Famine Diaries?: Narratives About Emigration From Ireland To Lower Canada And Quebec, 1832- 1853 by Jason King B.A., McGill University 1994 THESIS SUBMIlTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of English QJason King 19 9 6 Simon Fraser University December 1996 All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other mean, without permission of the author. APPROVAL NAME: Jason King DEGREE: Master of Arts (English) TITLE OF THESIS: Famine Diaries? Narratives about Emigration from Ireland to Lower Canada and Quebec, 1832-1853 Examining Committee: Chair: June Sturrock Leith Davis Senior Supervisor Assistant Professor of English Carole Gerson Professor of English Misao Dean . External Examiner Associate Professor, Department of English University of Victoria Date Approved: December 4, 1996 PARTIAL COPYRIGHT LICENSE I hereby grant to Simon Fraser University the right to lend my thesis, project or extended essay (the title of which is shown below) to users of the Simon Fraser University Library, and to make partial or single copies only for such users or in response to a request from the library of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. I further agree that permission for multiple copying of this work for scholarly purposes may be granted by me or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of this work for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Title of Thesis/Project/Extended Essay Author: (signature) (date) I Abstract This thesis examines the meDiary and the controversy that surrounds it, both in relation to genuine emigrant narratives from the mid-nineteenth century, and also in the context of recent scholarly debates about nineteenth century Irish migration to British North America, the historical import of the Great Famine in Ireland, and the modem significance and commemorative function of Grosse Ile National Historic Site (soon to become a National Park). I investigate the construction of national identity in the writing of Irish emigrants to Lower Canada and Quebec during the period of the Great Famine in Ireland and the decades immediately prior to it, when Irish mass migration to North America effectively began. I am interested, then, in tracing how the principles of Irish nationalism, particularly those of the Young Ireland movement (with its avowed antipathy towards the British), disseminate and modulate within a Canadian setting, and how such events as the 1832 cholera epidemic (which led to the establishment of the quarantine station at Grosse IIe), the rebellions of 1837, and particularly the potato blight shape and determine Irish Canadian configurations of national identity. In my first chapter, I focus on the Famine as a spurious text that advances a traditional Young Ireland interpretation of the Famine and of the migration experience as a form of exile, and I distinguish its hostile attitude towards emigration and towards Great Britain from those espoused in Robert Sellar's "Summer of Sorrown (1895), a prior work of historical fiction that presents a polar opposite account of the Famine migration yet provides the main source upon which the meDia is based. In my second chapter, I trace the origins of the Jbnm&my back one step further, to the Anglo-Irish aristocrat Stephen De Vere, whose authentic eye-witness account of the Famine migration, written to pressure the House of Lords into enacting Passenger Act reform, would provide the main source upon which Sellar's text, in turn, is based. Finally, in my third chapter, I compare the- m with genuine Famine journals and emigrant narratives from the 1830s, 1840s, and early 1850s, evaluating whether or not there are similarities between their respective attitudes towards emigration and towards Great Britain while accounting for whatever differences arise between them. I have collated a number of such genuine Famine diaries and Irish emigrant narratives written between 1832 and 1853, which provide ample material for comparison yet have received scant critical attention to date. I also examine these texts and the- against the backdrop of English emigrant narratives that date from the same time frame (Moodie, Traill) to discern whether or not cultural distinctions between EngIand and Ireland inform their respective representations of the migration experience. I am interested primarily, then, in examining how a select group of literate and affluent Irish emigrants choose to represent their migration experience, and, more specifically, whether or not the ethnic, linguistic, political, and religious affiliations of the emigrant communities they ostensibly represent become accentuated or mitigated in a Canadian setting: whether or not they consider Canada to be a land of opportunity and a natural setting for social amelioration or merely an extension of the British imperial domain Acknowledgments Although a scholarly undertaking of this scope will inevitably make use of a large variety of academic sources, I would like to particularly acknowledge Kerby Miller and Chris Morash, both of whose works on Irish emigration and the Irish Famine provided inspiration as well as a very solid foundation from which to undertake my research. I would also like to express my gratitude and indebtedness to Mary Lu MacDonald, Chris Morash, and especially Jim Jackson and Robert Hill for their confidence, support, and suggestions for potential avenues of research both in Canada and Ireland, without whose assistance this thesis would not have been possible. Robert Hill's suggestion that I consult the Robert Sellar manuscript for "The Summer of Sorrow" in the National Archives of Canada proved to be a most fortuitous one for me and provided direction for this thesis; Jim Jackson's enthusiasm and willingness to discuss his current research as weli as the unpublished Stephen De Vere correspondence and memoirs in Trinity College Dublin Library proved an invaluable aid for its completion. I would also like to thank my supervisor Leith Davis and Carole Gerson for their unfailing encouragement and incisive commentary throughout the composition of this thesis; the Department of English, FCAR (Fonds pour la formation de chercheurs et l'aide a la recherche), and a Scott Paper Limited Bicultural Graduate Entrance Fellowship all provided me with invaluable conference and research funding and financial assistance. Finally, my warmest thanks goes to my family and fiiends, especially Oonagh Shiel, Carl Peters, and Karlyn Koh, for their encouragement, reassurance, and emotional support. Table of Contents .. Approval ................................................................................................................................ 11 ... Abstract ................................................................................................................................. 111 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................. v Introduction ...............................................................................................................1 I . ne Diary and "Summerof Sorrown:Reception. Transmission. Modulation..... 15 I1 . From Emigrant to Exile: Gerald Keegan and Stephen De Vere ................................ 42 111 . Authentic Famine Migration Narratives: Preliminary Research ...............................64 Conclusion................................................................................................................ 105 End Notes ................................................................................................................. 110 Works Cited ............................................................................................................. 125 vi Introduction: Famine Diaries?: Narratives about Emigration from Ireland to Lower Canada and Quebec, 1832-1853 On the Celtic cross high above Grosse Ile, Quebec, reads the following inscription: Sacred to the memory of thousands of Irish emigrants, who, to preserve the faith, suffered hunger and exile in 1847-48, and stricken with fever, ended here their sorrowful pilgrimage. The monument, erected by the Ancient Order of Hibernians in America, an expatriate Irish nationalist organization, makes a number of implicit assumptions about the emigrants' social and political affiliations, their ethnic profile, religious orientation, attitudes towards migration, and reasons for leaving Ireland. They are in fact not emigrants at all but exiles, having left their homeland not through their own volition but from economic and political compulsion and under extreme duress. Thus, according to the monument, such "children of the Gael," faced only with "foreign tyrannical laws and an artificial famine" while they remained in Ireland, had no choice but to embark for the united States or British North America. Furthermore, their migration is invested with a religious significance. It is a "pilgrimage," a harrowing journey undertaken by famine-stricken Irish Catholics to preserve their faith, escape from English avarice, and maintain an imperiled Gaelic civilization: their mission the retention and transplantation of an endangered set of cultural and religious values. For such migrants, then, emigration is a matter of strict necessity, hardly an opportunity for social advancement or the achievement of material prosperity and