – without formal training or credentials – and offered his services to Her Majesty’s Government when approached by Fenians he had met during his military years. He became the best source of intelligence related to American Fenianism until he was brought into the open in the later attempt to implicate Parnell. Le Caron became an inseparable strand in the saga of American Fenianism. 19 Sean O’Luing, “Aspects of the Fenian Rising in Kerry, 1867,” Journal of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society 3 (1970). 20 The song “God Save Ireland!” was set to the air of an American Civil War marching song, “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp,” of which another version was used by the Canadian militia. In this version, the Canadians vow “beneath the Union Jack, we will drive the Fenians back.” Matters could become confusing when a band struck up this tune. 21 This writer would like to confess that the inspiration for this lies with the fictional Irish American caricature, Mr Dooley. 22 This petition included the signatures of three members of the cabinet, fourteen senators, and thirty mps. Although he did not sign, one does suspect the influence of Macdonald, who continued to receive intelli-

198

23

24

25 26 27

28 29

30 31

32

33

Notes to pages 40–4

gence from the elder Condon related to the American Fenians. See Thomas Condon to Sir Edward Thornton, 12 March 1868, Fenian Despatches. This collection is a microfilmed extraction from The National Archives of the United Kingdom (tna), fo5 1332–864, related to the Fenian movement in the United States. William O’Brien and Desmond Ryan, eds., Devoy’s Post Bag, 2 vols (Dublin: C.J. Fallon 1948, 1953), 1:9. This work is fundamental to an understanding of the later phases of the Fenian movement. It consists of a generous selection of documents from John Devoy’s personal papers, supplemented by editorial notes, especially those of a biographical nature. Hereafter this will be cited as dpb. See Brian Clarke, “Religious Riot as Pastime: Orange Young Britons, Parades, and Public Life in Victorian Toronto,” in The Orange Order in Canada, ed. David A. Wilson (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2007), 119. D.C. Lyne and Peter M. Toner, “Fenianism in Canada, 1874–84,” Studia Hibernica 12 (1972). “s.g. d160” to Devoy, 1 April 1875, dpb 1: 102,. David Thornley, Isaac Butt and Home Rule (London: MacGibbon and Kee 1964). Thornley’s Butt does not emerge as an inspirational character, and it is unfortunate that his ideas for the political future of Ireland did not receive a more favourable reception by either side. Perhaps a more charismatic personality could have made these ideas more attractive. Peter M. Toner, “The Home Rule League in Canada: Fortune, Fenians, and Failure,” Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 15, no. 1 (July 1989). Sean O’Luing, Fremantle Mission (Tralee: Anvil Books 1965); Philip A. Fennell, “History into Myth: The Catalpa’s Long Voyage,” New Hibernia Review 9, no. 1 (2005): 77–94. dpb, 1:141–2. dpb, 1:184. For an enlightening and balanced view of Ford, see James P. Rodechko, “An Irish American Journalist and Catholicism: Patrick Ford of the Irish World,” Church History 39, no. 4 (1970). Statement of the Secretary of the “v.c.” [cryptics for “u.b.”] of the Amount of Percentages [contributions of the local branches to the central organization] Received, 1 December 1879, National Library of Ireland, Devoy Papers, United Brotherhood files. In one of the rare lapses of strict secrecy, this document identifies d160 and d377 by location. See the Nation (Dublin), 11, 18 March 1876 and 1, 8 May 1880, for anonymous articles written by someone familiar with the Tenant League in Prince Edward Island. In them the tactics used by the Tenant League were described in some detail. It is difficult to believe that the precedent

Notes to pages 44–8

34

35

36

37

38

39 40 41

42

199

of pei, especially since these descriptions were published in a prominent newspaper, had no impact on the nature and course of the Irish Land War. The role of the Catholic clergy in limiting the influence of the Fenians is presented in Rosalyn Trigger, “Clerical Containment of Diasporic Irish Nationalism: A Canadian Example from the Parnell Era,” chapter 4 of this volume. Percentage Statement, 31 May 1883, Devoy Papers. d392, in Quebec City, had been organized some time in 1879, before the Land War. Scattered information related to Rossa’s new organization, the United Irishmen, can be gleaned from his papers, which are lodged in the Catholic University of America and are available on microfilm. Some inside information related to Costigan’s motion may be found in the O’Hanley [sic] Papers, Library and Archives Canada, mg29 b23. The fact that O’Hanly’s politics were less moderate than those of Costigan is evidence of the flexibility many Irish nationalists in Canada could exercise when it was to their advantage to do so. Conveniently, the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14, contains the entries for both: s.v. “Edward Blake,” 74–85, and “Charles Devlin,” 293–5. Charles was a nephew of Bernard Devlin. R.C. Clipperton to Granville, 21 December 1881, Fenian a files, nai. Clipperton had an agent in the Chicago Convention of the Land League, possibly Le Caron, who insisted that many of the delegates were members of various branches of the Fenian movement. He cited Jeremiah Gallagher of Quebec City as a violent Fenian who was familiar with terrorist activities in Canada, including the manufacture of bombs. Report of the Commission established under the Special Commission Act of 1888, reprinted by the Times (London 1889). D.C. Lyne, “Irish-Canadian Financial Contributions to the Home Rule Movement in the 1890s,” Studia Hibernica 7 (1967). Many would also fall in line to support the Great War in 1914, and some denounced the “stab in the back of the Empire” which others would style the “Easter Rising.” See Mark McGowan’s essay on the response of the Canadian Irish to that war, “Between King, Kaiser, and Canada: Irish Catholics in Canada and the Great War, 1914–1918,” chapter 5 of this volume. On a very personal note, this writer in his youth heard the phrase “going through the Butcher’s Gate” as an equivalent of “biting off more than you can chew.” It would be years later that he learned the true meaning of this term – which was after he had learned that “Derry” and

200

Notes to pages 50–5

“Londonderry” referred to the same place, if they were also in different worlds. 43 dpb, 2:268. Stockley was replaced for a year’s leave by Douglas Hyde. This writer’s family tradition held that it was “a professor,” probably Stockley, who recruited his grandfather to organized Irish nationalism. Irish nationalism could produce strange bedfellows: the Dublin-born, Trinity-educated professor and the Irish-speaking teamster who was born in New Brunswick. 44 And a widely known and widely read historian for a granddaughter, Marianna. It should be added: widely admired and respected as well.

wilson: was patrick james whelan a fenian? 1 Whelan to Macdonald, 14 September 1868, Macdonald Papers, Library and Archives Canada (lac), mg26a, vol. 184, ff. 76993–6. 2 Globe, 11 February 1869. 3 Macdonald to Sandfield Macdonald, 4 May 1868, Macdonald Papers, lac, mg26a, vol. 514, ff. 702–3; Canadian Freeman, 23 April 1868. 4 O’Hanly to John Hearn, 4 May 1868, O’Hanley [sic] Papers, lac, mg29 b11, vol. 1. 5 Charles S. Blue, “Famous Canadian Trials: The Case of Patrick James Whelan, Who Was Hanged for the Murder of Thomas D’Arcy McGee,” Canadian Magazine 44, no. 5 (1915): 392. 6 Murphy to Emmet J. Mullaly, 14 February 1935, Charles Murphy Papers, lac, mg27 iii b8, vol. 21, f. 9410. 7 Ibid. 8 R.E. Gosnell, draft article on McGee, 1925, in Murphy Papers, vol. 44, ff. 17964–5. 9 Toronto Mail and Empire, 7 April 1934. 10 T.P. Slattery, “They Got to Find Mee Guilty Yet” (Toronto: Doubleday 1972), 399 and passim. 11 Ibid., 340–3. 12 Ibid., 156–65. For some printed versions of Hess’s and Cullen’s now lost original memorandum of the conversation, see ibid., 371–4; also True Witness, 1 May 1868; Globe, 25 April 1868; Guelph Evening Mercury, 25 April 1868; and Irish Canadian, 29 April 1868. Detective Andrew Cullen was from County Clare; his surname was actually Cullinan, and he had been a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary before moving to Montreal in 1865, where he went on to be chief detective in the city. See

Notes to pages 56–61

13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31

201

William Cochrane, ed., The Canadian Album. Men of Canada; or, Success by Example (Brantford: Garretson & Co. 1893), 2:478; see also his obituary in Montreal Gazette, 11 February 1905. Slattery, “They Got to Find Mee Guilty Yet,” 343–8. As in, for example, the notorious Birmingham Six case after the ira’s bombing of two pubs in the city centre in 1974. It should be added that the pro-Fenian Irish Canadian introduced its report on the conversation between Whelan and Doyle as follows: “We give the following as one of the latest batches, a word of which, from beginning to end, we do not believe” (Irish Canadian, 29 April 1868). George Spaight, ed., Trial of Patrick J. Whelan for the Murder of the Hon. Thos. D’Arcy McGee (Ottawa: G.E. Desbarats 1868), 30. Ibid., 44. Slattery, “They Got to Find Mee Guilty Yet,” 335–6. Ibid., 329–36. Ibid., 336–8. Ibid., 322–4, 328. Ibid., 288–98, 352. See, for example, Janice Kennedy, “A Convenient Villain,” Ottawa Citizen, 17 March 2002: “Historians believe that Patrick James Whelan ... was probably wrongly convicted.” Melanie Brooks, “Who Shot D’Arcy McGee?” Ottawa Citizen, 2 March 2002. McGee, “An Account of the Attempts to Establish Fenianism in Montreal,” Montreal Gazette, 17, 20, 22 August 1867. Montreal Herald, 9 August 1867. Devlin made these comments in a speech when he learned that McGee was about to reveal information about the Fenians in Montreal; in response, people in the audience called out, “He’s dead.” On the spitting incident, see George Clerk, “Diary Excerpts,” 2 October 1867, Thomas D’Arcy McGee Collection, Concordia University Archives, po30, ha261, folder 6, and Montreal Gazette, 2 October 1867. Globe, 17 April 1868. For a slight variation, see Guelph Evening Mercury, 17 April 1868. Globe, 25 April 1868. Ottawa Citizen, 29 May 1868. Irish Canadian, 16 September 1868. Ibid. Globe, 17 April 1868; Irish Canadian, 16 September 1868; Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 34.

202

Notes to pages 61–4

32 The witnesses were William Goulden, Susan Wheatley, John White, William White, James Kinsella, and Patrick Eagleson; see Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 45, 50–3. 33 Irish Canadian, 16 September 1868; Canadian Freeman, 17 September 1868; Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 31–2. 34 Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 33. 35 At the Police Magistrate’s Inquiry in April, O’Neill said that Whelan possessed the rules and bylaws of the St Patrick’s Society in Montreal, but he did not mention the badge of the Hibernian Benevolent Society until the trial in September; see Globe, 10 April 1868, and Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 30. 36 P.C. Burton [Patrick Nolan] to McMicken, 31 December 1865, Macdonald Papers, lac, mg26a, vol. 236, ff. 103131–4. 37 Charles Halley to McMicken, 11 April 1868, Macdonald Papers, lac, mg26a, vol. 240, ff. 106717–8. 38 Globe, 10 April 1868; Canadian Freeman, 17 September 1868 (reporting that “some copies” of the paper were in Whelan’s possession); Irish Canadian, 16 September 1868; and Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 30 (reporting that one copy of the paper was found). According to the judge’s notes, Whelan had one copy; see Judge William Buell Richards, “Trial Notes,” Thomas D’Arcy McGee Collection, Concordia University Archives, p030, ha260, folder 1,. 39 Globe, 18 April 1868. 40 Canadian Freeman, 18 February 1869. 41 Marriage certificate, 13 February 1867, St Patrick’s Basilica, Montreal. I thank Sheila Hennessy-Brandl, a descendant of Patrick Doody, for this information. 42 For a sketch of Edward O’Meagher Condon’s career, see the Irishman, 13 March 1869; for the rescue of Thomas Kelly and the so-called Manchester Martyrs, see Brian Jenkins, The Fenian Problem: Insurgency and Terrorism in a Liberal State, 1858–1874 (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 2008), 105–8. 43 E.J. O’Neill to Macdonald, 13 April 1868, Macdonald Papers, lac, mg26a, vol. 184, ff. 76961–3; Globe, 17 April 1868; Canadian Freeman, 23 April 1868; Spaight, Trial of Patrick James Whelan, 33, 55. 44 Irish Canadian, 29 April 1868. 45 At the trial, as opposed to his testimony at the Police Magistrate’s Inquiry, Turner said that Enright accompanied Whelan to McGee’s house in August 1867, but he did not mention Murphy (Spaight, Trial of Patrick James Whelan, 33). 46 Globe, 17 April 1868.

Notes to pages 64–6

203

47 Slattery, in “They Got to Find Mee Guilty Yet,” made this mistake, and I repeated the error in “The Fenians in Montreal, 1862–68: Invasion, Intrigue, and Assassination,” Éire-Ireland 38, nos. 3 & 4 (2003): 128. 48 On Thomas Murphy’s occupation, see Globe, 16 April 1868; on Henry Murphy’s occupation and his role in Devlin’s election campaign, see Globe, 17 April, 29 May 1868. Edward Archibald, the British consul in New York, identified Henry Murphy as “one of the principal Fenians in Montreal”; see Archibald to Stanley, 9 April 1868, The National Archives of the United Kingdom (tna), fo5/1343, ff. 339–40. 49 Archibald to Stanley, 9 April 1868, tna, fo5/1343, ff. 339–40. 50 Globe, 18 April 1868; James O’Reilly to Colonel Bernard, 28 October 1868, “Papers re. parties charged with Fenianism in Ottawa,” lac, rg13 a–2, file 510 (1868). The list, which has been lost, may have been the one that Robert Latchford had been told about; see above, 54. 51 Compare John Joseph McGee’s testimony as reported in Irish Canadian, 22 April 1868, with Archibald’s description in his letter to Stanley, 9 April 1868, tna, fo5/1343, ff. 339–40. 52 According to J.L.P. O’Hanly, the government had intercepted a letter from Peter Eagleson to the secretary of the Fenian Brotherhood, naming the Ottawa delegate to a Fenian Convention; see O’Hanly, “Status of Irish Catholics,” O’Hanley [sic] Papers, lac, mg29 b11, vol. 17, folder 6. On Peter Eagleson’s “extreme opinions,” which he apparently shared with his brother Patrick, see Canadian Freeman, 9 April 1868. 53 Testimony of Patrick Buckley, Police Magistrate’s Inquiry, Irish Canadian, 22 April 1868, and Canadian Freeman, 23 April 1868; testimony of William Goulden, Judge William Buell Richards, “Trial Notes,” Thomas D’Arcy McGee Collection, Concordia University Archives, p030, ha260, folder 4. For evidence that Starrs knew about Whelan’s strong opposition to McGee, see Slattery, “They Got to Find Mee Guilty Yet,” 351. 54 See Irish Canadian, 25 March 1868. 55 Globe, 25 April 1868. 56 Dublin Special Commission, April 1867, Fenian Briefs, National Archives of Ireland (nai), box 9, no. 6(a), ff. 4, 58, 161–2; Fenian Photographs, nai, box 4, f. 506/811; “Dublin – Special Commission, April 1867: Alphabetical List of Prisoners arrested for complicity in the Fenian Conspiracy,” and “Lists of Warrants issued, arrests, discharges, 1868,” nai, Fenian Arrests and Discharges, 1866–69. 57 Globe, 25 April 1868. 58 Duke of Buckingham to Viscount Monck, 16 May 1868, Macdonald Papers, lac, mg26a, vol. 59, f. 24078.

