From Ireland To Canada

The Irishman in Canada

There are two aspects to the Irish emigration to Canada. What the Irishman has done for Canada is the first The second, is not less important, what Canada has done for the Irishman.

Men have come here who were unable to spell, who never tasted meat, who never knew what it was to have a shoe to their foot in Ireland, and they tell me they are masters of 1,000 or 2,000 or 3,000 acres as the case may be of the finest land in Canada. 

...Irish women were held in high esteem. The Irish ladies are such as might naturally be expected, such as have stamped a high and exalted character on the domestic economy of our country, and have rendered her in this respect, the envy and admiration of the world.

In one year, 1831*, as many as 50,000 persons landed at Quebec most of them being Irish. This large immigration soon told, even in Lower Canada. 

Irish ancestors Michael and Mary (McGovern) Powers moved from Ireland to Canada.  Their son John moved from Canada to Michigan.  John Powers' grandson, Ralph Newman Powers, married Beatrice Cameron, whose mostly Scots ancestors made an exception for Bridget Higgins, an native of Ireland who also moved to Canada.

*If John Powers, oldest known child of Michael and Mary Powers, was born in Canada as stated in the 1851 census taken at Grimsby [Ontario, Canada], the Powers family was in Canada by June 1834.

Bridget Higgins was in Canada by August 1833 when her oldest child, Ellen, was born in Lower Canada (Quebec).