There's new strife at Montreal's port as longshoremen have objected to management interpretation of their deal.
Management wants to hire from anybody who applies and the union wants to promote from within a list of people they propose, often friends and relatives.
This could be a benign suggestion from the union but it also leads to suspicion that they're trying to perpetuate an ancient custom of sneaking drugs and other contraband into the port, something which would become much more difficult with stranger newbs.
So I offer this excellent summary of how the Irish of Montreal gained control of the port, complete with extensive historical context, written exclusively for Coolopolis by esteemed shipping journalism veteran Christy McCormick, who was born and raised in the island jewel of the St. Lawrence before shipping off to Hong Kong where he runs a magazine.
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Montreal became an important station on a Irish arc from Quebec City to Baltimore. The big rush came in the 1840-50s, but there was a steady inflow well before that. Some came from the States after the Conquest (1759), then another rush after the American revolution, mostly but not
exclusively Protestant. The Protestant and Catholic Irish societies had cordial relations though, agreeing to work together on the St Patrick's Day parade in 1828 long before the 1849 famine.
A huge influence in these years was the British Army, whose regiments, rather like football teams, stayed in the city for three years before moving on in their various rings and from Montreal that meant back to the UK. There were two rings, the India Ring and the Africa Ring and they formed something akin to political parties in the army itself.
Montreal was part of the Africa Ring, which meant at a battalion of the Dublin Fusiliers, might first go to Malta for three years, then to Cape Town for three years, then Lagos for three years, then Kingston for three years and then Montreal for three years. Montreal was total party time, the booze was great the women were great, and desertions were massive.When Scots regiments were through, they invented curling, which while Scottish is a truly Canadian sport. And the many Irish regiments and their brass bands and pipes and drums had a huge market share of popular musical entertainment in the 19th and even much of the 20th century, and of course played their part in St Patrick's Day parades,
It was the 1830s cholera epidemic and later the famine with secured the Irish hold or cartage, as they were given carts to remove and and dispose of their dead. They had also built the Lachine Canal (1825), which assured them waterfront work. Their presence in great numbers the famine altered the social balance, as before it was typically assumed that Protestants were English and Catholic were French. Now we had English Catholics and the first peasantry from the Old Country who spoke the language of the ruling classes, which made them excellent policemen at a time when their countrymen were beginning to form the first organised criminal community that required policing. As they did in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore.
By the 1860s, the Irish in Montreal were able to elect MPs and then from what was then called the West End, now Little Bourgundy. St Catherine Street was still burbsville, the action was on Notre Dame, Roscoe's Hotel on St Paul's near the market. Of course the big issue back then was between D'Arcy McGee, then Minister of Agriculture, about which he knew nothing but it was nearly as important as the Department of Finance of which he knew less. And McGee was important because he had the Irish or most of them, though a guy called Devlin was trying to get them all fired up about the Fenians.
You will recall there was a little thing going on back then - the American Civil War (1861-65), and we being loyal royal Canadians and supported the South because having the Excited States of America divided in two made better sense than it being the monolith that even then we saw coming.
What's more the Irish in Canada were not so British and might easily side with their openly hostile fellow countrymen in the US and vote with the Liberals whose hostility to the crown dated back to the Rebellion of 1837 in Ontario, but that was a largely Protestant anti-Catholic affair so turned off the Montreal Irish. While the more substantial Quebec rebellion was executed by Catholics, the Church condemned it and it was largely a French show in which the Irish had little part.
So while the American Irish fit in comfortably with the general anti-British sentiment of the country, the Montreal Irish while being more trustworthy than the French as far as a very British Canada was concerned tended to be kept away from the guns on any serious level. So while the Black Watch in Montreal and the Calgary Highlanders and the Seaforth Highlanders in Vancouver were formed, the Irish had the pubs while the Scots had the regiments.
But armed progress was made at the municipal level, where the Irish formed a disproportionate number of police and tended to have control of the waterfront clerks partly because they had by the 1870s command of cartage, the means of getting freight to and from the waterfront, the way Italians have control or gardening today. The French did the heavy lifting, but the waterfront clerks, or checkers, tended to be Irish.
Of course back then the Port of Montreal was shut down in winter. So was much of the city as snow removal was in its infancy and only main arteries were passable even by sleigh. The street car didn't start till 1888, that then only ran along St Antoine, up Bleury to St Joseph then down the Main back to St Antoine, then called Craig Street.
But throughout the late 19th and much of the 20th century Montreal was a manufacturing centre, making everything from railway rolling stock to clothing for Canada and the world, keeping the waterfront and the railways busy with output. Only the rich bought imported consumer products back then while these days only the rich buy stuff made in North America, the rest of us buy the cheap imports.
Much of what we exported were bulk commodities, grain and lumber. and the world beyond French producers in Quebec and grain farmers and railways was English, which again played well into Irish hands as clerks and cops and truckers and soon in the actual running of the Montreal Harbour Commission, which was only displaced the the federal National Harbours Board under increasingly French direction in 1936, supposedly for reasons for national defence.
Like so many golden ages, the golden age for the Irish contained the seeds of its own destruction. Its political importance diminished as the need to placate it diminished as French resentment had to be placated instead. First by measures in the British North America Act, which gave them guaranteed number of seats in Ottawa, but clear control of their own province and its control of municipalities, whose democratic input was limited like Hong Kong's with the English getting most of the control on the basis that they paid most of the taxes.
So while the Irish numbers stayed much the same in the police, and on the waterfront into the 1920s, the means for displacing them were there, so they didn't replace each other the way they always did. The New York Waterfront Commission has just won a court case in which it managed to stop the Irish hiring each other in the Port or New York and New Jersey in favour of blacks and women and the gender displaced.