204

Notes to pages 66–9

59 Whelan’s own explanation, it should be added, was that he did not want his real name to get into the newspapers (Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 86). Against this, John Downes, a cab driver who had been acquainted with Whelan in Quebec City, testified that in 1865 Whelan had been calling himself Sullivan – indicating that Whelan had more general reasons for concealing his identity (Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 28). 60 Archibald to Stanley, 1 October 1867, Fenian a files, nai, a291. The informer was probably Rudolph Fitzpatrick, the assistant secretary at war in the Senate Wing of the Fenian Brotherhood. 61 See, for example, the file on Christian Norman, who was accused of attempting to swear two soldiers into the Fenian Brotherhood, in Justice Department, lac, rg13a–2, vol. 18, file 62, 1868; for an example of fears that British regiments were conduits for Fenians in Canada, see “Journal of Lady Monck, June 20 – June 28, 1867,” in Monck Letters and Journals, 1863–1868, ed. W.L. Morton (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart 1970), 320–1. 62 See above, p. 58. 63 Archibald to Stanley, 9 April 1868, tna, fo5/1343, f. 342. 64 Rooney to Lousada, 7 May 1868, tna, fo5/1343, f. 377. 65 Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 88. 66 See, for example, H.C. Moore to George-Étienne Cartier, 20 April 1868, Macdonald Papers, lac, mg26a, vol. 59, c1508, f. 24039; W. Lambert to Gilbert McMicken, 7 May 1868, Macdonald Papers, vol. 240, c1666, ff. 106830–1; Rev. E.P. Roche to Bishop Horan, 15 April 1868, Bishop Edward John Horan Papers, Archives of the Archdiocese of Kingston, Ontario, dc18 c18/19; MacNeil Clarke to Macdonald, 8 April 1868, Macdonald Papers, vol. 184, c1586, f. 76978; Statement of John Clare, 16 April 1868, Macdonald Papers, vol. 184, c1586, f. 76970. 67 McMicken to Macdonald, 14 April 1868, Macdonald Papers, lac, mg26a, vol. 240, ff. 106735–7; “Abstract of information in letters dated from Chicago, Il. on 23rd & 26th April 1868,” tna, fo5/1343, f. 405. 68 It is worth noting, in this respect, James Moylan’s view that the assassination emanated from “a jealous conspiracy or plot of a certain political coterie, principally confined to Ottawa and Montreal”; see Moylan to Henry J. Morgan, n.d., Murphy Papers, lac, mg27 iii b8, f. 14324. 69 Mail and Empire (Toronto), 7 April 1934. 70 Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 37–8. 71 Ibid., 44–7, 70–1.

Notes to pages 69–71

205

72 Wade to Macdonald, 23 December 1868, Macdonald Papers, lac, mg26a, vol. 341, ff. 156222–3; Wade to Macdonald, I March 1869, Macdonald Papers, vol. 342, ff. 156344–7. 73 Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 20–2. 74 William Goulden and Patrick Kelly, who worked with Whelan in Peter Eagleson’s shop, testified that Whelan admired McGee (Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 45, 47). Witnesses who testified that Whelan was a gentle and inoffensive man who did not speak badly of McGee included John Lyon (“never heard him speak of McGee”), William White (“he always found him a very decent man”), James Kinsella (“never discussed any matters of politics with Whelan”), Patrick Eagleson (“he would not hurt any person no more than the child unborn”), and Kate Scanlan (“never heard prisoner make any threats against Mr. McGee”); see Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 46, 51, 53, 54, 55. 75 John Lyon (or Lyons), for example, was a leading Fenian in Ottawa, with close links to Fenians around the Ogdensburg-Kemptville border. See Globe, 19 May 1868; Francis Ritchie to McMicken, 13 August 1868, Macdonald Papers, lac, mg26a, vol. 241, ff. 107337–9 (where Lyons is mistakenly identified as “Patrick”), and Francis Ritchie to McMicken, 21 September 1868, Macdonald Papers, vol. 241, ff. 107529–31. The government also had information that James Kinsella was a member of the Fenian Brotherhood and arrested him shortly after the assassination; see “Papers re. parties charged with Fenianism in Ottawa,” 17 April 1868, lac, rg13 a–2, file 510. 76 See, for example, O’Reilly’s cross-examination of the defence witnesses Antoine Quesnel, Pierre Morin (“Mr. O’Farrell gave him $5 to tell the truth”), Louis Roy, Simon Laferrier, and Francis Marigny, in Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 42–4. 77 Wade to Macdonald, 1 March 1869, Macdonald Papers, lac, mg26a, vol. 342, ff. 156344–7; see also Slattery, “They Got to Find Mee Guilty Yet,” 313–15. 78 The story was recounted by Charles Murphy to Isabel Skelton; see Murphy to Mrs O.D. Skelton, 2 May 1934, Murphy Papers, lac, mg27 iii b8, vol. 27, ff. 11591–2. 79 O’Reilly to Macdonald, 10 February 1869, Macdonald Papers, lac, mg26a, vol. 184, ff. 77023–4. 80 Hearn had been arrested for spiking military guns in Quebec City in 1848; see Quebec Spectator, 25 August 1848. 81 Campbell to Macdonald, 4 September 1882, Macdonald Papers, lac, mg26a, vol. 196, ff. 82037–42.

206

Notes to pages 71–6

82 Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 31–2. 83 Slattery, “They Got to Find Mee Guilty Yet,” 335–6. 84 According to Spaight, employing the third person, O’Neill said, “The grease he found on the balls was certainly applied after they had been put in. Cannot say how long the grease would remain noticeably fresh. It was as white as snow when witness found the revolver on prisoner” (Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 31). The account in the Irish Canadian, 16 September 1868, makes the same point more tersely: “Can’t tell how long the grease had been in, but it was white as snow on all the cartridges.” 85 T.P. Slattery, “McGee’s Murder: Did This Gun Fire That Bullet?” Montreal Gazette, 3 November 1973. 86 Finn Neilsen, personal correspondence, 19, 23 August 2002. 87 T.P. Slattery, “A Plot Denied: The Murder of D’Arcy McGee,” Ottawa Journal, 22 June 1974. 88 Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 10. 89 Ibid., 33. 90 Globe, 13, 18 April 1868; Irish Canadian, 22 April 1868; Canadian Freeman, 23 April 1868. 91 Irish Canadian, 15 April 1868; Globe, 18 April 1868; Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 20–1. 92 Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 20–1, 81. 93 Ibid., 19. 94 Ibid., 28. 95 Ibid., 19–20 (for Buckley’s testimony), 21 (for Storr’s testimony that Buckley and Whelan were talking); Slattery, “They Got to Find Mee Guilty Yet,” 111–13. 96 Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 29; Slattery, “They Got to Find Mee Guilty Yet,” 117–19. 97 Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 59–60. 98 Ibid., 83 (for O’Reilly’s comments on Quinn’s testimony), 28 (for Downes’s testimony). 99 Irish Canadian, 29 April 1868. 100 Irish Canadian, 22 April 1868. It should be noted that Whelan told the Globe’s reporter that he had gone to the Russell House after Parliament adjourned on 7 April; see Globe, 8 April 1868. 101 Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 41. 102 Guelph Evening Mercury, 9 April 1868. According to this report, Starrs was surprised by the fact that Whelan did not eat his breakfast but not by the fact that Whelan was drinking liquor at 7 am. 103 Slattery, “They Got to Find Mee Guilty Yet,” 337.

Notes to pages 76–83

207

104 Globe, 21 April 1868. 105 As pointed out by Slattery, “They Got to Find Mee Guilty Yet,” 216. 106 O’Hanly, “Status of Irish Catholics,” O’Hanley [sic] Papers, lac, mg29 b11, vol. 17, folder 6. 107 Irish Canadian, 16 September 1868. 108 Globe, 8 September 1868. 109 This is well covered in Slattery, “They Got to Find Mee Guilty Yet,” 58–61; see also the coverage in Globe, 8 September 1868. 110 For the Irish Canadian’s coverage of the appeal process, see 25 November, 23 December 1868, 13, 27 January and 17 February 1869. In the Irish Canadian, 13 January 1869, there was a sarcastic comment about Judge Richards (“no greater ornament, or a more impartial judge, occupies the Canadian Bench”) but no reference to any conflict of interest. 111 Slattery, “They Got to Find Mee Guilty Yet,” 288–98, 352. 112 Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 88. 113 Macdonald to O’Reilly, 12 February 1869, Macdonald Papers, lac, mg26a, vol. 35, ff. 14243–6. 114 Statement of Patrick James Whelan, 9 February 1869, Macdonald Papers, lac, mg26a, vol. 184, f. 77013. 115 Slattery, “They Got to Find Mee Guilty Yet,” 320. 116 Irish Canadian, 22 April 1868. 117 Globe, 17 April 1869. 118 Spaight, Trial of Patrick J. Whelan, 52–3. 119 Michael Kinsella to Macdonald, 27 April 1868, Macdonald Papers, lac, mg26a, vol. 59, ff. 24057–60. 120 Globe, 20 April 1869. 121 Canadian Freeman, 17 September 1868. 122 For suspicions of Giroux and O’Farrell, see above, 54, 70–1; for suspicions of Francis Bernard McNamee, see Alexander Campbell to Macdonald, 4 September 1882, Macdonald Papers, lac, mg26a, vol. 196, ff. 82037–42; for Ralph Slattery, see Globe, 8 April 1868; Slattery, “They Got to Find Mee Guilty Yet,” 35; for Richard Slattery, an agent in the Senate Wing’s “secret service” in Canada, see Receipt, 3 May 1866, and Richard Slattery to General [Sweeny], 9 May 1866, Thomas William Sweeny Papers, New York Public Library.

trigger: clerical containment of diasporic irish nationalism 1 I am very grateful to Jawad Jaouni for providing extensive research assistance for this project.

208

Notes to pages 83–4

2 The Montreal Post provided extensive coverage of the Philadelphia Convention in April 1883. Reference to the “dynamite men” can be found in the Post, 28 April 1883. The Montreal Daily Witness, 28 April 1883, commented on the moderate and orderly nature of the proceedings. For further discussion of the Philadelphia Convention, see Thomas N. Brown, Irish-American Nationalism, 1870–1890 (Philadelphia & New York: Lippincott 1966), 155, and D.C. Lyne and Peter M. Toner, “Fenianism in Canada, 1874–84,” Studia Hibernica 12 (1972): 60–1. 3 Post, 22 April 1883. “Diasporic” nationalism will be discussed in greater detail below. 4 Post, 22 April 1883. See also Post, 28, 30 April, and 2 May 1883. 5 The two delegates from the Montreal branch of the Land League were Charles J. Doherty and John Patrick Whelan; those from the Young Irishmen’s Literary and Benefit Society were Edward Tobin and Edward Halley. The fifth delegate, from Quebec City, was Edward Reynolds representing the National Society of Quebec. 6 Times, 4 January 1892. 7 For further discussion of Dowd’s anti-Fenian activities, see David A. Wilson, “The Fenians in Montreal, 1862–68: Invasion, Intrigue, and Assassination,” Éire – Ireland 38, no. 3–4 (2003): 109–33, and Rosalyn Trigger, “Irish Politics on Parade: The Clergy, National Societies, and St Patrick’s Day Processions in Nineteenth-Century Montreal and Toronto,” Histoire sociale/Social History 37, no. 74 (2004): 183–8. More detailed information on the political orientation of the Sulpicians can be found in Mark G. McGowan, Michael Power: The Struggle to Build the Catholic Church on the Canadian Frontier (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 2005), 44–5, and in Brian Young, In Its Corporate Capacity: The Seminary of Montreal as a Business Institution, 1816–1876 (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 1986). 8 New York Times, 21 December 1890. See also Montreal Star, 26 April 1887. 9 Post, 15 March 1880. 10 This episode is analyzed in Trigger, “Irish Politics on Parade,” 188–97. Oliver Rafferty discusses the extent to which the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church in Canada toward Fenianism was motivated by the fear of a Protestant backlash. See “Fenianism in North America in the 1860s: The Problems for Church and State,” History 84, no. 274 (1999): 276–7. 11 New York Times, 16 July 1878. 12 Gerald Berry, “Father Patrick Dowd Refuses to Be a Bishop,” Canadian Catholic Historical Association Report 14 (1946): 95–104.

