Wild hogs eating corpses on a battlefield, women shot in the face, Irish soldiers strung up by their heels and mutilated, hangings, deportations, and ghosts Does this sound like Canada to you? Despite appearances of gentility in Upper Canada, the Battle

The 1837 Lower Canadian Rebellion was as close as the Canadian colonies ever came to revolution. Edmund Bailey OCallaghan doctor, politician, and notable newspaper editor in Montreal was Louis-Joseph Papineaus right-hand man in the tense years lead

Ellen Cashman was born during the era of the Great Irish Famine in Co. Cork. As a young woman, she left with her family for Boston and then the Wild West. A businesswoman, prospector, philanthropist, and literal trailblazer, Irish Nellie was a notable

The Franklin Expedition looms large in Canadian myths and legends, in large part because of what happened to the doomed crews of the HMS Erebus and Terror or what we think happened. But at the heart of this story of the Canadian north is an Irishman fro

We're back on March 2nd with The Irish in Canada Podcast, Season 2!

Our final episode this season recounts the tale of Mary Gallagher, Montreals Ghost of Griffintown, and the gory murder that has had her ghost searching for her lost head for the nearly 150 years. Well known to Irish Montrealers but not to many who liv

The Gender, Migration & Madness Project (www.gendermigrationandmadness.ca) is our focus this week: a multi-year investigation Jane has been leading that explores how the Irish were treated in Canadian colonial lunatic asylums in the mid-nineteenth cen

In another country, the dark legends about The Shiners might never have been forgotten. But in Canada? How many people today are aware that one of the most dangerous cities in North America used to beOttawa? Not many and yet, it was. The Shiners

Jane gets a bit carried away this week, but we can see why.  James FitzGibbon was one of the best known Irishmen in pre-Famine Canada as a hero of the War of 1812, the defender of Toronto, and a one-man riot-squad brought in to stop sectarian violence.  H

Ogle Gowan was an Orangeman, a politician, a journalist, a rabble-rouser, and the illegitimate son of one of Co. Wexford’s most notorious anti-Catholics.  His use of violence to achieve political ends in Upper Canada made him a hero to some, and a villain