"Different Feelings": Corktown and the Catholic Irish in Early Hamilton, 1832-1847

Abstract

Sectarian strife has been a consistent theme in the historiography of the Irish in nineteenth-century Ontario and, perhaps, with good reason. Anglo-Canadian nativism, Orange-Green affrays and their variants provided recurrent sources of social violence which did much to belie the notion of Upper Canada as a colony exemplary for its social harmony, or some kind of peaceable kingdom.1 Historians analyzing these forms of social violence in early Canada have been careful not to caricature the immigrant Irish as typically combative, and have focused instead upon the local conditions and circumstances that gave rise to episodic expressions of cultural hatred: systematic political and economic repres sion, accusations of disloyalty, and cultural insults. But clearly, cultural antago nism did not characterize the relations between the immigrant Irish and Anglo Canadians at all times, in all parts of British North America. Social peace was arguably more common, more sustainable, and more desirable among contem poraries than recent historians have chosen to document. Historians have not asked the same questions about periods of sustained cultural peace. What were the prevailing conditions, or circumstances in those periods in Upper Canadian history when cultural harmony prevailed? This essay attempts to address that question, focusing on the experiences of the Catholic Irish settlers of Corktown in Hamilton, Upper Canada. From 1832 to 1847, significant numbers of Catholic Irish immigrants settled in Hamilton, establishing economic footholds, a cultural presence, and a sense of ethnic space. Corktown, a working-class neighbourhood, occupied a portion of the southeast ern part of town. There, the Catholic Irish built a community whose cultural cohesion was manifest in a common religious identity, and in social life present in neighbourhood taverns, shops and associations. A local Catholic Irish identity in Hamilton emerged in the years before mid-century, shaped from within by a common past, common patterns of work, and shared space. The Irish experience in early Hamilton was shaped, moreover, by a sense of cultural entente that developed between the newcomers and established resi dents. This understanding seems to have been secure, but only so long as the Catholic Irish maintained a notably subordinate position in society. The Catholic Irish welcome rested, it seems, on four conditions: inoffensive use of space, eco nomic usefulness and self-sufficiency, political innocuity, and cultural expres sions that posed no challenge to understood notions of British identity and loy alty. Early Corktown's Catholic Irish met all of these stipulations. Relative eth nic harmony prevailed in Hamilton in the 1830s and 40s, and is attested by the