Notes to pages 85–6

209

13 John Francis Maguire, The Irish in America (London: Longmans, Green and Co. 1868), 96. 14 Emmet Larkin, The Roman Catholic Church and the Creation of the Modern Irish State, 1878–1886 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society 1975), and The Roman Catholic Church and the Plan of Campaign in Ireland, 1886–1888 (Cork: Cork University Press 1978). See also Anne Kane, “Narratives of Nationalism: Constructing Irish National Identity during the Land War, 1879–82,” National Identities 2, no.3 (2000): 246, and John Newsinger, “Historiographical Essay: The Catholic Church in Nineteenth-Century Ireland,” European History Quarterly 25, no.2 (1995): 247–67. 15 Brown, Irish-American Nationalism, 85. 16 Oliver Rafferty, The Church, the State, and the Fenian Threat, 1861–75 (New York: St Martin’s Press 1999), 15. Brian P. Clarke also talks about the forging of a broad Irish nationalist consensus in Canada around this time. See Piety and Nationalism: Lay Voluntary Associations and the Creation of an Irish-Catholic Community in Toronto, 1850–1895 (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 1993), 205–6. 17 From its earliest days, the Irish Home Rule movement attracted influential supporters in Montreal. During the 1870s, prominent Irish Montrealers such as Edward Murphy and John Joseph Curran were involved in the Montreal branch of Isaac Butt’s Home Rule League. See Post, 10 March 1880; True Witness and Catholic Chronicle, 16 April 1875; The Canadian Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery of Eminent and Self-Made Men: Quebec and the Maritime Provinces Volume (Chicago: American Biographical Pub. Co. 1881), 83. Local newspapers later claimed that this body was “the first Home Rule organization established on this side of the Atlantic” (Post, 13 April 1886). Further information on the Home Rule League in Canada can be found in Peter M. Toner, “The Home Rule League in Canada: Fortune, Fenians, and Failure,” Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 15, no. 1 (1989): 7–19, and in Lyne and Toner, “Fenianism in Canada,” 34–5. 18 Although Clarke does not use the term “hierarchy of loyalties,” the distinction that he makes between radical and moderate nationalists raises similar issues (Piety and Nationalism, 211). 19 For insights into McGee’s vision, see David A. Wilson, “Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s Wexford Speech of 1865: Reflections on Revolutionary Republicanism and the Irish in North America,” Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 26/27, no. 2/1 (2000/2001): 9–24, and “A Rooted Horror: Thomas D’Arcy McGee and Secret Societies, 1845–68,” Canadian

210

20

21 22

23

24

Notes to pages 86–7

Journal of Irish Studies 31, no.1 (2005): 45–51. Clarke describes moderate Irish Catholic nationalists in Canada during this period as having “a special mission to show that the Confederation of the Canadian provinces could provide a model for the United Kingdom, a mission that placed a premium on loyalty to Canada” (Piety and Nationalism, 231). Kevin Kenny, “Diaspora and Comparison: The Global Irish as a Case Study,” Journal of American History 90, no. 1 (2003): 159. See also Mark Boyle, “Towards a (Re)theorisation of the Historical Geography of Nationalism in Diasporas: The Irish Diaspora as an Exemplar,” International Journal of Population Geography 7, no. 6 (2001): 429–46. Clarke, Piety and Nationalism, 211–13. On the spatial dimensions of nineteenth-century Irish nationalism, see Boyle, “Towards a (Re)theorisation,” 429–46, and Adrian N. Mulligan, “Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder: Transatlantic Irish Nationalism and the 1867 Rising,” Social and Cultural Geography 6, no. 3 (2005): 439–54. Connections between Canadian and American Fenianism are explored in a number of works, including Hereward Senior, “Quebec and the Fenians,” Canadian Historical Review 48, no. 1 (1967): 26–44; C.P. Stacey, “A Fenian Interlude: The Story of Michael Murphy,” Canadian Historical Review 15, no. 2 (1934): 133–54; Peter M. Toner, “The ‘Green Ghost’: Canada’s Fenians and the Raids,” Éire – Ireland 16, no. 4 (1981): 27–47; and Wilson, “The Fenians in Montreal,” 109–33. Irish nationalism in the United States during the latter part of the nineteenth century is often presented as being more vocal and militant than its Canadian counterpart, with various explanations being offered. These include the role of the American Civil War in promoting the spread of Fenianism, the greater freedom that existed in the United States to express anti-British sentiments, and the fact that the number of Irish-born individuals peaked later in the United States than it did in Canada. Alan O’Day reminds us, however, to be cautious of static views of Irish America as (to quote Michael Davitt) “the avenging wolfhound of Irish nationalism.” See “Imagined Irish Communities: Networks of Social Communication of the Irish Diaspora in the United States and Britain in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” Immigrants and Minorities 23, no. 2–3 (2005): 399–424. My attention was first drawn to this issue by Dorothy S. Cross, “The Irish in Montreal, 1867–1896,” (ma thesis, McGill University, 1969). Cross’s

Notes to pages 87–9

25 26

27 28

29 30

31

211

work is an important starting point for those with an interest in the nineteenth-century history of Montreal’s Irish community. Post, 14 May 1883. Following the suppression of the Land League in Ireland by the British Government, the Montreal branch of the Land League had been quick to express support for Parnell’s new Irish National League in 1882 (Post, 20 November 1882; Times, 21 November 1882). Montreal Daily Witness, 21 May 1883; Montreal Star, 21 May 1883; Post, 21 May 1883. Bishop John Loughlin of Brooklyn to Father Patrick Dowd, 7 July 1879, and Archbishop John Joseph Williams of Boston to Father Patrick Dowd, 10 July 1879, Archives of St Patrick’s Basilica (aspb), Father Dowd Correspondence. Montreal Daily Witness, 24 November 1879. Fernand Harvey, “Les Chevaliers du travail, les États-Unis et la société québécoise, 1882–1902,” in Le Mouvement ouvrier au Québec, ed. Fernand Harvey (Montreal: Boréal Express 1980), 69–130; Philippe Sylvain, “Les Chevaliers du travail et le cardinal Elzéar-Alexandre Taschereau,” Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 4th series 11 (1973): 31–42. Terence V. Powderly visited Montreal in 1883 and delivered an address entitled “Land and Labor” (Post, 19 December 1883). Patrick Ford’s New York-based newspaper, the Irish World, also circulated in Montreal, promoting the idea that the oppression of the working classes in America was little different from the oppression by the landlords in Ireland. Henry J. Cloran was editor of the Post and the True Witness between circa 1882 and 1886, a founding member of the Montreal Trades and Labour Council, and an active participant in the Montreal branch of the Irish National League throughout the 1880s. See Cross, “The Irish in Montreal,” 232–3, and Henry J. Morgan, The Canadian Men and Women of the Time: A Handbook of Canadian Biography (Toronto: W. Briggs 1898), 198–9. Evidence of William Keys’s involvement in both the labour movement and the Irish nationalist movement can be found in Post, 19 December 1883; Post, 27 November 1886; Montreal Star, 8 December 1890; and Sylvain, “Les Chevaliers du travail,” 35. For further discussion of the connection between Irish nationalism and working-class radicalism, see Brown, Irish-American Nationalism, 66; David Brundage, “Respectable Radicals: Denver’s Irish Land League in the Early 1880s,” Journal of the West 31, no. 2 (1992): 52–8, and “After the Land League: The Persistence of Irish-American Labor Radicalism in Denver, 1897–1905,”

212

32 33 34 35 36 37

38

Notes to pages 89–90

Journal of American Ethnic History 11, no. 3 (1992): 3–26; Clarke, Piety and Nationalism, 226–7; Eric Foner, “Class, Ethnicity, and Radicalism in the Gilded Age: The Land League and Irish-America,” in Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press 1980), 150–200; Colm Kiernan, “Home Rule for Ireland and the Formation of the Australian Labor Party, 1883 to 1891,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 38, no. 1 (1992): 1–11; M.J. Sewell, “Rebels or Revolutionaries? Irish-American Nationalism and American Diplomacy, 1865–1885,” Historical Journal 29, no. 3 (1986): 730; and Victor A. Walsh, “‘A Fanatic Heart’: The Cause of Irish-American Nationalism in Pittsburgh during the Gilded Age,” Journal of Social History 15, no. 2 (1981): 191–3. Montreal Star, 27 November 1886; New York Times, 27 November 1886; Post, 27 November 1886. New York Times, 4 October 1886; Post, 4 October 1886. Montreal Star, 21 May 1883. True Witness and Catholic Chronicle, 23 May 1883. Montreal Daily Witness, 22 May 1883; Montreal Star, 21 May 1883. Following Parnell’s address at the Theatre Royal the day after the procession, a resolution expressing support for his “patriotic struggle to procure for our fellow subjects in Ireland the privileges we here enjoy” was passed, and steps were taken by the leading Irish Montrealers present to organize a branch of the Irish Land League and Relief Association (Post, 10 March 1880). It is interesting to note that Parnell paid his respects to Fathers Dowd and Hogan the morning after his arrival in Montreal but that neither clergyman followed the example set by their American colleagues by participating in the public demonstrations of support for Parnell (Post, 9 March 1880). Such reserve, it should be noted, was not universal amongst the clergy in Montreal and can be contrasted with the enthusiasm of Brother Arnold, principal of the Christian Brothers School in St Ann’s parish. Arnold made regular appearances at receptions for visiting Parnellites, and his school – described as “a breeding place for staunch Irishmen” – was a fixture on the nationalist visitors’ circuit (Post, 7 January 1888). For further information on Parnell’s North American tour, see Clarke, Piety and Nationalism, 225–6; Michael V. Hazel, “First Link: Parnell’s American Tour, 1880,” Éire – Ireland 15, no. 1 (1980): 6–24; O’Day, “Imagined Irish Communities,” 415–18. Montreal Star, 22 May 1883; Post, 23 May 1883; True Witness and Catholic Chronicle, 23 May 1883. Some newspapers identify Father Simon P. Lonergan with St Bridget’s parish during this period, when he was in fact pastor of St Mary’s. It was Father James S. Lonergan who served as parish

Notes to pages 90–3

39 40 41 42

43 44 45 46

47 48

49 50

51 52 53

213

priest of St Bridget’s parish at this time. English-speaking Catholics living in the east end of Montreal had previously attended English-language services at St Bridget’s Church, but St Mary’s parish had been created to serve their needs in 1879. Because of the tendency of the newspapers simply to refer to “Father Lonergan” or “Father S. Lonergan,” confusion between the two individuals can easily arise, and it is therefore possible that statements attributed to S. Lonergan were in fact made by James S. Lonergan. Montreal Daily Witness, 4 June 1883; Montreal Star, 4 June 1883; Post, 4 June 1883. Montreal Star, 26 June 1883; Post, 25 June 1883. See Clarke, Piety and Nationalism, 231–2. The Montreal branch of the Irish National League served as the parent organization in the Dominion of Canada and was described later on in the decade as “the hub of the Canadian movement for Irish home rule” (New York Times, 21 December 1890). Dorothy Cross provides a very useful history of the Irish press in Montreal. See “The Irish in Montreal,” 223–60. Post, 31 October 1881. Post, 3 November 1881. Copy of a letter from Father Patrick Dowd to John P. Whelan, Managing Director of the Post Printing Co., 4 November 1881, aspb, Father Dowd Correspondence. John P. Whelan to Father Patrick Dowd, 5 November 1881, aspb, Father Dowd Correspondence. Post, 28, 29 April 1887. Irish Montrealers gave an enthusiastic reception to a number of visiting Irish dignitaries, including Justin McCarthy (November 1886), Michael Davitt (November 1886), and Thomas Grattan Esmonde (January 1888), over the course of the decade. Montreal Star, 28 April 1887; Toronto Globe, 29 April 1887. Clarke, Piety and Nationalism, 241. Mark G. McGowan goes somewhat further in interpreting the response to O’Brien’s 1887 visit to Toronto as a sign that the local Irish Catholic community “was in the process of transferring its primary focus of loyalty from the old country, Ireland, to the new, Canada.” See The Waning of the Green: Catholics, the Irish, and Identity in Toronto, 1887–1922 (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 1999), 3–5. New York Times, 12 May 1887; Post, 13 March 1888. True Witness and Catholic Chronicle, 4 May 1887. Post, 27 April 1883; 13 March 1888.

214

54 55 56 57

58

59

60 61

62 63 64

65 66

Notes to pages 93–4

Lyne and Toner, “Fenianism in Canada,” 40. Ibid., 60. Post, 13 March 1888. Montreal Daily Witness, 16 March 1888; Post, 13 March 1888. This presumably refers to the Home Rule resolution that was passed by the Canadian House of Commons in 1886. See Cross, “The Irish in Montreal,” 242–3. Alan Hustak, Saint Patrick’s of Montreal: The Biography of a Basilica (Montreal: Véhicule Press 1998), 59–61. For a detailed account of the contest between ultramontanism and liberalism in Quebec in the second half of the nineteenth century, see Mason Wade, The French Canadians, 1760–1945 (Toronto: Macmillan 1956), esp. 331–92. The controversial article from the Post was reprinted in the Montreal Daily Witness, 16 March 1888. Excerpts also appeared in the New York Times, 17 March 1888. Rafferty, The Church, the State, and the Fenian Threat, xi. Montreal Daily Witness, 14 May 1888; Montreal Star, 14 May 1888; New York Times, 14 May 1888; Post, 14 May 1888; Times, 15 May 1888. The Plan of Campaign had been launched by members of the Irish National League (of Ireland) in the autumn of 1886. Its goal was to prevent evictions by forcing landlords to reduce their rents. See Larkin, The Roman Catholic Church and the Plan of Campaign in Ireland, xiv. Post, 7 May 1888. Post, 14 May 1888. See also Montreal Daily Witness, 14 May 1888; Montreal Star, 14 May 1888. Examples of French Canadian newspapers banned or denounced by the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Quebec can be found in Wade, The French Canadians, 344, 362, 383. Irish newspapers in other Irish migrant communities suffered the same fate as the Post. On the Free Press controversy in Glasgow, for example, see Terence McBride, “Irishness in Glasgow, 1863–70,” Immigrants and Minorities 24, no. 1 (2006): 6, 12; and Richard B. McCready, “Irish Catholicism and Nationalism in Scotland: The Dundee Experience, 1850–1922,” Irish Studies Review 6, no. 3 (1998): 247. New York Times, 14 May 1888. See also Montreal Daily Witness, 14 May 1888. Dorothy Cross reports that the last known edition of the Post is dated 17 December 1888. Its weekly counterpart, the True Witness and Catholic Chronicle, which had been under joint management and editorship, continued publication. In 1892 this newspaper announced a change in

Notes to pages 96–101

215

editorial policy: henceforth church news would take priority over specifically Irish Catholic interests (Cross, “The Irish in Montreal,” 226–9). 67 Rogers Brubaker, “The ‘Diaspora’ Diaspora,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 28, no. 1 (2005): 12–13.

