Finding Molly Johnson : Irish Famine Orphans in Canada

McGowan, Mark G.

ISBN 10: 0228022991 / ISBN 13: 9780228022992

Published by McGill-Queen's University Press, 2024

Unread book in perfect condition. Seller Inventory # 48088638

Synopsis:

Ireland’s Great Famine produced Europe’s worst refugee crisis of the nineteenth century. More than 1.5 million people left Ireland, many ending up in Canada. Among the most vulnerable were nearly 1,700 orphaned children who now found themselves destitute in an unfamiliar place. The story Canada likes to tell is that these orphans were adopted by benevolent families and that they readily adapted to their new lives, but this happy ending is mostly a myth. In Finding Molly Johnson Mark McGowan traces what happened to these children. In the absence of state support, the Catholic and Protestant churches worked together to become the orphans’ principal caregivers. The children were gathered, fed, schooled, and placed in family homes in Saint John, Quebec, Montreal, Bytown, Kingston, and Toronto. Yet most were not considered members of their placement families, but rather sources of cheap labour. Many fled their placements, joining thousands of other Irish refugees on the Canadian frontier searching for work, extended family, and the opportunity to begin a new life. Finding Molly Johnson revisits an important chapter of the Irish emigrant experience, revealing that the story of Canada’s acceptance of the famine orphans is a product of national myth-making that obscures both the hardship the children endured and the agency they ultimately expressed.

About the Author: Mark G. McGowan is professor of history at the University of Toronto and principal emeritus of St Michael’s College. His is the author of several books including The Imperial Irish: Canada’s Irish Catholics Fight the Great War, 1914–1918.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Finding Molly Johnson : Irish Famine Orphans...
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Publication Date: 2024
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: As New