Wednesday Talk: March 26, 2025, at 2pm. It is in-person and on Zoom

Speaker: Mark G. McGowan, St. Michael’s College, U of T

 Topic: “’Kindred Spirits’ in the North: Indigenous Peoples in British North American and their Donations to the Irish Famine Relief”

Abstract: The Irish Famine (1846-1852) was one of the most traumatic events in modern Irish history. With the repeated failure of the potato crop, upon which two-thirds of Ireland’s 8 million people depended, the social and economic fabric of Irish life was torn to pieces. By the early 1850s, one million people had perished from hunger or disease and another 1.5 million simply left Ireland. One of the heralded episodes of the Famine was the donation of $170  or about $6,300 USD in today’s currency, from the Choctaw Nation in the USA to Irish relief.  What has gone virtually unheralded in Canadian history is similar gifts made by the Canada’s Indigenous peoples. In 1847, the traditional Haudenosaune territory of Tiohtiake, then Montreal, was the scene of tremendous suffering and death. The Mohawk Nation of Kahnawake, south of the city on the St. Lawrence River, immediately responded to the Irish, bringing food from their lands to the fever sheds and took up a collection for Irish relief in Montreal, raising about $150, or just shy of $5,000 in today’s Canadian dollars.

Other Indigenous peoples, sometimes prompted by colonial authorities, made similar, if not greater donations. On St. Patrick’s Day, 1847, Thomas Gummersall Anderson, the Chief Superintendent of the “Indian Department” in Canada West issued an invitation to the Indigenous nations within his jurisdiction to donate to the Fund. At least 16 bands answered the call and requested that donations be deducted from their government annuities, added to the Fund, and then sent to “our suffering fellow subjects and Christian brethren in Ireland and Scotland.” Although each Indigenous band confessed that they themselves were in poverty, they still subscribed donations by deducting money from their annuities for the Relief Fund. By the middle of May, the Mohawks, Haudenosaunee of the Six Nations of Grand River, Chippewa (Ojibwa), Delaware, Wyandotte, and Mississauga peoples had donated £115 to the Fund. By early June with further donations from the Saugeen, Ojibwa of Lake Huron, and Moravian Ojibwa, the total Indigenous gift to the Relief Fund was £172, or over $19,000 in today’s Canadian currency. The surviving documents of these gifts, however, reveal a deeper meaning behind the Indigenous donations—and this is the subject of this lecture.

Bio: Mark G. McGowan, FRSC, is a Professor of History and Celtic Studies at the University of Toronto, and former Deputy Chair of the History Department. He is currently the Co-ordinator of the Celtic Studies Program. He specializes in Canadian, Irish, religious, education, and immigration history. In 2009, his fifth book Death or Canada was the basis for a joint award-winning Canada-Ireland docudrama on the Famine, aired in Canada, Ireland, the USA and Britain. His books on Ireland, Canada, immigration, and religion–including The Waning of the Green: Catholics, the Irish, and Identity in Toronto, 1887-1922 and Michael Power: The Struggle to Build the Church on the Canadian Frontier— have won numerous prestigious awards.  His fourth book, The Imperial Irish: Canada’s Irish Catholics Fight the Great War, 1914-1918, was published in May 2017. Within the Catholic educational circles, he is known for his booklet and film, The Enduring Gift: The History of Catholic Education in Ontario and his book, It’s Our Turn: Carrying on the Work of the Pioneers of Catholic Education in Ontario (2019). In 2023, Cork University Pressed released his Hunger and Hope: The Irish Famine Migration from Strokestown, Roscommon, in 1847 (co-edited with Christine Kinealy and Jason King). In September, 2024, his Finding Molly Johnson: Irish Famine Orphans in Canada, 1847-1848 was published by McGill-Queen’s University Press.

His current research priority is an exploration of the Indigenous Peoples Gift to Irish Famine Relief in 1847, and with the Historical Houses Project, based at the University of Birmingham (UK), and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities agency of the UK, he is pursuing a study of Governor General Lord Dufferin, and the passage of the Indian Act (Canada, 1876). In partnership with the former Irish ambassador to Canada, Dr. Eamonn McKee, he is an editor and contributor to a forthcoming book Fifty Irish Lives in Canada.

The link to register is https://forms.office.com/r/5X6VkSRhHB

The deadline to register is the Monday before the event at noon.  The Zoom link will be sent to registrants only.