mcgowan: between king, kaiser, and canada 1 W.J. O’Brien, “Send Out the Army and the Navy,” typescript, 28 April and 4 May 1916, 18. Courtesy of the O’Brien Family. 2 John Joseph O’Gorman personnel file, Library and Archives Canada (lac), rg9 iii, vol. 196, file 6–0–44. 3 There were three distinct phases of voluntary enlistment: August to October 1914; October 1914 to September 1915 (coordinated by the militia); and October 1915 to October 1917. The final phase of enlistment was conscription under the auspices of the Military Service Act. See Robert Craig Brown and Donald Loveridge, “Unrequited Faith: Recruiting in the c.e.f., 1914–1918,” Revue Internationale d’Histoire Militaire 51 (1982): 56–63. 4 Carman Miller, “A Preliminary Analysis of the Socio-Economic Composition of Canada’s South African War Contingents,” Histoire sociale/Social History 8 (Nov. 1975): 219–37. 5 New Freeman, 31 October 1914. 6 Northwest Review, 8 August 1914. See also Alfred E. Burke, “The Irishman’s Place in the Empire,” in Empire Club Speeches, 1909–1910, ed. J. Castell Hopkins (Toronto: Warwick and Bros & Rutter 1910), 225–32. 7 For Catholic population figures, see Robert Choquette, “English-French Relations in the Canadian Catholic Community,” in Creed and Culture: The Place of English-Speaking Catholics in Canada, ed. Terrence Murphy and Gerald Stortz (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press 1993), 5. 8 O’Gorman, Memorandum to the Archbishops and Bishops of Ontario, October 1917, lac, rg9 iii, vol. 4636, c-o–3, pp. 10–11. See also “Religious Statistics,” rg9 iii, vol. 4673; and 22 August 1916, rg24, vol. 1249, hq–593–1–77, which suggests the French Canadian recruitment to be about 13,000. Similar figures appear in Sessional Paper, 143-b, 1917, cited in Elizabeth Armstrong, The Crisis of Quebec (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, Carleton Library Series 1974), 247. It should be pointed out that recruitment of Catholics from Ireland to the British Expeditionary Force (bef) was also strong throughout 1914, 1915, and early 1916; see David Fitzpatrick, “Militarism in Ireland, 1900–1922” in A Military History of Ireland, ed. Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jeffery (Cambridge: Cambridge

216

9

10

11

12

13

Notes to pages 101–2

University Press 1997): 388–91. See also Charles Townshend, Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion (London: Penguin Books 2006), 73–8. Townshend demonstrates that there was a decline in recruitment by 1915. And see Nuala C. Johnson, Ireland, the Great War, and the Geography of Remembrance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003). The 208th Battalion also included drafts from the 180th Toronto Sportsman’s Battalion. See Brian Horgan, “The Second World War and the Saga of the Irish Regiment in Canada,” in The Irish in Canada: The Untold Story, ed. Robert O’Driscoll and Lorna Reynolds (Toronto: Celtic Arts of Canada 1988), 2:593–606. Establishments no. 6, 31 December 1916, lac, rg9 iii, vol. 4652. The Catholic population of Nova Scotia was approximately 29.4 per cent, divided between Acadians, Highland Scots, and the Irish; in New Brunswick, Catholics amounted to 41.2 per cent of the population, divided between the majority Acadians and the minority Irish; and in Prince Edward Island, Catholics constituted 44.8 per cent of the population, divided between Acadians, Scots, Mik’maq, and Irish; see Fifth Census of Canada, 1911, vol. I (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1911), table i. When one employs table ix and subtracts the francophones (the overwhelming majority of whom were Catholic in each province) from the entire Catholic population, one has a greater sense of the anglophone component, of which Irish Catholics formed a part: Nova Scotia, 29.4–10.5 = 18.9% anglophone rc; New Brunswick, 41.2–28 = 13.2%; pei 44.8–14 = 30.8%. Mark G. McGowan, “We Are All Canadians: A Social, Religious, and Cultural Portrait of English-speaking Catholics in Toronto, 1890–1920” (phd dissertation, University of Toronto, 1988), 524–5; Ontario Catholic Directory (1919), 96; Casket, 25 November 1915. The honour roll at St Andrew’s Cathedral in Victoria shows that seventeen parishioners were killed in the war. Charles Murphy claimed that 700 men from St Theresa’s Parish in Ottawa enlisted, but this figure appears wildly inflated for such a small parish (undated speech, Charles Murphy Papers, lac, mg27 iii b8, vol. 49, pp. 22178–9). Compiled from Catholics of the Diocese of Antigonish, Nova Scotia and the Great War (Antigonish: St Francis Xavier University Press 1920), 67–158. About 14.6 per cent of these recruits were not Anglo-Celtic, including Acadians, Italians, and Syrians. 30 August 1915, lac, rg24, vol. 1249, hq–593–1–77. These units included 33rd (London), 37th (northern Ontario), 58th (central Ontario), 76th (Barrie, Orillia, Collingwood), 83rd (Toronto), 59th (eastern Ontario), 8th cmr (Ontario), 77th (Ottawa), 40th (Nova

Notes to pages 103–5

14

15

16

17 18 19

20

21

217

Scotia), 55th (Sussex, New Brunswick), 60th (Montreal [one company of Irish Rangers]), 64th (Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick), 54th (bc), 51st (Edmonton), 63rd (Alberta), and 66th (Edmonton). Mark G. McGowan, “‘To Share in the Burdens of Empire’: Toronto’s Catholics and the Great War,” in Catholics at the Gathering Place: Historical Essays on the Archdiocese of Toronto, 1841–1991 ed. McGowan and Brian P. Clarke (Toronto: Canadian Catholic Historical Association [henceforth ccha] and Dundurn Press 1993), 186–7. J. Michael Bliss, “The Methodist Church and World War I,” Canadian Historical Review 49 (Sept. 1968); S.D. Chown to Lt. Col. Charles F. Winter, 28 October 1915, lac, rg24, vol. 1249, hq–593–1–77; Denominational Census, nos. 6, 7, 8, lac, rg9 iii. Text of Pastoral Letter by Archbishops and Bishops of the Archiepiscopal Provinces of Ottawa, Quebec and Montreal, 23 September 1914; Catholic Register and Canadian Extension, 22 October 1914. The fifteen signatories requested that the faithful pray for peace, support the Patriotic Fund, make the necessary economic sacrifices, and offer men and money to support the empire in its struggle. Casket, 12 November 1914. Register, 20, 27 August and 19 November 1914, and 7 January 1915. See also Catholic Record, 16 January 1915. Casket, 26 November 1914. Catholics of the Diocese of Antigonish, Nova Scotia and the Great War. Also note James Morrison’s war pastoral of 3 March 1915. Pastoral, 28 August 1914, Archives of the Diocese of London (adl); and Record, 12 September 1914. Similar patriotic and spiritual effusions were noted from John T. McNally, bishop of Calgary, Patrick Ryan, auxiliary bishop of Pembroke, Edward J. McCarthy of Halifax, and Louis O’Leary, auxiliary bishop of Chatham. See McNally Papers, Archives of the Archdiocese of Halifax (aah), vol. 5, documents 761, 771, 790, 791, 798; McCarthy Papers, aah, vol. 1, documents 80 and 81. Ryan Papers, Pastorals and Circulars, 1914–19. Archives of the Diocese of Pembroke; O’Leary in Register, 27 May 1915. Fallon (Record, 8 April 1916, and Register, 2 March 1916; Circular letter, 31 December 1915, and Herbert Ames to Fallon, 3 March 1916, Michael Francis Fallon Papers, adl); McNeil (Register, 7 January 1915; War Box, “Catholic Young Men ‘shun,” Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto [arcat], fwgc 01.103); Morrison (Circular letter, 15 February 1915, Archives of the Diocese of Antigonish [ada]; Pastoral

218

22 23 24 25 26

27

28 29 30

31

32 33

34

Notes to pages 105–8

letter, 15 February 1916, ada; Casket, 24 February 1916); and MacDonald (Casket, 25 November 1915). André Chapeau et al., Évêques catholiques du Canada/Canadian R.C. Bishops (Ottawa: Research Centre in Religious History of Canada 1980). Casket, 19 August and 21 October 1915. Circular, 25 August 1914, Neil McNeil Papers, arcat, pc01.02. Belgian Relief collections are praised in the Casket, 8 October 1914. Walkerton Telescope, 10 February 1916. J.J. O’Gorman in Ottawa (Register, 20 January 1916); John E. Burke, especially, in Toronto (Wt. M. Kennedy to McNeil, 28 March 1916, McNeil Papers, arcat). See also Charles G. Brewer, “The Diocese of Antigonish and World War I” (ma thesis, University of New Brunswick, 1975), 38. Peter M. O’Leary, Canadian Chaplaincy Corps, personnel files, lac, rg9 iii c15, vol. 4637, c-o–4. In 1914 O’Leary enlisted again at age 64 and served with the 12th Battalion and the 1st Canadian General Hospital. There were rumours afoot about his intemperance, although these were hotly denied and fellow padres took up a petition in his favour (21 November 1915). In January 1917 he was promoted to lieutenantcolonel and several months later was demobilized on account of his age. His influence as a “faithful and gallant” padre in South Africa was noted by the assistant director Chaplain Service – Catholic. His popular influence is confirmed in Duff Crerar’s “In the Day of Battle: Canadian Catholic Chaplains in the Field, 1885–1945,” ccha Historical Studies 61 (1995): 56. Casket, 13 August 1914. See also Casket, 1 October, 12 November 1914, and 15, 29 April, 12 August, and 30 December 1915. Register, 10 September 1914. Record, 20 February and 4 December 1915; Casket, 15, 22 October and 5 November 1914; New Freeman, 24 October 1914, 17 April and 17 July 1915, and 8 January 1916. Cornwall Freeholder, selected issues, 1915–16; Register, 29 October 1914 and 21 January 1915; War Box, Foundation of the Catholic War League, 14 May 1918, arcat. St Joseph’s Lilies 4 (June 1915): 86–8; Honour roll of the Great War, St Joseph’s Parish, Ottawa. I.J.E. Daniel and D.A. Casey, For God and Country: A History of Knights of Columbus Catholic Army Huts (Toronto 1922); Register, 12 and 19 September and 3 October 1918. Ontario Catholic Yearbook (Toronto: Newman Club 1919), 97.

Notes to pages 108–21

35 36 37 38 39 40

41

42 43 44 45 46 47

48 49 50

51 52

219

Charles Foy Papers, Archives of Ontario (ao), box 3, file 14, 1915–16. J.H. Barry to Foy, 2 October 1915, Foy Papers, ao, box 3, file 14. New Freeman, 29 July 1916. Robin B. Burns, “The Montreal Irish and the Great War,” ccha Historical Studies 52 (1985): 72–3. Ibid., 67–81; and 15th Brigade, Canadian Infantry, 21 April 1917, lac, rg9 iii, vol. 4650. Leo McIntyre, “The Cape Breton Highlanders,” in More Essays in Cape Breton History, ed. R.J. Morgan (Windsor: Lancelot Press 1977), 50–61; Casket, 23 March and 14 December 1916. Labour Gazette, 15 (Nov. 1915): 559; (Dec. 1915): 668; 16 (Jan. 1916): 778–9; (March 1916): 986; (April 1916): 1084; (May 1916): 1184; (June 1916): 786–7. McGowan, “To Share in the Burdens,” 187. Canadian Freeman, 4 May 1916. In reality, James Larkin had nothing to do with the Easter Rising. Canadian Freeman, 18 May 1916. Canadian Freeman, 8 June 1916. Canadian Freeman, 22 March 1917. Canadian Freeman, 29 March 1917, and Ottawa Citizen, 23 March 1917. Susan Mann, Margaret Macdonald: Imperial Daughter (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 2005), 88–97. Mann’s biography of the matron-in-chief of Canada’s nursing sisters (Macdonald was a Scottish Catholic from Nova Scotia) is an excellent overview of the recruitment of nurses and overseas placements after 1916. Labour Gazette (journal of the Department of Labour), 16, (July 1915 – Dec. 1916): 1271–84 and 1531–44. “Statement of Bishop Fallon in favour of Union Government,” 6 December 1917, Fallon Papers, Speeches, adl. M.J. Ryan to McNeil, War Box, 1918, arcat, fwwe 07.02; Canadian Annual Review (1917): 412–14; C.W. Kerr to Murphy, 22 December 1917, Muphy Papers, lac, mg-27 iii b8, vol. 14, ff. 5733–4; A.M. Latchford to Murphy, 24 May 1917, Murphy Papers, vol 16, ff. 6347–50. Undated speech notes, Murphy Papers, vol. 49, ff. 22178–85. O’Brien, “Send Out the Army and the Navy,” 234–8.

mcevoy: canadian catholic press reaction 1 Mark G. McGowan, The Waning of the Green: Catholics, the Irish, and Identity in Toronto, 1887–1922 (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 1999); David Shanahan, “The Irish Question in Canada: Ireland,

220

2 3

4 5 6

7

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18 19 20 21 22

Notes to pages 122–5

the Irish, and Canadian Politics, 1880–1922” (phd dissertation, Carleton University, 1989); Robert McLaughlin, “Irish Canadians and the Struggle for Irish Independence, 1912–1925: A Study of Ethnic Identity and Cultural Heritage” (phd dissertation, University of Maine, 2004). McGowan, Waning of the Green, 191–3; The Canadian Newspaper Directory 1921 (Montreal: A. McKim 1921), 84. R.A. MacLean, The Casket: 1852–1992. From Gutenberg to Internet: The Story of a Small-Town Weekly (Casket Printing and Publishing, n.d.), 67; Marie Daly, “Joseph A. Wall, Editor, 1915–1918,” Catholic Register, 20 February 1993, 19. Marie Daly, “Msgr. Thomas O’Donnell, Editor, 1918–1922,” Catholic Register, 20 February 1993, 21. The Canadian Newspaper Directory, 1921, 44 and advertisements section, 121 (separate pagination). McGowan, Waning of the Green, 194; “Thomas Coffey,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 14: 227–8; “Rev. J.T. Foley, b.a.,” Catholic Record, 10 March 1917, 4. Catholic Record, 6 May 1916, 4. In reality, of course, it was the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and not Sinn Féin, that was responsible for the rising. “The Tragedy in Ireland,” Catholic Register and Canadian Extension, 4 May 1916, 6. Charles Townshend, Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion (London: Penguin 2006), 30. “What Is Sinn Fein and Why,” Record, 20 May 1916, 4. “The Murder of Sheehy Skeffington,” Record, 24 June 1916, 4. “The Irish Executions,” Register, 11 May 1916, 6. “The Irish Situation,” Register, 18 May 1916, 6. “Ireland,” Register, 1 June 1916, 6. “The Nationalist Manifesto,” Record, 10 June 1916, 4. “What Irish Bishops Say,” Register, 22 June 1916, 6. “Late Irish Rumours,” Register, 29 June 1916, 6; Michael Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland: The Sinn Fein Party, 1916–1923 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999), 58. “The Irish Settlement,” Register, 18 July 1916, 6. “The Latest as to Home Rule,” Register, 27 July 1916, 6; Laffan, Resurrection of Ireland, 60–2. “Irish Valor and Irish Self-Government,” Record, 23 September 1916, 4. “Ireland and Conscription,” Register, 19 October 1916, 6. “No Conscription in Ireland,” Record, 28 October 1916, 4.

