Group Identity

Though Irish Protestants have continued to immigrate to Canada in the twentieth century, they have come from a much different Ireland. Because the label “Irish” has been appropriated in the homeland by Catholic nationalists, twentieth-century Ulster Protestants have generally regarded themselves as British, and some of the more recent immigrants note that they never felt Irish until they left Ireland and began to encounter expatriate English and Scots in Canada. In centres with smaller Irish immigrant populations, the Protestants often know one another but they tend to associate equally with other British immigrants, and even with Irish Catholics, in activities such as soccer and rugby teams. Few Protestants join Comhaltas (traditional Irish cultural and musical societies), but many Irish Catholic newcomers, unless interested in traditional music, find these organizations equally unrepresentative of their own Irish experience. In cities such as Toronto, where there is a large Irish Catholic population, feelings of Irish nationalism and exile have been intensified by emigration, and for these people Irish cultural organizations have greater appeal.

In several Canadian cities, there are a few businesses run by Irish immigrants who give priority in hiring to compatriots, regardless of religion. Residence in Canada allows a distancing from the “Troubles,” and many come to regard the nationalist and unionist paramilitaries alike as thugs operating under the guise of religion. In their new home, they can safely ignore the pragmatic implications of religious affiliation that they would have to face in Ulster. Still, some, like other immigrants, feel a continuing attachment to the old land. Reinforcing that attachment is the ease and comparative affordability of transatlantic travel in the present age. Temporary and return migration has increased as a result, and many young people who accompanied their families to Canada in recent decades face difficult choices upon reaching adulthood. Some return to live in Ireland, but both they and many of those who stay in Canada remain uncertain as to where they best belong.

Twentieth-century Irish Protestant immigrants have been too small in number and scattered geographically to constitute a community of their own, and, despite the massive Irish Protestant immigration of earlier years, they have not found an indigenous community of fellow Irish ready to welcome them. By the time of their arrival, the descendants of earlier Irish Protestant immigrants to Canada had blended completely into the mainstream. Though many of them continue to this day to think fondly of their ancestral roots, their real identification is with Canada.

Indeed, Canada’s Irish Protestants, it can be argued, already had ceased to be a distinct ethnic presence by Confederation. The expansion of the Orange Order far beyond its Irish Protestant roots to become the country’s largest fraternal organization at the turn of the century demonstrated that long-standing Irish Protestant preoccupations – an early pro-British and imperialist version of Canadian nationalism, and growing unease about the international resurgence of Roman Catholicism – were increasingly in tune with attitudes shared by many other Protestant Canadians. This view of the world and of Canada’s place in it evolved in another direction in the twentieth century. Little replenished by continuing Irish immigration, but living adjacent to the economically and culturally assertive United States, Canadians cut the umbilical chord with mother Britain and came, in an increasingly secular world, to view their differences with French Canada in a linguistic rather than a religious context. Recent immigrants from Ulster have tended to accept this vision of Canada, viewing life here as a welcome respite from the long history of continuing unrest in their homeland.