Irish Settlements in Eastern Canada: A study of cultural transfer and adaptation

Among the vast migration of European peasants to North America during the nineteenth century, the largest group came from southern Ireland, Celtic, Catholic, rural, pre-industrial, many of them nevertheless settled in cities, but an appreciable number, particularly in eastern Canada, took up land and farmed. This study examines three areas of Irish settlement -- the Avalon peninsula, Miramichi, and Peterborough -- in terms of how their traditional farming methods, building styles, implements, settlement morphology, and other aspects of their culture were transferred, maintained, altered, or adapted in the new setting. The author has studied archives and records in both Ireland and Canada and rounded out these findings by interviews with some of the older settlers. The work is unique in that most studies in North American by historians, sociologists, and others have focused on the adjustment and assimilation of ethnic groups to their new environment rather than including also a study of their earlier cultural patterns and their transfer and survival in the New World.