42 Pat McCann

In memory of the many of those of Irish birth or descent who helped build the railways and canals of Canada from St. Johns Newfoundland to Victoria B.C. the communittee have selected the fictional name of Pat McCann in their honour so that their work and contribution to transport in Canada will always be remembered.

Between 1815 and 1867 well over a million immigrants from Great Britain entered the seven colonies of British North America: Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Lower Canada (Quebec), and Upper Canada (Ontario). This large-scale movement reinforced the Anglo-Protestant character of most of the colonies. Lower Canada was, of course, the major exception; there, French-speaking Catholics represented approximately 70 percent of the population in this period. The Catholic character of the province was reinforced by the arrival of thousands of Irish immigrants, most of whom gravitated towards the rapidly expanding city of Montreal, which by 1851 had a population of about 58,000. Their integration into this new environment was not always harmonious, however.Throughout the nineteenth century Irish immigrants often vigorously competed with French Canadians for jobs, for neighbourhoods, and even for control over Catholic parishes in the city. The Irish were also an important element in the unskilled labour force of Upper Canada and New Brunswick, especially in the lumber camps and as canal and railway navvies. By the 1850s they formed a core group within the urban working class in Toronto and Saint John, New Brunswick. Competition between the Irish and other groups of immigrants from the British Isles was also evident in Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia.

The Irish Navvy

Chorus: So drill, ye tarriers, drill
Drill, ye tarriers, drill
For it’s work all day for the sugar in your tay
When you work upon the CP railway
So drill, ye tarriers, drill.

Now the boss sent us to drill a hole
He cursed and damned our Irish soul
He cursed the ship that brought us through
To work on the CP railway crew

Now the foreman’s name was Pat McGann
My son, he was a darn fine man
Last week a premature blast went off
And a mile in the sky went Big Jim Gough.

Now the boys quit work to tell his wife
About how Jim had lost his life
Says she, “We’ll take him into town”
Says they, “Well he ain’t yet come down.”

But the very next day we heard a cry
And saw Big Jim coming down from the sky
He lit on the top of a big rock dump
And he said, “My Lord, that’s a hell of a bump.”

Next week when payday rolled around
Big Jim a dollar short was found
When asked what for, came this reply
“You was docked for the time you was up in the sky.”

Will Grant, our cook, was a Bluenose man
At making up hash, you bet he can
His bean’s so fine they’d make a stew
To fatten the ribs of the Frank Brothers crew.