against him. However, owing to the precautions
taken by the Irish soldiers to identify themselves with
the French Canadian peasantry, there is no record of
reprisals. The Irish settled down in the Province of
Quebec and, while retaining their names, or French
variations of them, they were in a few years absorbed
by the ambient race. The case of Dr. Timothy O'Sul-
livan is typical. He was the son of a lieutenant-
general in the army of James II, and had during
sixteen years served as captain of dragoons among
the Irish in Spain. In 1716 he started for Ireland
to raise recruits for his regiment. During the voyage
he was seized by pirates who landed him in New Eng-
land. He escaped to Canada, settled down, and be
gan to practise the profession of a surgeon. In 1720
he married the widow of M. Dufrost la Jemerais, whose
eldest daughter, Madame d'Youville, became in after
years the foundress of the Grey Nuns of Canada.
O'Sullivan's French Canadian descendants are still to
be found under the name of Sylvain. Other instances
An image should appear at this position in the text.CELTIC CROSS ON GROSSE ISLE, P. Q.
Erected by the A. O. H. in 1909 to commemorate the great fever among Irish immigrants in 1847
of assimilation of French and Irish in
Canada are preserved for us in the
Archives of the Marine, in Paris. In
1748, an English ship, bound for Virginia with a score or two of young
Irishwomen on board, was seized on
the Atlantic by a French vessel,
"L'Heureux". The passengers were
brought to Quebec and distributed
among different private families,
where their racial identity was soon
lost, as nothing more is heard of them.
The pathetic case is cited in the same
documents of Cullen, or Collins, an
Irish soldier, who, after the fall of Oswego, in 1756, was seen with his wife
and children drifting in an open boat
over Lake Ontario on his way to some
French settlement. Historic facts
like these go to prove that a larger
percentage of Irish blood flowed in
the veins of the French Canadian
population at the end of the eighteenth
century than is generally suspected.
There are few traces of systema- tized immigration of the Irish into Canada until the beginning of the nineteenth century. The supremacy of the King of England in matters ec- clesiastical, so persistently insisted upon during the first years of the Eng- lish domination, and the evident desire to crush out the Catholic Church, shown so plainly in the "Royal Instructions to Governors", were not of a nature to encourage immigration of Catholics, espe- cially of Irish Catholics, who had suffered so long under unjust laws in their own land. These "Instructions' forbade under severe penalties all appeals to, or cor- respondence with, any foreign ecclesiastical juris- diction "of whatever nature or kind whatsoever". No episcopal or vicarial power could be exercised by any person professing the religion of the Church of Rome, but only such as was essentially and indis- pensably necessary to the free exercise of the Romish religion. A parish priest could not be appointed in a place where Protestants were in the majority. In such parishes the Protestant incumbent should have all the tithes, but the Catholics might have the use of the church. In places where the Catholics were in a majority, a parish priest might be appointed, but the tithes of the Protestants should be held in reserve for the support of the Protestant clergy. Section 8 of Article 43 of the "Instructions" shows the sentiments which animated the British Government in those years: "All ecclesiasticks as may think fit to enter into the holy state of matrimony shall be released from all penalties to which they might have been subjected in such cases by any authority of the See of Rome." Naturally the Irish would shun a colony where such laws were in force, and where even the French Catholic colonists did not know what their destiny was to be; but one of the first British governors, Sir Guy Carleton-a humane and tactful Irishman, born in Tyrone, who declared later that if Lower Canada had been preserved to Great Britain, it was owing to the Catholic clergy-did much in his correspondence with the Home Government to mitigate the rigour of the obnoxious Instructions" and to reconcile the Canadians to their new masters. It was the same Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, who, in 1775, successfully defended Quebec, during the American siege, in which General Montgomery, also an Irishman, lost his life.
Succeeding governors of Canada, especially Haldimand and Craig, were less accommodating to Catholics than Carleton, and it was not till the diplomatic and uncompromising Bishop Plessis, one of the illustrious figures in Canadian history, took up the struggle for the liberties of the Church, that Catholics began to breathe freely. This prelate succeeded in having the rights of the Church recognized, and left the way open for the immigration to Canada of Catholics of every nationality. When he visited the Upper St. Lawrence, on a pastoral tour, in 1816, he found seventy-five Catholic families in the neighbourhood of Kingston, among them twenty Scotch and Irish, and others as far west as Niagara. Ferland tells us that during the summer of 1820 over thirty families arrived at Quebec from Ireland. They had hoped to better their condition by emigrating, but, owing to the unsettled condition of the country and the stagnation of business, they failed miserably. These poor exiles were in the direst poverty, and, as winter was approaching, the noble-hearted Bishop Plessis wrote a touching letter to his parish priests in their favour.
Meanwhile groups of Irish colonists had begun to arrive and settle in Upper Canada and in the Maritime Provinces. In 1803, a Talbot of Malahide, moved by the desire to control the 'Paradise of the Hurons" he had read about in Charlevoix, secured six hundred and eighty thousand acres in Western Ontario and gradually opened up this vast district to settlement. Talbot was one of the first to draw his countrymen to that province. In 1825 Peter Robinson began to work on similar lines north of Lake Ontario. He brought two thousand colonists and located them along the banks of the Otanabee, in the neighbourhood of Peterboro. Other groups continued to arrive from time to time to strengthen the Irish element; between 1830 and 1860 two hundred thousand settled in Ontario; and in several counties the Irish still predominate. The Nova Scotia Archives show that Irish settlers were numerous in this province, many of whom were undoubtedly disbanded soldiers of the Cornwallis Regiment. Shortly after the treaty of 1763, Irish Presbyterians settled in Windsor, Truro, Londonderry, and other inland points, where their descendants may still be found. Although the intolerant laws of England were still in force against Catholics, the provincial governors showed themselves more or less conciliatory to the proscribed religion, and Irish Catholic colonists continued to increase in numbers. The appointment of a vicar Apostolic for Nova Scotia, in 1818, proves
