Opinion: Montreal's Irish community has renewed vitality
The early 1990s were something of a crossroads for Montreal’s Irish community, which had been starved of new immigrants for several decades. Oh yes, the St. Patrick’s Day parade was still appearing on Ste. Catherine St. every year, superbly organized by the United Irish Societies. The St. Patrick’s Society, the oldest of Montreal’s 18 Irish associations, was still holding its well-attended annual luncheon and ball. And the Erin Sports Association was still attracting a thousand people to its Irishman of the Year Breakfast.
But Montreal’s Irish community felt like it was running on autopilot.
That started to change, though, in the debates leading up to Quebec’s 1995 sovereignty referendum, when the Irish felt caught in the polarization between French and English, between pure laine and les autres.
They were conflicted, because these distinctions did not fit with their own sense of the past, their historical role — sometimes successful, sometimes difficult — between the French and the English.
Successful examples of bridge-building could be seen in public figures from the Irish community who helped develop Montreal and Quebec, among them six mayors (William Workman, Francis Cassidy, Sir William Hingston, James McShane, Richard Wilson-Smith and James Guerin) and four premiers (Edmond James Flynn, Daniel Johnson Sr., Pierre Marc Johnson and Daniel Johnson Jr.). There were examples of the community’s achievements in business (the City and District Savings Bank), education (Loyola High School and College), health (St. Mary’s Hospital), culture (poet Émile Nelligan, whose father was Irish) and sports (Ambrose O’Brien, founder of the Canadiens).
So why didn’t the Irish feel integral to the fabric of Montreal and Quebec?
The simple answer is that most were not aware of their deep and impressive participation in the evolution of this unique society.
In the early 1990s, most organizations in the Irish community had little contact even with each other. Finally, a series of meetings was struck, and representatives from all of the Irish associations debated whether they might want to make a common public intervention in the 1995 referendum campaign.
Eventually it was decided not to. But the associations did agree to start publicizing and supporting each other’s events, which produced a more actively engaged community. Discussions frequently returned to the history of the Irish in Montreal, Quebec and the rest of Canada, and the desire to promote greater awareness of it.
This desire led to the creation of the Canadian Irish Studies Foundation, headed by lawyer Peter O’Brien and former Westmount mayor Brian Gallery. Through courses and public lectures, people of Irish descent began learning more about their history and sharing it with others. They learned that the grand march toward responsible government in Canada began when Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine became joint premiers of the Province of Canada, in the 1840s, continued with the coalition of Francis Hincks and A.N. Morin in the 1850s, and culminated in Confederation in 1867, with Thomas D’Arcy McGee as a central figure. It was as much an Irish/French partnership as an English/French one, since Baldwin, Hincks and of course McGee were Irish.
The Quebec government has now approved a major in Canadian Irish Studies at Concordia University. The official announcement came last month.
It comes as a time of difficult economic conditions in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland, when Montreal finds itself again welcoming a small but steady stream of new immigrants from Ireland. They are usually university graduates attracted by this city’s cosmopolitan reputation, and are more than willing to polish their high-school French. (Young families are moving to Calgary, Vancouver and especially Saskatchewan, whose government attended recruitment fairs in Ireland to attract experienced tradespeople.) In Montreal you will find Irish immigrants working in surprising corners of the economy, particularly in the aerospace, pharmaceutical and video-gaming sectors. Perhaps the best barometer of this influx is the increased membership of the Irish Rugby Football Club and the Montreal Gaelic Athletic Association.
The infusion of young immigrants and the vitality of Canadian Irish Studies at Concordia University give Montreal’s Irish community added reason to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day this year.
Michael Kenneally holds the research chair in Canadian Irish Studies at Concordia University.
Related links:
• Full piece in the Montreal Gazette
• School of Canadian Irish Studies
• Michael Kenneally’s faculty profile