Irish Migration to Quebec

From the time that people began living in groups, people have migrated to suit their personal needs. For some, it was to escape difficult times or hardships faced by their ethnic group. Such is the case of the Irish who migrated to Quebec from 1815 to the Potato Famine of 1847. What causes and factors drove these people to cross an ocean and leave their homeland for the unknown prospects of Quebec? To examine and fully answer this question, one must look at the social, economic and religious conditions in Ireland at the time, as well as what drew the Irish to Quebec rather than somewhere else.

To know why the Irish left Ireland, one must look at what was going on in Ireland from approximately 1815, a time before the famine began, to 1854 when the famine came to an end. Firstly, the Irish population had been steadily increasing from 2.8 million in 1712 until an estimated 8.5 million in 1841. This naturally led to harder times as families had more children to support. There also came a decline in agricultural prices, leading the average farmer’s income to decline as well. There was a legislation, as well, that was passed in 1816 and 1819 that decreased the cost of eviction, which led some of the landowners to evict their tenants to use the land for the purpose of grazing. This left those tenants without a place to live and a way to support themselves. As well, the Union with Great Britain in 1801, and the free trade that followed, ruined many of the forms of labour in Ireland at the time, including manufacturing and the products of artisans. This led many of the farmers and labourers to resort to begging, stealing and even starvation. This seemed to be enough of an incentive for people to start migrating overseas, and it is only common sense that those with the most money were able to leave first in 1815, these people mainly Protestant farmers. However, there was a reduction in fares in 1817 and that allowed some of the poorer classes, most usually were the Protestant counterparts, to finally migrate. During that period, many of the Irish immigrants came from the town of Ulster. This has been found to be due to the collapse of the linen industry there, which left the former employees unemployed. It seems apparent that in the decade prior to the Potato Famine, unemployment and a decline in the level of lifestyle were the major driving forces behind the first