Locating Irishness in the “Belfast of this Great Dominion”: Toronto, 1841–1926

Abstract

Abstract Through an exploration of how readings of Irish ethnic identity were produced, reproduced, and modified in Toronto between 1841 and 1926, this article contributes an urban-scale study to research on global Irishness. In the mid-nineteenth century, Toronto numbered among the most Irish of North American cities, and Catholics and Protestants of Irish birth and ancestry were touched by two nineteenth-century political projects that reached global levels of significance. The first concerned the attempted resurrection of the “Irish nation” through the return of a self-governing Dublin parliament by either constitutional or violent means. The second was the ongoing expansion of Britain's empire, a geo-political entity for which the Irish in Canada displayed varying degrees of affection through the century. For these projects, Toronto can be seen as both an Irish diasporic and British imperial location of importance. The study is informed by scholarship cautioning against the essentializing of any ethnic group as a transhistorical entity with consensual goals, and it considers the role of ethno-political entrepreneurs within the historical cycle of ethnic group-making.