Notes to pages 125–30

221

23 “Why Ireland Is Opposed to Conscription,” Record, 18 November 1916, 4. 24 “Redmond and Ireland,” Register, 23 November 1916, 6. 25 “Irishmen and Imperial Federation,” Record, 4 November 1916, 4. 26 Laffan, Resurrection of Ireland, 75–6, 151; Charles Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland: Government and Resistance since 1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1983), 280–1. 27 “Hope Deferred,” Record, 17 March 1917, 4. 28 “Developments in the Irish Question,” Record, 19 May 1917, 4. 29 “A Wretched Excuse,” Register, 17 May 1917, 6. 30 “East Clare,” Register, 19 July 1917, 6. 31 Charles Townshend, Ireland: The Twentieth Century (London: Arnold 1998), 81; Laffan, Resurrection of Ireland, 106; Michael Hopkinson, The Irish War of Independence (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 2002), 4. 32 “The Irish Convention a War Measure,” Record, 2 June 1917, 4. 33 “The Irish Convention,” Register, 11 August 1917, 4. 34 “A Possible Solution of the Irish Problem,” Record, 15 September 1917, 4. 35 “An English View of the Irish Convention,” Record, 8 October 1917, 4. 36 “The Irish Situation,” Register, 31 May 1917, 6; “Redmond on the Convention,” ibid., 14 June 1917, 6; “Grounds for Hope,” ibid., 21 June 1917, 6. 37 Laffan, Resurrection of Ireland, 130–3. 38 “Ireland, Home Rule and Conscription,” Record, 20 April 1918, 4; ibid., “The Dark Hour before the Dawn over the Hills of Ireland,” 27 April 1918, 4. 39 “Ireland and Conscription,” Register, 18 April 1918, 6. 40 “The Tragedy of Ireland,” Register, 25 April 1918, 6. 41 “Let Us Keep Sane,” Register, 2 May 1918, 6. 42 “The Moral of Broken Pledges,” Record, 4 May 1918, 4. See also “Ireland Again,” Register, 18 July 1918, 6. 43 Laffan, Resurrection of Ireland, 142–5. 44 “Ireland’s Case,” Register, 23 May 1918, 6. 45 Laffan, Resurrection of Ireland, 142. 46 “Must ‘Reverse Their Irish Policy,’” Record, 15 June 1916, 4. 47 McGowan, Waning of the Green, 275–8. 48 “Irish Home Rule,” Record, 17 February 1917, 4. 49 “The Irish Settlement,” Record, 14 July 1917, 4. 50 “Ireland’s Only Hope,” Register, 26 December 1918, 6. 51 “The Sinn Fein Victory,” Register, 9 January 1919.

222

Notes to pages 130–3

52 “In One of Its Protean Forms,” Record, 28 December 1918, 4. 53 “The Dail Eireann,” Record, 1 February 1919, 4. 54 “The Outlook for Ireland,” Record, 15 March 1919, 4; “St. Patrick’s Day, 1919,” Register, 13 March 1919, 6. 55 “Egyptian Bondage for Ireland,” Register, 17 April 1919, 6. 56 Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (New York: Random House 2003), 11. 57 “A Discredited President,” Register, 18 September 1919, 6; see also “The Eclipse of Wilson,” 21 April 1921, 6. 58 Peter Hart, Mick: The Real Michael Collins (New York: Viking 2006), 209; Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland, 331–4; Peter Hart, The I.R.A. at War, 1916–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2003), 62–4. 59 “Ireland’s Crimelessness,” Register, 14 August 1919, 6. 60 “The Irish Question,” Record, 4 October 1919, 4. 61 Laffan, Resurrection of Ireland, 271–4. 62 “Irish Tragedies,” Register, 16 October 1919, 6. 63 “Mistaken Methods,” Register, 23 October 1919, 6. 64 “Back to the Days of Coercion,” Record, 1 November 1919, 4. 65 “Arbitrary Will Substituted for Law in Ireland,” Record, 29 November 1919, 4. 66 Townshend, Ireland, 100. 67 “The Home Rule Bill,” Record, 8 January 1920, 4. 68 “New Home Rule Bill,” Register, 1 January 1920, 6. 69 “Divide and Conquer,” Register, 15 January 1920, 6. 70 “The Lloyd George Home Rule Bill,” Register, 4 March 1920, 6; ibid., “Dominion Home Rule,” 11 March 1920, 6. 71 “The Latest Sinn Fein ‘Outrage,’” Record, 10 January 1920, 4. 72 “A Sinn Fein Outrage,” Record, 6 April 1920, 4. MacCurtain was shot in his home on 19 March. 73 “The Spirit of Military Rule in Ireland,” Record, 10 April 1920, 4. 74 On republican violence, see Hart, I.R.A. at War, especially chapter 3, and Charles Townshend, The British Campaign in Ireland, 1919–1921: The Development of Political and Military Policies (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1975), 214. Using Irish Office statistics, Townshend gives figures of 196 civilians killed and 185 wounded by republican forces between 1 January 1919 and the truce. 75 Hopkinson, Irish War of Independence, 28, 35–6. 76 “Whether on the Scaffold High,” Record, 24 April 1920, 4. 77 “Hunger Strikes,” Record, 11 September 1920, 4. 78 “Cork’s Lord Mayor,” Record, 25 September 1920, 4. 79 “Lord Mayor MacSwiney,” Record, 2 October 1920, 4.

Notes to pages 134–7

223

80 “Was It Suicide?” Record, 6 November 1920, 4. The same moral issue arose during the hunger strike by Republican prisoners in Northern Ireland in 1980–81, resulting in a number of deaths. At that time church officials, including Cardinal Tomas O’Fiaich, Primate of All Ireland, and Bishop Edward Daly of Derry, ruled that the deaths were not suicide because the primary aim of the prisoners was not to bring about their own deaths but rather “to bring the pressure of public opinion to bear upon what they perceived to be an unjust aggressor in order to secure redress of their grievances”; see Padraig O’Malley, Biting at the Grave: The Irish Hunger Strikes and the Politics of Despair (Boston: Beacon Press 1990), 178. 81 “Outrage in Ireland,” Record, 18 September 1920, 6. 82 “The Truth Will Out,” Register, 23 September 1920, 6. 83 “The Force of Public Opinion,” Record, 16 October 1920, 4. 84 “The Truth Will Out,” Register, 23 September 1920, 6. 85 “An Honest Suggestion,” Record, 8 July 1920, 6, and “Irish Government,” ibid., 12 August 1920, 6. See also “The Culture and Intellect of England Revolts,” Record, 23 October 1920, 4, and “Anti-British!” ibid., 30 October 1920, 4. 86 “The Irish Impasse,” Record, 18 December 1920, 4. 87 “As in a Looking-Glass,” Register, 16 December 1920, 6. 88 “Cardinal Logue’s Pastoral,” Register, 23 December 1920, 6. 89 “Peace,” Register, 30 December 1920, 6. 90 “Might Is Right,” Register, 17 February 1921, 6. 91 Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland, 356–9. 92 “Hope,” Register, 14 July 1921, 6. 93 “What Shall It Be?” Register, 21 July 1921, 6. 94 “The Victory of Ireland,” Register, 11 August 1921, 6; Townshend, Ireland, 103. 95 “The Irish Truce,” Record, 20 August 1921, 4. 96 “The Irish Situation,” Record, 10 September 1921, 4. 97 “Ireland’s Power to Stand Alone,” Record, 17 September 1921, 4. 98 “The Irish Peace Negotiations,” Record, 1 October 1921, 4. 99 “The Irish Peace Conference,” Record, 20 October 1921, 4. 100 “The Irish Peace Conference,” Record, 3 December 1921, 4. 101 On the treaty, see R.F. Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600–1972 (London: Penguin Books 1989), 505–7. 102 “The Irish Free State,” Register, 15 December 1921, 6. On Orange reaction to the treaty, see McLaughlin, “Irish Canadians and the Struggle for Irish Independence,” 215. 103 “Dominion Status for Ireland,” Record, 17 December 1921, 4. 104 “Ireland’s Allies,” Record, 24 December 1921, 4.

224

Notes to pages 137–40

“Failure,” Register, 9 December 1920, 6. “The Irish Language Congress,” Register, 2 September 1920, 6. “Delegates of What?” Register, 26 February 1920, 6. “Minority Rights,” Record, 19 November 1921, 4. “Rampant Bigotry,” Register, 18 August 1921, 6. “The Irish Peace Conference,” Record, 20 October 1921, 4. “We Have Got to Settle,” Register, 16 September 1920, 6. “The Irish Question,” Register, 22 July 1920, 6. McGowan, Waning of the Green, 286–8. This view is shared by David Shanahan, who writes that Irish Canadians were “busy trying to escape the past and look to the future in the new land” (“The Irish Question in Canada,” 282). Robert McLaughlin, on the other hand, believes that “many Irish-Catholic Canadians forged a new identity, that of loyal Canadians who retained an ethnic identification with, and sympathy for, the national aspirations of their ancestral homeland” (“Irish Canadians and the Struggle for Irish Independence,” 92). 114 In 1920 the Register surveyed its readers to determine what in the paper they were interested in as well as any criticisms or recommendations they might have. A total of 48 individuals or groups – families, for example – responded. This small sampling is far from scientific, but the results are nevertheless interesting. Of the 48 responses, 27 mentioned the paper’s Irish coverage. Not one was unfavourable, though 6 expressed no interest in the question. Of the remaining 21 respondents, most were satisfied with the paper’s coverage of the situation in Ireland, while several wanted to see even more coverage, with one expressing the opinion that the paper’s coverage was “not ardent enough.” One respondent believed that the paper’s coverage of Ireland was one of the reasons that justified its existence. While this sampling is too small to be conclusive, it does support the argument that the Register was in tune with its readers on the question of Ireland (“Results of an inquiry among the readers of the paper ...” 1920, Catholic Truth Society Papers, Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto).

105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113

peterman: from terry finnegan to terry fenian 1 “Terry Finnegan’s Letters,” Canadian Freeman, 27 January 1864. 2 McCarroll to John A. Macdonald, 13 May 1864, John A. Macdonald Papers, Library and Archives Canada, mg26a (henceforth Macdonald Papers), vol. 298, f. 136700.

Notes to pages 140–1

225

3 No Orange Order records have been found, but James Moylan clearly believed that McCarroll had once served as the “Secretary of the Peterborough Orange Lodge” (Canadian Freeman, 14 March 1868). That McCarroll remained sensitive to Orange thinking is evident in his long friendship with Ogle Gowan. 4 McCarroll’s upward trajectory in the customs service is notable. He began as a landing waiter in Cobourg but became the collector at both Port Stanford (1851) and Port Credit (1853). The position of outdoor surveyor in Toronto represented greater prestige and a larger salary than he had commanded previously. 5 Irish-born Francis Hincks, later Sir Francis (1807–85), was a highly influential Reform journalist in the 1840s, who after his election became inspector general for Canada West in 1848 and co-premier of the United Provinces of Canada in 1851. His interest in McCarroll’s career can be traced in the papers of the customs service during these years; see Department of National Revenue (Customs), Library and Archives Canada (lac). 6 McCarroll owned and operated the Peterborough Chronicle (which he began in December 1843) until a fire destroyed his printing office in the summer of 1846, rendering him bankrupt. He also contributed to the Chronicle’s successor, the Peterborough Despatch, which used the Chronicle’s printing press, and to the Cobourg Star; as well, he edited the Newcastle Courier for several months in 1847. By the mid-1840s he had a reputation as a fiery and capable Reform journalist. 7 McCarroll was an accomplished flautist and an early champion of classical music in Upper Canada. He taught music in Cobourg in the 1830s and 1840s, briefly led the choir at St John’s Church in Peterborough, and often performed in local fundraising and benefit concerts. In Toronto he appeared in more than twenty public concerts, usually charity events. For example, at a Grand Concert at St Lawrence Hall for the House of Providence, James Moylan’s Canadian Freeman ( 27 February 1862) reported that “The performances of Mr. and Miss [Mary] McCarroll on the flute and piano was [sic] given with splendid effect, and awakened a perfect furore through the audience, which loudly demanded a repetition.” 8 In the 1860s the McCarrolls lived at 54 Bay Street, close to the business, entertainment, railroad, and shipping hubs of the city. 9 James Beaty was from Killashandra, County Cavan, and was a strong supporter of Francis Hincks. During this period (1855–65), the Leader

