The Shiners' War

Joseph Montferrant ("Big Joe Mufferaw") takes on the Shiners.

My native Eastern Ontario was torn in the earlier years of the 19th century (1837-45) by what is called the "Shiners Wars." The Shiners were recent Irish immigrants working in the lumber camps, who generally raised trouble and terror up and down the Ottawa Valley.

Besides raising hell, the Shiners apparently also had a political agenda. At one point they flooded a meeting of an agricultural society, and had their leader elected the society's president. At another they tried to take over Nepean Township, but were outvoted.

Canadian troops were actually called in to restore order.

Generally considered a case of the boys just getting rowdy. But nobody knows why they were called "Shiners."

I have a theory. The term "Shinner" was actually common in Ireland in the early 20th century. It referred to the members of Sinn Fein, the Irish nationalist organization. "Sinn" is pronounced like "shin." Could the "Shiners" be "Shinners"?

At first, it looks improbable. Sinn Fein was founded by Arthur Griffith in 1905, long after the days of the Shiners. But "sinn fein" is also an Irish phrase. It means "ourselves," with the implication "on our own." And it is found in English-language nationalist songs from early in the 19th century. It seems likely that Griffith, a speaker of Gaelic as a second language, because it already had a certain cachet, and it may have been quite common for some time in Gaelic.

So "Shiner" might have been a recognized reference, to the Irish of the Valley, to "Sinn Feiner." With the implication that the lumbermen's true aim was some form of self-government for themselves as Irishmen, in the new world if not in the old.

This was, in fact, a common thought among Irishmen throughout the Irish diaspora. We have all heard of the Fenian movement in the US, I presume? And you have heard of Ned Kelly, the famous Australian outlaw? Except he was not just an outlaw. His hope was to establish at least a part of Australia as an independent Irish republic. In 1798, inspired by events in the US and France, the United Irishmen rose in a rebellion that lasted for six years. In 1800--bet you never heard this--Irish in Newfoundland rose in the same cause.

Now note again the year the "Shiners Wars" began. 1837. Do you remember, from your history, anything else that was happening in Canada in 1837?

Two things, actually. In Lower Canada, the Patriots took up arms. Probably the only name you know from that rebellion is Papineau, and you imagine it purely a Francophone thing. Not so. As prominent as Papineau among the rebels was Edmund Bailey O'Callahan, the MLA for Yamaska and editor of the Montreal Vindicator. To make the matter plain, he was the leader of the Irish community in Quebec at the time.

And in Upper Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie also took up arms.

You can see something was in the air.

It is amazing how all this Irish Canadian history has been suppressed. I believe it has mostly been suppressed by the Irish themselves. Canada defines itself as the Loyalist half of North America; Being opposed to the British Empire has no doubt not always been a politically comfortable position. It became less comfortable thanks to the Fenian raids of the latter half of the 19th century, when being Irish in Canada must have put my ancestors under a suspicion similar to that German Canadians would have felt during the First World War, or Japanese Canadians during the second. Indeed, it must have been awkward for Irish Canadians again in the First World War, when the Easter Rebellion happened in Dublin. It was seen at the time by the British as treason during wartime, after all. And this on top of the usual prejudice against Irish and Catholics.

Someone needs to revisit this history, and tell the truth about it.