A Canadian Emigration Commissioner in Northern Ireland

Abstract

ANADA gave much .official publicity 'to immigration, and advice 'to intending immigrants, •before ,as well as after 1867. • A typical government pamphlet, of 1861, stated its aim as follows: "... Let it be our place to undeceive [Europeans] and to 'shew that Canada is a country totally distinct from the United Sta'tes [a poir•t ,on which earlier Irish immigrants were frequently confused]-free from the blight of slavery, and free, too, from many of the faults which have crept into the social and political relations .of our Republican eighbours. "2 This production was "intended for extensive circulation in Great Britain and Ireland, and... Europe." The note of competitive advertising is interesting. A flood of Canadian publicity is said to have been put out in Ireland in the later 1860's; little trace of it now appears in the Irish repositories, apart from some press advertising. Clearly, then, Canada like the United States was periodically interested in immigrant labour, and ff this could not be captured in the St. Lawrence it must be caioled or indentured before embarkation. The employment "runners" were famfiiar figures around the incoming boats at Quebec and Montreal, and the government tried to control them by 'a licence ,system. More.ove.r, from about 1860 Canada began 'to appoint resident agents in some of the principal catchment-areas of emigration, both in the British Isles and in continental Europe. These men found themselves in competition with the emissaries .of some American states, railroads, and land companies. From Canada, the celebrated A. C. Buchanan first came to Liverpool apparently in 1861, aand by 1865 he was advertising in Ireland the opening of his office for personal or postal irfformation on Canada? This was a time when the average Irish emigrant o North America began his long westward iourney by an eastbound passage •a, cross the channel •o the Liverpool packets.