226

10 11

12 13 14 15

16

17 18

19

Notes to pages 141–2

established itself as the main competitor of Brown’s Globe. His three great-nephews, the Belford brothers, arrived from Ireland during the “McCarroll” years and cut their teeth at the Leader. In particular, Robert Belford became a close friend of McCarroll and later in New York hired him as an editor for and contributor to Belford’s Magazine; he also published McCarroll’s collection of poems, Madeline and Other Poems (1889). His serialized story “The New Gauger,” set in County Leitrim, appeared to much acclaim in the Anglo-American Magazine in 1856. Only Alexander McLachlan and Charles Sangster had more inclusions than McCarroll. Though Dewart claimed not to know McCarroll, he held a high estimate of his poetry. New Era, 11 February 1858. The poem was originally published in the Toronto Leader, 6 February 1858. Toronto Leader, 9 March 1857; Canadian Freeman, 3 December 1863. See, for instance, Carleton’s Phelim O’Toole and Lover’s Handy Andy. John Jackson of Kilrush, County Clare, created Terry Driscoll (or O’Driscoll). An obituary of Jackson reported that “No Irish writer, Carleton not excepted, exceeded ‘Terry Driscoll’ in his peculiar style – his spontaneous humour, sly sarcasm, graphic portraiture of character, vivid pictures of life and manners, and his succinct and pointed allusions to the political and local incidents of the day” (Cobourg Star, 8 April 1857). Writing to the Cobourg Star as its “Niagara Correspondent,” McCarroll sent a vernacular letter by “Dennis Finnegan” dated 23 September 1851 to “dear Tim [O’Gallagher, Town of Cobourg].” See the issue for 15 October 1851. Maureen Waters, The Comic Irishman (Albany: State University of New York 1984). The Letters of Terry Finnegan (Toronto, 1864), First Series, letter 13 and letter 11. All subsequent quotations from the letters will be designated by letter number and taken from that (rare) text. A Second Series appeared in the Grumbler, 29 July – 2 September 1864, the Latch-Key (for which the surviving issues are 16 September, 7 October, and 14 October 1864), and the Pick, from December 1864 to May or June 1865; unfortunately, no copies of the Pick are extant, and all the letters that appeared in that magazine have been lost. The only evidence of Momus beyond its pre-publication advertising in the Leader was the inclusion of one Terry Finnegan letter in the Toronto Leader (4 April 1861) under the heading “Extracts from Momus.” The letter was dated 20 March 1861 and is no. 3 in the 1864 volume. It is possi-

Notes to pages 142–6

20

21 22

23

24 25 26

27 28

227

ble that McCarroll himself was the proprietor and editor of Momus, but there is no evidence to confirm this. It is known, however, that he had his own printing press during his Toronto years. The Grumbler had three incarnations – in 1859, 1860–65, and 1869. Terry Finnegan’s letters appeared with some regularity in its pages in 1861–63 (First Series) and again in 1865 (the first six letters of the Second Series). Stanley Street was later renamed Lombard Street. It runs between Church and Jarvis Streets, just north of King Street. Michael Hamilton Foley (1820–70) was a Sligo-born Irish immigrant who was first elected in 1854 as a moderate Reformer and enjoyed several appointments as postmaster general; see letter 17. McCarroll had written a poem of tribute, “To Moore” (Peterborough Despatch, 31 January 1849), in which he celebrated Moore’s capacity to charm his readers less through his content than his beguiling music. The poem was a part of his “Irish Anthology,” a manuscript he continued to build for possible publication during the 1860s. From the Second Series; see the Grumbler, 13 August 1864. From the Second Series; see the Grumbler, 30 July 1864. In the extant Finnegan letters of the Second Series (eleven in all), Terry did not alter that view, but, then, the Civil War persisted into 1865. None of the Finnegan letters that appeared in the Pick (1865) has survived. This short-lived satiric paper may also have been a McCarroll production, for a Finnegan letter seems to have appeared in almost every issue. Notices of issues of the Pick appeared often in the Leader in 1865, calling it the “sole heir of its predecessors.” The Pick seems to have run from December 1864 into or beyond May 1865. In its issue of 25 March, the Leader noted that the Terry Finnegan letter that week was “particularly caustic” and on 20 May that Terry’s letter, datelined Montreal, had the appearance that Terry was “ardent for annexation.” The poem originally appeared in the Latch-Key in August 1863 and was republished in the Toronto Leader, 14 October 1863. For several months McCarroll had also been increasingly critical of and uncooperative with the two-man committee (Alfred Brunel and Thomas Worthington) established by the government to look into reforms of the customs service. His hostility and insubordination may well have factored into the decision to remove him from office. McCarroll used his various media outlets to campaign relentlessly against the two men, Worthington in particular, especially after he lost his position.

228

Notes to pages 146–9

29 On 30 June 1863, Murphy and Boyle came forward to back McCarroll’s “revenue security bond” as surveyor in Her Majesty’s Customs (Library and Arhives Canada [lac], rg5 b9, vol. 76, bond no. 5062). 30 Irish Canadian, 7 January 1863. “Oh! Sainted Shannon!” – McCarroll’s lament for the lost grandeur of Ireland – appeared in the issue of 25 February 1863. 31 Only three issues survive. The paper began in August 1863 and folded in October, thus bookending the month in which McCarroll lost his customs position. In a recently discovered letter dated 5 September [1864], McCarroll invited William A. Foster to contribute to the new series of the Latch-Key. The invitation links McCarroll’s new magazine both to Momus and the First Series of the Grumbler (Foster Papers, Ontario Archives, f70, mu1058). 32 Irish Canadian, 9 March 1864. 33 McCarroll to Macdonald, 13 April 1864, Macdonald Papers, vol. 298, ff. 1366687–8. 34 McCarroll to Macdonald, 8 August 1864, Macdonald Papers, vol. 298, f. 136705. 35 McCarroll to Macdonald, 5 March 1864, Macdonald Papers, vol. 298, f. 136685. At Macdonald’s request, McCarroll had attacked Sandfield Macdonald’s disparagement of Canadian Orangemen when he dared to compare them to the Thugs of India. 36 McCarroll to Macdonald, 16 February 1865, Macdonald Papers, vol. 298, f. 136721. “Three Loaded Dice” was reprinted in the Toronto Leader (“From the Latch-Key”) on 14 October 1863. 37 No specific Macdonald letters to McCarroll have been saved, but in his own letters McCarroll acknowledged receipt of what were likely short missives. See, for instance, McCarroll’s letter of 11 May 1864, which begins, “Thanks for your letter of this morning and the kind intentions it expresses” (Macdonald Papers, vol. 298, f. 136698). 38 Macdonald to W. McDonnell, 13 December 1864, Macdonald Papers, Letter Book 7, p. 7 (6 December 1864) and p. 19 (13 December 1864). 39 The notion that McCarroll had been the victim of Scottish prejudice against the Irish was also held by James Moylan; in an article entitled “Rooting out the Irish,” Moylan described McCarroll’s dismissal as “the latest act in this Scotch crusade against the Irish,” and wrote that Sandfield Macdonald’s action “exhibits all the malevolence and persecution towards Irishmen of which the premier is so pre-eminently capable” (Canadian Freeman, 10 September 1863). 40 From the Second Series; see the Grumbler, 30 July 1864.

Notes to pages 149–59

229

41 Irish Canadian, 15 March 1865. 42 Irish Canadian, 20 September 1865. 43 McCarroll to Macdonald, 19 January 1866, Macdonald Papers, vol. 298, f. 136726. 44 McCarroll to Macdonald, 18 March 1866, Macdonald Papers, vol. 298, f. 155045. 45 Irish Canadian, 28 February 1866. 46 Republished in Irish Canadian, 19 October 1866. 47 A letter sent from Fort Erie by Charles Treble to Thomas Worthington describes the fervour of Fenian activities around Buffalo and confirms that the “invasion of Canada is a settled fact at four or five different places.” Treble speaks glowingly of McCarroll (“a protestant [who] is a dear lover of his native country”) as having “tendered his services to the ‘General,’” assuring him that he has “a complete knowledge of the people and the country” based on his long service in Customs. (Treble to Worthington, 16 April 1866, Macdonald Papers, vol. 57, ff. 22985–91). 48 Canadian Freeman, 15 November 1866. 49 Canadian Freeman, 14 February 1867. 50 Canadian Freeman, 14 May 1868. 51 The charge of debauchery against McCarroll is an interesting one. There was something of the lady’s man in McCarroll (as seen in certain of his poems), but this may only have been his poet’s pose and his wandering eye for female beauty; however, what is mysterious and disturbing about his move to Buffalo is that during this time his wife was seriously ill and had been so for several years. Anne McCarroll died in 1866, likely at the home of her parents, while McCarroll was in Buffalo seeking to make a new way for himself. Perhaps her condition increased his anxiety, but nowhere in his letters to Macdonald does he allude to Anne’s declining health. Lack of archival material about the family hinders a clearer view of the family’s domestic life during these troubled years. 52 The text indirectly alludes to McCarroll’s own case in chapter 12, 145–6. 53 The Scian Dubh was the black-handled knife used by ancient Celt warriors. It was reputed to have magical powers and was worn semiconcealed in the hose. 54 Ridgeway has recently been republished, though without notes or introduction. See IndyPublish.com (Boston, ma), 2006. Quotations are taken from this text. 55 Irish Canadian, 13 January 1869. 56 McCarroll included “The Irish Wolf” in Madeline and Other Poems. It likely appeared first in either the Buffalo Globe or the Fenian Volunteer. 57 Irish Canadian, 28 February 1866.

230

Notes to pages 161–70

stevenson: irish canadians and the national question 1 For a brief but stimulating analysis, see Peter M. Leslie, Ethnonationalism in a Federal State: The Case of Canada, Research Paper 24 (Kingston: Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, Queen’s University 1988). 2 The concept is explained in Garth Stevenson, Community Besieged: The Anglophone Minority and the Politics of Quebec (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 1999), 7–16. 3 Michael Taylor and Douglas Rae, “An Analysis of Crosscutting between Political Cleavages,” Comparative Politics 1, no. 4 (1969): 534–47. 4 André Siegfried, The Race Question in Canada. Carleton Library edition (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart 1966), 19. 5 Ibid., 98. 6 Garth Stevenson, Parallel Paths: The Development of Nationalism in Ireland and Quebec (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 2006), 19–20, 157, 192. 7 Ronald Rudin, The Forgotten Quebecers: A History of English-Speaking Quebec 1759–1980 (Quebec: Institut québécois de recherche sur la culture 1985), 96–7. 8 More information may be found in Robert J. Grace, The Irish in Quebec: An Introduction to the Historiography (Quebec: Institut québécois de recherche sur la culture 1993). 9 Robin B. Burns, “From Freedom to Tolerance: D’Arcy McGee, the First Martyr,” in The Untold Story: The Irish in Canada, ed. Robert O’Driscoll and Lorna Reynolds (Toronto: Celtic Arts of Canada 1988), 465–80, at 475. 10 Garth Stevenson. Ex Uno Plures: Federal-Provincial Relations in Canada, 1867–1896 (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 1993), 326, 336. 11 Ibid., 130. 12 “Richard W. Scott,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography (DCB), 14:913–16. 13 “Frank Smith,” DCB, 13:965–8. 14 The text of his motion is in Official Debates of the House of Commons of the Dominion of Canada, 4th parliament, 4th session (1882), 1033–4. 15 John O’Farrell, “Irish Families in Ancient Quebec Records,” Éire-Ireland 2, no. 4 (1967): 19–35. The article is a reprint of a lecture given in Montreal in 1872. 16 “Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan,” DCB, 10:554–5. 17 Burns, “From Freedom to Tolerance,” 476.

Notes to pages 170–9

231

18 McGee’s lecture “Historical and Political Connection of Ireland and Scotland,” reported in the True Witness, 12 February 1858. 19 Details of Fitzpatrick’s career from http://www.assnat.qc/fra/Membres/ notices/e-f/FITZC.htm 20 James G. Snell and Frederick Vaughan, The Supreme Court of Canada: History of the Institution (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1985), 65. 21 Ibid., 94–5. 22 Robert Craig Brown and Ramsay Cook, Canada 1896–1921: A Nation Transformed (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart 1974), 191. 23 John English, The Decline of Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1977), 79–80. 24 H. Blair Neatby, William Lyon Mackenzie King, 1924–1932: The Lonely Heights (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1963), 174. 25 Peter Black, “Tory Harper Loosens Cannon from Rouge Roots,” Log Cabin Chronicles (October 2006), http://www.tomofobia.com/black/ new_tory.shtml. 26 Norman Ward, ed., The Memoirs of Chubby Power: A Party Politician (Toronto: Macmillan 1966), 5. 27 Ibid., 101–2. 28 Ibid., 168–72. 29 Stevenson, Community Besieged, 37. 30 “Joseph Shehyn (Sheehy),” DCB, 14: 925–8. 31 Stevenson, Ex Uno Plures, 101. 32 “Charles Ramsay Devlin,” DCB, 14: 293–5, at 295. 33 Quoted in John N. McDougall, The Politics and Economics of Eric Kierans: A Man for All Canadas (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 1993), 50. 34 Stevenson, Community Besieged, 77–9. 35 Ibid., 52–3, 107.

akenson: stepping back and looking around 1 Probably the easiest introduction to Franco Moretti’s considerable output are his An Atlas of the European Novel, 1800–1900 (London: Verso, translated from the Italian, 1998), and his Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary Theory (London: Verso 2005). A lapidary essay is “The Slaughterhouse of Literature,” Modern Language Quarterly 61 (March 2000): 207–27. Moretti’s basic stance on the novel as a world subject is found in “Conjectures on World Literature,” New Left Review (Jan.–Feb. 2000), online edition. A delightfully tart interview is “Interpreting

232

Notes to pages 184–5

Abstraction: Interview with Franco Moretti,” in the online journal aggultinations.com (25 January 2004). The massive cooperative venture Moretti edited, Romanza, 5 vols (Turin: Einaudi 2001–03), has been filleted down to two volumes in English (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2006). 2 Howe’s list is as follows: (1) classic Marxist anti-imperialism, identifying social class as the main problem; (2) nationalism as purely anti-colonial without dialectical materialist overtones; (3) attempts at overcoming cultural and psychological impositions; (4) reactive pragmatic responses to British imperialism, essentially non-ideological in nature; (5) nationalism based on a perception of Ireland, after 1921, as being post-colonial, at least in the twenty-six counties; (6) the embracing of aspects of former colonialism as being progressive forces. Howe’s entire book deserves careful reading. Stephen Howe, Ireland and Empire: Colonial Legacies in Irish History and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000). 3 R.F. Foster, The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making It Up in Ireland (London: Penguin 2001), 40.

