St. Patrick’s Day, and All That

March 17 in North America is usually a silly day, silly in the nicest way. Anyone with a single drop of Irish blood, or even if the ship their spouse’s ancestors sailed to the new world had an Irish bosun, will dress in green, paste made-in-China shamrocks all over the office, and leave early to join drinkers of green beer at Cybulski’s Irish Pub. Silly. But lots of fun.

At least in Canada, St. Patrick’s Day also signals that winter is facing up to its mortality and summer revelries are just around the corner. Lots of good reasons to listen to fiddle music and practice a really bad brogue.

The Irish have contributed so much to Canada, notwithstanding their being considered very second class by the British ruling class. The Avalon Peninsula was settled largely by Irish whose native tongue persisted well into the nineteenth century. If not for Irish labourers, such public works as the Rideau Canal would not exist.

The distinctive accent of the Ottawa Valley shows off its Irish roots. “He bought de caows from up de loin and put ‘em in de bairn.” (“Up de loin” means up the line, being pretty well anywhere up or down a road, but particularly a north/south road.) Families of ten and fifteen, farming the rocky fields of the Valley, sent their kids to the one-room log schools, and then off to Toronto where they became leaders in Ontario’s legal and medical communities.

Canada’s parliaments and legislatures have always had a disproportionately high number of Irish names amongst members, Mulroney (father and daughter), O’Dea, Seamus O’Regan, and the list goes on and on. And not a shrinking violet among the lot.

Canada’s Irish have always had an interesting intersection with Canada’s French. Montreal saw its share of street brawls, but mostly the Irish were seen as co-religionists and happy to side against the cursed English overlords.

During the Great Migration which resulted from the potato famine, entire shiploads of orphans arrived on Grosse-Île, their parents having succumbed to cholera on the five-week passage. The nuns sent them to be raised by francophone Catholic families all over the province, as a result of which it’s estimated that a quarter of all Quebecois have significant Irish ancestry. Directories all over the province are full of names such as Jean-Pierre O’Neill. Patrick is a particularly common given name throughout French Canada.

So there you have it for the day we replace the red maple leaf with a shamrock, put green food colouring in our beer, and pretend to enjoy corned beef and cabbage. A Happy St. Patrick’s day to all!