New SFU Course Examines Irish and Scots Immigrant Experiences
BURNABY - During the Simon Fraser University 2008 spring semester, a new course entitled "The Scots and Irish in Canada" will examine and compare the experiences of Scottish and Irish immigrants.
The following themes will be considered: motivations for migration; reception in the new world; social, economic, and cultural contributions in new communities; participation in formal and informal politics; the persistence of migration myths; and the interplay between folk memory and identity formation.
Popular understandings of Scottish and Irish immigration to Canada share a common narrative motif: impoverished migrants, forced from the land by avaricious landlords, were crowded together in the bowels of unsanitary ships, where disease and starvation took a terrible toll before survivors were dumped on the strange and sometimes hostile shores of the new world.
In Scottish-Canadian memory, this narrative is linked with the Highland Clearances; in Irish-Canadian, it emanates from the period of the Great Famine.
Yet these passive victims of folk memory were not representative of most Scottish and Irish immigrants to Canada, especially those who came to British North America before 1815 or to Canada from the latter Nineteenth Century onwards. Most immigrants carefully weighed conditions in the old world against opportunities in the new, and made conscious decisions to move in order to improve their lives.
Another popular narrative thread about the Scots and Irish in Canada suggests strong contrast: that the Scots became Canada's business, political, and educational elite, while the Irish were ghettoized in cities and became the urban proletariat. Yet these interpretations do not reflect the full diversity of experiences - of Scottish farmers and miners, for example, or of Irish fishers and political elites.
The course, History 391: The Scots and Irish in Canada, is presented by Jack Little and Willeen Keough. For more information, e-mail: jlittle@sfu.ca or wkeough@sfu.ca.
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