Contributors

d o n a l d h a r m a n a k e n s o n was named the 1995 Canada Council Molson Laureate for his lifetime contribution to Canada’s cultural and intellectual life. He teaches at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. s e a n fa r r e l l is associate professor of history at Northern Illinois University. The author of Rituals and Riots: Sectarian Violence and Political Culture in Ulster, 1784–1886 (University Press of Kentucky 2000), he also has co-edited (with Danine Farquharson) Shadows of the Gunmen: Violence and Modern Irish Culture (Cork University Press 2007) and (with Michael De Nie) Power and Popular Culture in Modern Ireland: Essays in Honour of James S. Donnelly, Jr (Irish Academic Press, forthcoming). He is currently working on a study of the construction of sectarianism in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century North Armagh. f r e d e r i c k m ce voy is an independent scholar living in Ottawa. He has written on Ireland-Canada relations, the Irish in Canada, and Catholicism in Canada. He is the principal author of a history of Saint Patrick’s Basilica, Ottawa. m a r k m cg owa n is professor of history at the University of Toronto and principal of the University of St Michael’s College. He is the author and co-editor of six books, including The Waning of the Green: Catholics, the Irish, and Identity in Toronto, 1887– 1922, and Michael Power: The Struggle to Build the Catholic Church on the Canadian Frontier. He has just published Death or Canada: The Irish Famine Migration to Toronto, 1847, which is a companion to the joint Canada-Ireland docudrama of the same name. He is currently writing a history of religion and broadcasting in Canada.

234

Contributors

m i c h a e l p e t e r m a n is professor emeritus (English Literature and Canadian Studies) at Trent University and now splits his time between Peterborough, Ontario, and Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. In addition to his work on James McCarroll, which will eventually include a collection of his writing and a biography, he has written extensively about Susanna Moodie, Catharine Parr Traill, Isabella Valancy Crawford, Robertson Davies, Margaret Laurence, Timothy Findley, Willa Cather, and Edith Wharton. He edited The Journal of Canadian Studies for fifteen years and has written extensively about early Canadian writing. He is a member of the Royal Society of Canada, and his latest book is Sisters in Two Worlds (2007). g a rt h s t e v e n s o n is a professor in the Political Science Department at Brock University, where he specializes in Canadian politics (Quebec politics, federalism) and comparative politics (nationalism, the state and the economy). His most recent book, Parallel Paths: The Development of Nationalism in Ireland and Quebec, was awarded the Donald Smiley prize for the best book on Canadian politics published in 2006. p e t e r to n e r was born in Fredericton and educated at St Thomas College, Chatham, nb, the University of New Brunswick, and University College, Galway. He joined the Department of History and Politics at the University of New Brunswick, Saint John Campus, in 1971, and became an emeritus professor in the fall of 2008. He has written extensively on Irish nationalism in Canada and is currently conducting research on the use of Irish as a first language in Canada. r o s a ly n t r i g g e r is a historical geographer and research fellow with the ahrc Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies, based at the University of Aberdeen. Her research on the Irish, Scottish, and English immigrant communities in nineteenth-century Canada has been published in journals such as Histoire sociale/Social History, The Journal of Historical Geography, and Urban History Review. She is currently completing a book on the Protestant community in nineteenth-century Montreal. dav i d a . w i l s o n is a professor in the Celtic Studies Program and the Department of History at the University of Toronto.

Index

Act of Union, 5 Akenson, Donald Harman, 20–1, 32 Allen, William, 40 American Fenian movement, post-1867, 40 Ancient Order of Hibernians (aoh), 3, 15–16, 88, 108–9, 111 Anglin, Timothy, 39, 167 Anglo-American Magazine, 141 Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, 17, 47, 137–8 Anglo-Irish War, 131–4 Archibald, Edward, 67 Armstrong, Edward, 73 Arrah-na-Pogue, 12, 60, 62 Asquith, Herbert Henry, 124 Ataturk, Kemal, 97 Baldwin, Robert, 164 Banim, John, 142 Barry, John H., 108 Beach, Thomas Billis, 39, 46 Beatty, James, 141 Belgian Relief fund, 105, 108 big-frame reading, 180 Black and Tans, 134, 136

Blake, Edward, 8, 45, 47, 93, 164 Blood on the Moon, 59 Blue, Charles S., 53 Boer War, 100 Borden, Robert, 113, 171 Boucicault, Dion, 12, 60 Bourassa, Henri, 19, 162, 163, 175 Bourke, Thomas Francis, 93 Boyle, Bridget, 63 Boyle, Patrick, 18 Brault, Pierre, 59 British North-American Magazine, 141 Brown, George, 6, 143, 148 Brown, Thomas, 85 Buckley, Patrick, 74, 76, 79, 80, 81 Burke, Alfred E., 106, 107 Burke, Thomas, 45 Burns, Robert, 109 Bush, George W., 187 Butt, Isaac, 5, 11, 41, 187 Cameron, John Hillyard, 58, 78 Campbell, Alexander, 70–1 Le Canada: Les Deux Races, 160 Canada Temperance Act, 167

236

Index

Canadian Chaplaincy Service, 106, 111 Canadian Fenian movement, 7 Canadian Freeman (Kingston), 106, 110–11, 113 Canadian Freeman (Toronto), 145, 153 Canadian Patriotic Fund, 105, 108 Canning, George, 24, 25 Cannon, Arthur Lawrence, 171 Cannon, Lawrence, 172 Cannon, Lucien, 171, 172 Carleton, William, 142 Carson, Edward, 123, 124, 129, 138 Cartier, George-Étienne, 170 Casey, D.A., 110 Casey, Timothy, 104 Casket (Antigonish), 106, 107, 122 Catholic Association, 23–4 Catholic Emancipation, 5, 9, 22, 23 Catholic Mutual Benefit Association, 113 Catholic Record (London), 16–17, 106, 122, 125; Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, 137–8; Anglo-Irish War, 131–4, 135–7; conscription in Ireland, 125, 127–9; democracy and the rights of small nations, 129–30; Easter Rising (1916), 122; Home Rule bill (1920), 132; Irish Convention, 127; Sinn Féin, 122, 126, 130, 132–3, 134–5; Terence MacSwiney, 133–4 Catholic Register and Canadian Extension (Catholic Register, Toronto), 16–17, 106, 121–2, 124–5;

Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, 137–8; Anglo-Irish War, 131–4, 135–7; conscription in Canada (1917), 113; conscription in Ireland, 124–5; democracy and the rights of small nations, 129; Easter Rising (1916), 122–3; execution of leaders of the Easter Rising, 123–4; Home Rule bill (1920), 132; Irish Convention, 127; Lloyd George, 135–6; Sinn Féin, 126, 130, 134–5; MacSwiney, Terence, 133–4 Catholic Truth Society, 113 Cavanagh, George, 78 Cavendish, Lord (Frederick), 45 Centre of Forensic Sciences, 72 Charlottetown Accord, 173 Chesterton, G.K., 134 Clan na Gael, 3, 89 Clarke, Brian, 86, 92 Cloran, Henry J., 89 Cobourg Star, 142 Coffey, Thomas, 122 Cohalan, Daniel, 187 Collins, Jerome, 40 Collins, Michael, 131, 137 Condon, Edward O’Meagher, 34, 40, 63, 68, 93 conscription in Canada (1917), 113–14 conscription in Ireland, 124–5, 127–9 consociational power, 161 Costigan, John, 8, 11, 45, 93, 168 Cottrell, Michael, 8 Courier (Buffalo), 152 Croke, Thomas William, 91 cross-cutting cleavages, 161, 162

Index

Cullen, Andrew, 55, 56, 60, 62, 65, 66, 67, 71, 79 Cultural Studies, 178–9 Cummings, J.P., 105–6 Curran, John Joseph, 93 Daily Witness (Montreal), 88 Dalhousie, 9th Earl (George Ramsay), 26 Davin, Nicholas Flood, 19, 159 Davitt, Michael, 44, 89 Desjardins, Louis Roy, 70, 74 de Valera, Eamon, 126, 136, 137, 187 Devlin, Bernard, 12, 37, 59–60, 64, 170, 175 Devlin, Charles Ramsay, 8, 45, 174–5 Devoy, John, 40, 46, 47 Dewart, Edward H., 141 diasporic Irish nationalism, 14, 15, 86, 87, 94, 96 Doherty, Charles J., 20, 87, 90, 107, 114, 171 Donovan, William, 107 Doody, Patrick, 39, 63, 68 Dowd, Patrick, 14, 84; Ancient Order of Hibernians (aoh), 88; denounces affiliation of Land League (Montreal Branch) with the Irish National Land League of America, 87–8; influence over Irish groups in Montreal, 94–6; Knights of Labor, 88–9; Montreal Post, 91–4; Young Irishmen’s Literary and Benefit Society (Montreal), 93, 95 Downes, John, 74, 79 Doyle, John, 55, 61, 63, 69, 75, 80, 81

237

Drummond, Lewis, 113 Dublin Warden, 42 Duggan, Michael, 69 Dunlop, Henry, 98, 103, 115 Durham, Lord (John George Lambton), 160, 170 Duvernay, Ludger, 26 Eagleson, Peter, 65, 68, 76 Earl, Paul, 175 Easter Rising (1916), 5, 9, 16, 97, 98, 99, 109–13 Eccles Hill, 39 embedded Irish nationalism, 14, 15, 85–6, 90, 92 English, John, 171 Enright, Michael, 63, 64, 68 Fabre, Édouard-Charles, 94 Fallon, Michael Francis, 105, 106, 113 Farrell, Sean, 10–11 Faulkner, Joseph, 62, 69, 79 federalism, 161 Feely, Denis C., 11, 46 Fenian Brotherhood, 3, 5, 34, 37, 42 Fenianism: Home Rule League, 41–2; Orangeism, 6–7; orthodox version, 4; Patrick James Whelan, 52, 53, 57–9, 62–3, 65–8, 82; sectarianism, 48–9; and Thomas D’Arcy McGee, 38–9 Fenianism in Canada: dynamite campaign, 46; membership, 65; post-1867, 40–1; traditional view, 35 Fenian Volunteer (Buffalo), 19, 153, 154

238

Index

Finkel, Caroline, 24 Finnegan, Terry. See Terry Finnegan (satirical character) First World War: Ancient Order of Hibernians (aoh), 108–9; Catholic clergy, 100–6; Catholic episcopacy, 104–5; Catholic laity, 107–8; Catholic press, 106–7; conscription in Canada (1917), 113–14; Easter Rising (1916), 5, 9, 16, 97, 98, 109–13; enlistment of Irish Canadian Catholics, 14, 16, 98, 99–104 Fitzpatrick, Charles, 107, 170–1 Foley, J.T., 122 Foley, Michael, 143 Ford, Patrick, 43 Foster, Roy, 185 Frankland, Charles Colville, 30 Fremantle mission, 42 French Canadians: Irish Canadian Catholics, 19–20, 162–3 Gaelic Athletic Association, 184, 185 Gallagher, Frank, 37, 151–2 Gallagher, Jeremiah, 50 Gibbons, Luke, 10, 31–2 Gladstone, William Ewart, 164 Glascock, Talbot, 26–8, 33 Gleeson, David, 32 Globe (Buffalo), 19, 151–3 Goodwin, James, 70, 80, 82 Gouin, Lomer, 175 Goulden, William, 79 Gowan, Ogle, 18, 143, 145 Grace, Robert, 8 Graham, William, 74, 79 Great War. See First World War Griffin, Gerald, 142

Griffith, Arthur, 135, 137 Groves, Patrick, 75 Growler (Toronto), 148 Grumbler (Toronto), 142 Hanley, Frank, 176 Harper, Stephen, 187 Haslam, Mary, 8 Hearn, John, 70 Hess, Robert, 55, 56, 60, 63, 65, 66, 67, 71, 75, 79 Hibernian Benevolent Society, 11, 36, 37, 146; Toronto, 62–3, 67 Hincks, Francis, 140, 164 Hogan, James, 87, 89, 90 Home Government Association, 5, 41 Home Journal, 141 Home Rule, 5, 16, 85, 90, 121, 122–5; Canadian response, 45, 111, 168 Home Rule League, 5, 41; Montreal, 41 Howe, Stephen, 11, 32, 184–5 imperialism: Irish nationalism, 186 Inglis, Joseph, 62, 69, 79 Ireland and Empire: Colonial Legacies in Irish History and Culture, 184–5 Irish American (New York), 12, 63, 68 Irish American nationalism: relationship with Irish nationalism in Canada, 86 Irish Canadian (Toronto), 12, 18, 77, 146, 147, 155 Irish Canadian Catholics: British Empire, 15–16, 104–5, 106; census returns (1871, 1931, and

Index

1941), 165–7; conscription in Canada (1917), 113–14; Easter Rising (1916), 16, 98, 109; French Canadians, 19–20, 162–3; French-language instruction, 163; Home Rule, 16, 19; nurses in First World War, 120; participation in Canadian war effort (1914–18), 107–9; percentage of Irish Canadians, 9; Quebec (census returns of 1871, 1931, and 1941), 165–6; recruitment to the Canadian Expeditionary Force (1914–18), 15, 16, 98, 99–104, 109–10, 112–14, 116, 117, 118, 119 Irish Canadian nationalism. See Irish nationalism in Canada Irish Canadian National League, 14. See also Irish National League (Canadian Branch) Irish Canadian Protestants, 163–4 Irish Catholic Canadians. See Irish Canadian Catholics Irish Convention, 126–7 Irish Exile (Hobart), 182 Irish-French alliance in Quebec, 169–77 Irish immigration to Canada, 9 Irish in Canada: Catholic Irish, 50–1; census returns, 164–7; collective identity, 50; Irish in the United States, 3–4, 8; politicians, 167–77; Protestant Irish, 50; single largest ethnic group, 9; traditional view, 35 Irish in Montreal, 85 Irish Land League. See Irish National Land League The Irishman in Canada, 159

