Canada and the Irish

 

The Black Rock, Montreal

Enjoying reading Apartment Seven, a collection of essays—partly memoirs—by Canadian poet Miriam Waddington. She writes at length about her alienation from the Canadian mainstream, growing up as a Jew.

It makes me think of my own ambiguous relation to the Canadian mainstream, as an Irish Catholic. 

Significantly, I notice being invisible to Waddington. To Waddington, other than Jews, there were two groups in Canada: the French and the English. Both were “Christian.”

Yet since before Confedertation, and up until her time, there would have been more Irish than English in “English Canada”; and the last thing they would have seen themselves as is “English.” Even if most of them spoke the language--as Waddington herself did. Not to mention the 25% or so of “French-Canadians” who were Irish.

And to them—to us—the dividing line between Protestant and Catholic was far more significant in our thoughts, in our lives, and in our politics than Christian and Jew.

Waddington here is typical. It is the signature experience of the Irish in Canada. We are not acknowledged to exist. We are the invisible people.

There is a Black Rock in Montreal, dredged up during the construction of the Victoria Bridge. It now marks the unmarked mass grave of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Irish immigrants who died there and were hastily buried where they died in 1847, without service or acknowledgement; as they did in Quebec, in Ottawa, in Kingston, in Toronto, where there are similar mass graves. The Black Rock is now considered the premiere monument to the Irish experience in Canada.

And on it, the Irish are not mentioned. Just “immigrants.” It was consecrated by an Anglican bishop. No Catholic priests were invited to attend.

Most Canadians are oblivious to this; including the Irish themselves. But growing up in Quebec, the Francophones always identified me as “Anglais.” An outsider. The English were, at the same time, generally well aware that I was Irish, and Catholic, and therefore not one of them, and suspect. In either case, an outsider in my own country.

Widely dispersed and largely in the countryside, without cultural power, we had little intercommunication. Therefore our actual numbers were largely invisible even to ourselves. Most of us probably assumed we were a small minority. And at the same time, most of us probably identified optimistically as "Canadian," not "Irish."

But it is also true that being Irish in Canada has always meant keeping your head down and often hiding or denying your ethnic ties and trying to “pass.” The English openly despised us, and they were in command. As we and they read of constant rebellions against English rule in Ireland, and as the Fenians raided, it did not do to admit you were Irish or openly fly that ethnic flag.

Yet the Irish in Canada did not rebel. They agitated for representative government, but the moment that took on the character of rebellion, the Irish, to a man, withdrew. They kept silent, and tried to appear model citizens. For they had nowhere else to go if Canada did not work out. They had escaped a hellish condition in Ireland. They had no money for further immigration. Most came over on “coffin ships,” followed by sharks hoping to dine on the next Irish corpse jettisoned. Those who did not die on the docks had to seek any paying work they could get. 

In Canada, while not treated as equals, while still facing “no Irish need apply” attitudes, they could own land, could vote and run for office, could build churches, educate their children, practice their faith, pass inheritance to their children; and they probably would not starve. Some who managed the money moved on to the US, but those who did found anti-Catholic attitudes stronger there; in Canada they were protected in part by the need for the British to keep quiescent the large French Catholic presence.

Knowing far worse, this was not an applecart the Canadian Irish wanted to overturn. They kept their mouths shut and heads down, and sought opportunities, as in World War I, to prove their loyalty.

Their inevitable strategy was to seek here a distinctive new identity: not Irish, not French, and not English. Canada was largely their project. This was the great project of D’Arcy McGee, and this for him and them was the ultimate objective of Confederation.

This project always struggled against the colonial mentality. Waddington laments that, in her day, members of English faculties were always either English or American, not Canadian, and they scoffed at the idea of including Canadian writing on the curriculum. They looked down on anything produced by mere locals. I experienced the same going through English Lit at Queen’s in the seventies. There were no courses available in Canadian literature, even as electives, and no Canadian writing was included in any of the courses offered. The message was that no decent literature had been or could be written in Canada, by Canadians.

Yet at about that time, it looked as though we might soon break through. We had a generation of writers who seemed to be getting things going: Waddington’s generation. We had almost-famous names like Irving Layton, Mordecai Richler, Al Purdy, Margaret Atwood, Robertson Davies, Timothy Findlay, Alice Munro, W.O. Mitchell, … A distinctive Canadian literature in English seemed to be emerging.

And then the empire struck back. The colonial mentality is hard to overcome. Now the only writers allowed on the curriculum are indigenous, or, again, have been born abroad. And they do not write about Canada; they write only of their own ethnicity and its differences and difficulties. No “mainstream” Canadian culture is recognized to exist.

The Irish still seem, as always, to get it in the ear.

I had a chat with a relatively prominent Canadian poet recently. He had never heard of Emile Nelligan or Al Purdy. He might have known of other Canadian poets of a previous generation; I do not know. These are the only two Canadian poets who happened to come up.

He wrote mostly about Iran, the country of his birth.

As a Canadian, as an Irish Canadian, I still wait for Canada to be born.