Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, when the population of Ireland reached its highest point of over 8,000,000, the pressure on the people caused them to emigrate in large numbers, and then the famine came to drive out great crowds of those who survived.  In proportion to its population Canada received a great many more of these Irish emigrants than did the United States.  Unfortunately the conditions on board the emigrant sailing vessels in those days cost many lives.  They were often becalmed and took months to cross the ocean.  My grandmother coming in the thirties was ninety-three days in crossing, landing at Quebec after seven weeks on half rations, part of the time living on nothing but oatmeal and water.  Ship fever, the dreaded typhus, broke out on her vessel as on so many others, and more than half the passengers perished.  Many, many thousands of the Irish emigrants thus died on ship-board or shortly after landing.  In 1912, the Ancient Order of Hibernians erected near Quebec a monument to the victims.  In spite of the untoward conditions, emigration continued unabated, and in 1875, in the population of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, it was calculated that the Irish numbered 846,414 as compared with 706,369 English and 549,946 Scotch (Hatton, quoted by Davin in The Irishman In Canada).

It had become clear that Canada would prosper more if united than in separate provinces jealous of each other.  The first move in this direction came from the Maritime Provinces, where the Irish element was so much stronger than elsewhere, and when a conference of the leading statesmen of these Provinces was appointed to be held at Charlottetown, P.E.I., September 1864, representatives of Upper and Lower Canada asked to be allowed to be present to bring forward a plan for a Federation of all the British Provinces in North America.  The British North America Act was passed, and received the royal assent, the queen appointing July 1, 1867 as the formal beginning of the Dominion of Canada.

Among the men who were most prominent in bringing about federation and who came to be known as the Fathers of Confederation were several distinguished Irishmen.  Thomas D’Arcy McGee was the best known and probably did more than any other Canadian to make the idea of confederation popular by his writings and speeches.  He had come to Canada as a stranger, edited a newspaper in Montreal, and was elected to the Assembly after a brief residence, in spite of the opposition cries of “Irish adventurer” and “stranger from abroad,” was subsequently elected four times by acclamation, and was Minister of Agriculture and Education and Canadian Commissioner to the Paris Exposition of 1867.  His letters to the Earl of Mayo, pleading for the betterment of conditions in Ireland, were quoted by Gladstone during the Home Rule movement as “a prophetic voice from the dead coming from beyond the Atlantic.”