239

Irish nationalism: diasporic, 14, 15, 86, 87, 94, 96; embedded, 14, 15, 85–6, 90, 92; imperialism, 186; a world history, 186–7 Irish nationalism in Canada, 85–6; alienation, 5, 6; analysis, 48–51; assimilation, 6; clergy during the Parnell era, 85; constitutional, 6, 8, 10, 11; Daniel Tracey, 10–11; definition of Irish, 11–12; diasporic, 14, 15, 86, 87, 94, 96; different strands, 21; Easter Rising (1916), 15; embedded, 14, 15, 85–6, 90, 92; Fenianism, 34–5; global context, 20–1, 180–1; historiography, 8; imperialism, 21, 186; issues of concern, 5; market capitalism, 21, 186–7; radical, 7–8, 11, 12, 14–15; relationship with Irish American nationalism, 86 Irish National Land League, 5, 11, 44; Canada, 44–5. See also Land League (Montreal Branch) Irish National League (Canadian Branch), 90, 95. See also Irish Canadian National League Irish National League of America, 14–15, 84, 95; Land League (Montreal Branch), 87–91 Irish Orientalism, 23 Irish Parliamentary Party (ipp), 122, 124–5, 130 Irish Republican Brotherhood. See Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood Irish Republican Union (1848), 7 Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood; also known as Irish Republican Brotherhood (irb), 34, 39–40,

240

Index

41, 44, 45, 185, 187; Charles Stewart Parnell, 46 Irish Vindicator and Canada Advertiser, 10–11, 22; Daniel O’Connell, 22, 23–4, 25, 27; Mexican independence, 26; Patriote politicians, 26; reform in Upper and Lower Canada, 26–7; Russo-Ottoman conflict (1824–29), 25–6, 31; Turkish gender roles and Irish and Canadian reform causes, 28–30. See also Tracey, Daniel Irish World (New York), 43 Jackson, James, 8 Jackson, John, 142 Jesuit Estates Act, 162 Jolivet, Simon, 8 Kealey, Gregory, 8 Kelly, Florence, 98, 108, 115 Kelly, Patrick, 79 Kelly, Thomas, 63 Kenny, Edward, 167 Keshen, Jeff, 8 Keys, William, 89 Kierans, Eric, 174, 175–6 Kilby, Francis, 75 Kilmainham Treaty, 45 King, Jason, 32 King, William Lyon Mackenzie, 171 Kinsella, James, 79, 81 Knights of Columbus, 105, 108 Knights of Labor, 88–9 Lacroix, Jean-Baptiste, 54, 55, 57, 69, 79 Laffan, Michael, 128

LaFontaine, Louis-Hippolyte, 164 LaFrance, Euphemie, 56, 71, 72 Land League (Montreal Branch), 83, 86; Irish National League of America, 87–91. See also Irish National Land League Land War, 44–6 Lansdowne, Marquess of (Henry Charles Keith Petty-Fitzmaurice), 92 Larkin, Emmet, 85 Larkin, Michael, 40 The Last Hurrah, 176 Latchford, Robert, 54, 69, 107 Latch-Key (Toronto), 146, 148 Laurier, Wilfrid, 122, 167, 168, 170, 171, 172, 175 Lawrence, Reuben, 81 Leader (Toronto), 141, 145, 153 Le Caron, Henri. See Beach, Thomas Billis Lees, Robert, 80 Lenin, Vladimir, 187 Lennon, John, 187 Lennon, Joseph, 23 Lesage, Jean, 175 The Letters of Terry Finnegan, 142 Lévesque, René, 175, 176 Lindsay, Charles, 145 Lloyd George, David, 124, 125, 126, 127, 132, 138; Catholic Register, 135–6 Lomasney, William Mackey, 11, 46 Lonergan, Simon, 90 Lotbinière, Henri Joly de, 162 Lousada, Francis, 67 Lover, Samuel, 142 Lucas, Douglas, 72 Lynch, John Joseph, 92 Lyon, John, 79

Index

McCarroll, James, 18–19; Buffalo, 151, 156; employment, 140, 146; entertainer, 146; Fenianism, 149–50, 157; “The Fenian Vow,” 149–50; “The Irish Wolf,” 158; John A. Macdonald, 147–8, 150, 153, 155; Latch-Key, 146, 148; The Letters of Terry Finnegan, 142; “National Music,” 151; pen name of Scian Dubh, 155; pen name of Irish Wolfdog, 151; poet, 141, 149–50, 151–2, 158; Ridgeway, An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada (1868), 155–8; satirist, 141; Thomas D’Arcy McGee, 141, 147, 148, 153–4; Toronto, 141 McCarthy, Edward, 106 MacCurtain, Tomás, 133 MacDonald, Alexander, 104 Macdonald, John A., 5, 7, 18, 45, 53, 68, 81, 167, 173, 174; James McCarroll, 147–8, 150, 153, 155; Patrick James Whelan, 52 Macdonald, John Sandfield, 18, 145–6, 147, 148 Macdonnell, A.C. “Batty Mac,” 115 McDonnell, William, 148 McEvoy, Frederick, 12, 15, 17–18 McGee, Frank, 98, 115 McGee, John Joseph, 61, 64 McGee, Mary, 52–3 McGee, Thomas D’Arcy, 4, 6–7, 12, 18, 20, 46, 159, 167, 169, 170; death, 52; early career, 35–6; James McCarroll, 141, 147, 148, 153–4; Patrick James Whelan, 60–1, 62; Police Magistrate’s Inquiry, 59, 60–1, 63;

241

Terry Finnegan (satirical character), 141–6 McGowan, Mark, 8, 12, 15, 17, 121, 138 McGuinness, Joe, 126 McKenna, Mary, 73 Mackenzie, Alexander, 167 McLachlan, Alexander, 144 McLaughlin, C.J., 109, 110 MacLennan, Hugh, 160 MacManus, Terence Bellew, 181–2 McMicken, Gilbert, 7, 68, 153 McNamee, F.B. (Francis Bernard), 37, 70–1, 82 McNeil, Neil, 104 MacNeill, Eoin, 135 MacSwiney, Terence, 133–4 Madden, R.R., 29–30 Maguire, John Francis, 84–5 Mahmoud II, 24, 28, 31 Manchester Martyrs, 40 Manitoba Schools Question, 168 market capitalism, 21, 186–7 Marxian historians, 175–80 Meagher, Thomas Francis, 182, 183 Meagher, William, 98, 103, 115 Meech Lake Accord, 173 Mercier, Honoré, 19, 163, 171, 174, 176 Military Service Act, 16, 112, 114, 127–8, 129 Minehan, Lancelot, 113 Momus (Toronto), 142 Monck, Lord (Charles Stanley), 41 Monk, Frederick, 171 Montreal Gazette, 153 Montreal Post, 14, 83–4, 86; clerical interference in politics, 89; Patrick Dowd, 91–4 Montreal Star, 90

242

Index

Moretti, Franco, 20, 179, 180 Moriarty, Murtagh, 40 Morrison, James, 104 Moylan, James, 19, 53, 143, 145 Mulroney, Brian, 20, 173–4 Murphy, Charles, 53–4, 114, 115, 168, 169 Murphy, Henry, 64 Murphy, Michael, 4, 18, 36–7, 38, 40, 41, 50, 146, 147 Murphy, Thomas, 63, 64, 68 Murray, George, 31 National Hibernian, 108 Neatby, Blair, 171 New Departure, 44 New Era (Montreal), 141 New Freeman (Saint John), 100, 106, 109 Nichol, Robert, 72 Northwest Review (Winnipeg), 100, 106, 113 O’Brien, Bill, 98, 115 O’Brien, Michael, 40 O’Brien, William, 92 O’Brien, William Smith, 182, 184 O’Callaghan, Edmund B., 170 O’Connell, Daniel, 5, 22, 23–4, 25, 27, 30, 163 O’Connor, Edwin, 176 O’Connor, John, 167–9 O’Dea, Patrick, 19, 151, 153 O’Donnell, Thomas, 122 O’Donoghue, Patrick, 182, 183–4 O’Farrell, John, 70, 79, 81–2 O’Gara, Martin, 80 O’Gorman, John J., 98, 100, 101, 106; double duty of Irish Catholics, 111–12, 114, 115

O’Hanly, J.L.P. (John Lawrence Power), 49, 53, 77 O’Leary, Peter, 106 O’Mahony, John, 36, 38, 40 185th Cape Breton Highlanders, 109 199th Irish Rangers of Montreal, 101, 109, 110, 112 121st Battalion from Vancouver, 101 O’Neill, A.B., 113 O’Neill, Edward, 56, 62, 63, 68–9, 71–2, 73, 76, 79, 80 O’Neill, John, 11, 38, 39, 68–9 Orangeism: Fenianism, 6–7 Orange Order, 3, 28, 36, 51, 84, 88 Orange Sentinel (Toronto), 17 O’Reilly, James, 53, 58, 69, 75, 77 Orientalism, 29 Papineau, Louis-Joseph, 25, 30, 170 Parizeau, Jacques, 176 Parnell, Charles Stewart, 5, 49, 89; fall from power, 47; Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood (irb), 46; Kilmainham Treaty, 45; Land War, 44, 45; United Brotherhood, 44, 46; visit to Montreal, 89 Parnell Testimonial Fund, 89 Pasha, Tepedeleni Ali, 24 Patriot Hunters’ lodges, 7 Pearse, Patrick, 97 Peterman, Michael, 18 Philadelphia Convention (1883), 83, 87, 91, 95 Phoenix Park murders, 45 Powderly, Terence V., 88–9

Index

Power, Charles Gavan “Chubby,” 20, 114, 172–3, 175 Quiet Revolution, 176 Quinn, Richard, 74–5, 79, 81 Rafferty, Oliver, 85 Rebellions of 1837–38, 5, 169–70 recruitment of Irish Canadian Catholics in the Canadian Expeditionary Force (1914–18), 15, 16, 98, 99–104, 109–10, 112–13, 116–19 Redmond, John, 16, 122, 127, 135 Reford, Alexander, 175 Richards, William Buell, 58, 68, 78 Ridgeway, An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada (1868), 19, 155–8 Ridgeway, battle of, 38 Riel, Louis, 170 Roberts, William, 36, 38 Robertson, John Ross, 142 Rooney, James, 67 Rossa, Jeremiah O’Donovan, 11, 14, 40, 42–3, 49, 83, 93 Rudin, Ronald, 165 Russian-Ottoman conflict (1824–29), 24–5, 31 Said, Edward, 29, 30, 31 St Laurent, Louis, 163 St Patrick’s Day parades, 8, 14, 34, 65, 93 St Patrick’s Literary Association (Ottawa), 65 St Patrick’s Society of Montreal, 41, 62, 63, 168 Scanlan, Kate, 60, 63, 81 Schiffer, Reinhold, 29, 30, 31

243

Scott, Richard, 167, 168, 169 Self-Determination League, 50 Shaughnessy, Lord (Thomas George), 107 Shehyn, Joseph, 174, 176 Siegfried, André, 160, 161, 162, 164, 167 Sinn Féin, 9, 16, 17, 110, 111, 113, 123, 125, 127, 128, 129; by-election victories (1917), 126; Catholic Record (London), 122, 126, 130, 132–3; Catholic Register (Toronto), 126, 130, 134–5; electoral victory (1918), 130; rejection of John Redmond, 135 Sinnott, Alfred, 104 Sinnott, Patrick, 38 Skeffington, Francis Sheehy, 123 Skirmishing Fund, 43 Slattery, Ralph, 82 Slattery, Richard, 82 Slattery, T.P., 54–7, 67, 71–3, 75, 76, 78 Smith, Frank, 168 Sparks, Jonathan, 78 Spratt, Michael Joseph, 104 Stacey, C.P., 34 Starrs, Michael, 65, 75 Steacy, R.H., 106 Stephens, James, 35 Stevenson, Garth, 19 Stockley, W.F.P., 49–50 Storr, Edward, 69–70, 74, 79, 81 Sullivan, Alexander, 11, 46 Taschereau, Elzéar-Alexandre, 88 Terry Finnegan (satirical character), 141–6 Thompson, E.P., 179 tight-focus reading, 180

244

Index

Tobin, Edward, 14, 93 Toner, Peter M., 4–5, 8, 11 Tracey, Daniel, 10–11, 22; British foreign policy, 27; death, 25; Turkish character, 25; Turkish government, 28; Turkish mind, 30–1. See also Irish Vindicator and Canada Advertiser Travels in Turkey, Egypt, Nubia and Palestine in 1824, 1825, 1826 and 1827, 29–30 Travels to and from Constantinople, 30 Trigger, Rosalyn, 8, 12, 13–14 Troubles of 1919–21, 5, 9, 17 Troubles of 1968–98, 9 True Witness and Catholic Chronicle (Montreal), 92 Turner, Alec, 59, 60–1, 63–4, 67, 69, 79 208th Irish Canadian Regiment of Toronto, 101, 110, 112 Two Solitudes, 160 Ulster Unionists, 128, 129 United Brotherhood, 11, 40–1, 42, 43, 45; Canada, 47; Charles Stewart Parnell, 46; Saint John, nb, 43 Victory Bonds, 105 Viger, Denis-Benjamin, 26 Wade, Reuben, 69, 70, 79

Wall, Joseph A., 122 Waters, Maureen, 142 Wellington, Duke of (Arthur Wellesley), 23, 25, 26, 27 Whelan, Bridget, 89 Whelan, John Patrick, 83, 87, 91 Whelan, Joseph, 65–6 Whelan, Kevin, 10, 31–2 Whelan, Matthew, 113 Whelan, Patrick James, 12–13, 39, 154; behaviour before and after murder of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, 73–6; Charles Murphy, 53–4; Charles S. Blue, 53; Edward O’Neill, 56, 71–2, 73; execution, 58; Fenianism, 52, 53, 57–9, 62–3, 65–8, 82; gun, 56–7, 71–2; jailhouse confession, 55–6; John Lawrence Power O’Hanly, 53; letter from Mary McGee, 52–3; letter to John A. Macdonald, 52; Police Magistrate’s Inquiry, 59, 60–1, 63 White, William, 79 Wilson, Woodrow, 17, 130, 131, 137 Wiman, Erastus, 142 Yeats, William Butler, 184 Young Ireland, 5, 36, 41, 181 Young Irishmen’s Literary and Benefit Society (Montreal), 14, 83, 86, 89, 95; Patrick Dowd, 93