The Irish-Canadian story received what might be its definitive bookmark with a new book showcasing 50 Irish-born lives, both the ordinary and extraordinary, across the last 356 years.

At its launch Dec. 3 at Toronto’s University of St. Michael’s College, Dr. Eamonn McKee, the former Ambassador of Ireland to Canada, and Dr. Mark McGowan, professor and principal emeritus of the University of St. Michael’s College, chatted in front of a wide audience about Fifty Irish Lives in Canada, 1661-2017, an encapsulation of Irish-born Canadians’ significant contributions to all areas of Canadian life. The event was joined by William Peat, the  executive director of the Canada Ireland Foundation, who moderated the two editors’ discussions. 

As told by McGowan, a historian renowned for his work on both the Catholic Church in Canada as well as the Great Irish Famine and other areas of Irish culture, a project so wide in scope took years to get off the ground, but is now finalized as exactly what McKee and he had envisioned.  

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“McKee, an Irish diplomat who is also an Irish ambassador to places like the Republic of Korea and Israel, was blown away by the Irish community's size and history here in Canada.  He wanted something that accurately reflected what was going on here, and so we cooked up this idea of a book, and over the course of two years, we selected some of the best historians and writers on the Irish in Canada to make it possible,” McGowan said. 

Over the last three and a half years, roughly 18 specialist historians and writers took on the challenging task of selecting, exploring and honouring 50 distinct Irish lives from 1661 to 2017 that would go on to impact the history of Canada. Published by Novalis and partly funded by the Canada Ireland Foundation, the team sought to narrow down more than three centuries of stories into a collection of interesting, varied and often overlooked passages through time. 

“To be selected, you had to be deceased, and you had to be born in Ireland, but we also needed to get a breadth to cover Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Ontario, the west, up north, having a balance of males and females, we even have children who comprise some of the entries,” McGowan said. “We wanted to be broad-based in terms of both the elites and average ordinary people who made a difference in Canada, for good or for ill.” 

Entries include figures like former governor general Lord Dufferin, Kingston tavern owner and one of John A. Macdonald’s few female advisors, Eliza Grimason, Timothy Eaton and Thomas D’Arcy McGee. McGowan shared that among the chosen are a number of figures with roots in the Catholic faith, featuring detailed stories of Archbishop John Joseph Lynch of Toronto, Archbishop Fleming of St. John’s, Archbishop Connolly of Halifax, Sisters Theresa Dease and Elisabeth Phelan and other priests, nuns and brothers who built schools, hospitals and parishes across Canada. 

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Whether holy in service or humble, Fifty Irish Lives in Canada runs the gamut of Irish Canadians who contributed to their society and the country’s reputation globally, both small and large. 

The book also features various thematic essays interwoven throughout the tales of past Irish greats,  on topics like the Indigenous gifts to Irish famine relief in 1847, the influence of the Duke of Wellington and the more than 80 responders who died in Canada during the famine.  

A truly all-encompassing collection, McGowan attests to  how important members of the Irish ascendancy were in the early governance of Canada. He also hopes readers note how prominent Irish hands were in shaping major Canadian institutions. 

“People like Nicholas Flood Davin, he was one of the architects of indigenous residential schools as an example of ill, but at Patrick Reid was the head of a small design unit in Ottawa who was charged with essentially creating the prototype for the Canadian flag. These great stories are woven all the way through our history,” he said. 

“Alexander Kirkwood comes up with the idea that we need reserved lands for recreation, and he creates Algonquin Park. Timothy Eaton, when many think about the Santa Claus parade or those famous catalogues. I think what people will be generally surprised by is the way in which Irish men and women wrote major parts of the narrative of Canadian history in a rather profound and tangible way.” 

Perhaps most of all, McGowan hopes readers take away one recurring truth often lost to time: that Irish immigrants, whether Catholic or Protestant, rich or poor, never forgot where they came from as they ventured ahead. 

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“These men, women and children showed an extraordinary drive to make this country the best it could possibly be, and that’s interwoven in the history of Canada. You see that again and again in these biographies; the sheer commitment to Canada, and at the same time, not losing the sense of their Irish roots and heritage,” he said. 

Fifty Irish Lives in Canada is published by Novalis. See novalis.ca.