But only the resentment was building as the 19th century came to an end, and the Irish were doing well. In the Boer War (1899-1902), Canada's first overseas military engagement, the Royal Canadian Regiment, with its disproportionate Irish content, its E company being from Quebec and almost entirely anglophone, acquitted itself magnificently. It was said with some justice that the British were losing the war until we got there. The French sided with the Boers for the most part.
So with the German armies crashing through Belgium, and with the call to the Empire for troops the Montreal Irish were considered trustworthy enough to be allowed to raise their own regiment, the 199th Duchess of Connaught's Irish Canadian Rangers. This many thought would help the Irish scale the heights of Westmount and make the St Patrick's Ball with the Rangers' silver band as magnificent as the St Andrews Ball had always been with the help of the Black Watch Pipes and Drums. After all, the war was supposed to over by Christmas!
But this was not to be. And when the IRA's Easter Rising erupted in Dublin in 1916, and a series of hangings followed, the Irish Canadian Rangers refused to soldier for England, and there were shots fired when British took over the Canadian camp outside of London in Essex. But it was a surrender under terms. No one would make much fuss of the mutiny if the regiment agreed to be filmed on a march through Ireland to show how loyal the Irish were. The film was called The North and South Irish at the Front, ironic as they were not north or south Irish, nor were they at the front, but Canadians touring Ireland - most for them for the first time After the walkabout, the individual ranger companies were sent as drafts to other Montreal regiments, and except for its colours, which went to the Loyola Chapel, And that was the inglorious end of the Irish Canadian Rangers.
Of course, English controls were failing at City Hall with the election of Mayor Mederic Martin in 1914. It had been the custom to alternate between English and French mayors, but when it was the Englishman's turn in 1914, the Frenchman ran anyway. There was no rule against it - and Mederic Martin won. Which ended the polite fiction, which has become increasingly threadbare that the city's population was fairly represented in the quadrants of the city's flag, the cross of St George with the French, English, Scots and Irish equally represented. I think it is still only armorial bearing in Canada in which the Irish are represented.
Still the waterfront was secure. At age of 23, an ex-Irish checker who started on the docks when he was 14 became port manager. He put local financiers together, and we had a handsome collection in those days, to build the Jacques Cartier Bridge (nee Montreal Harbour Bridge). And if you pull over to the those towers in the middle of the bridge at the St Helen's Island exit, you will see the names of the men involved. The ones in large type forming a pyramid at the top and another in smaller type forming a junior pyramid below it. At the top of the second worker bee pyramid, you will find the name of MP Fennell, who told me in 1969 that "if any Irishman said he didn't have a job, it was only because he hadn't spoken to me yet".
Then he ran off to get the Chicago meat, which at the time was railed in from the south west on the hoof and railed out to Baltimore, frpom where it was shipped to UK north Continent and the Med. But the Irish who ran the the rail and stockyards in the "slaughterhouse of the nation" would put no meat through a port which flew the Union Jack, as we did in the 1920s.
But Fennel didn't give up or stand on his dignity as port manager, but rode the rails to Baltimore like a tramp in search for a fault he could exploit. And on the Baltimore docks, he found it, the meat, he said, carried from shore to ship on the "backs of sweating niggers". He hired a photographer and got pictures , forged a letter of credit and bought passage to Southampton where he retailed the story in London for the benefit of importers, with press statements for the continent. He told them of pristine snows of Canada, how Montreal had a cold storage shed. Not true at the time, but soon was, and it's still there - the big brown brick building with the vertical white stripes at the water's edge, east of Market Basin. To hear that Chicago would not ship through such a wonderful port simply because it flew the Union Jack was too much for British importers. So Chicago changed its mind and trade patterns changed too.
When the Twenties ceased to roar, and the Dirty Thirties descended like a London peasouper, the private sector had failed to deliver and government was supposed to save the day. Increasingly political appointing were made and they involved more French and while the business of the waterfront remained anglophone, the checkers union was merged in with the French main local and the Irish disappeared. As I suspect happened at other stations.
Management wants to hire from anybody who applies and the union wants to promote from within a list of people they propose, often friends and relatives.
This could be a benign suggestion from the union but it also leads to suspicion that they're trying to perpetuate an ancient custom of sneaking drugs and other contraband into the port, something which would become much more difficult with stranger newbs.
So I offer this excellent summary of how the Irish of Montreal gained control of the port, complete with extensive historical context, written exclusively for Coolopolis by esteemed shipping journalism veteran Christy McCormick, who was born and raised in the island jewel of the St. Lawrence before shipping off to Hong Kong where he runs a magazine.
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| McCormick in a recent photo, 2nd from left |
exclusively Protestant. The Protestant and Catholic Irish societies had cordial relations though, agreeing to work together on the St Patrick's Day parade in 1828 long before the 1849 famine.
A huge influence in these years was the British Army, whose regiments, rather like football teams, stayed in the city for three years before moving on in their various rings and from Montreal that meant back to the UK. There were two rings, the India Ring and the Africa Ring and they formed something akin to political parties in the army itself.
Montreal was part of the Africa Ring, which meant at a battalion of the Dublin Fusiliers, might first go to Malta for three years, then to Cape Town for three years, then Lagos for three years, then Kingston for three years and then Montreal for three years. Montreal was total party time, the booze was great the women were great, and desertions were massive.When Scots regiments were through, they invented curling, which while Scottish is a truly Canadian sport. And the many Irish regiments and their brass bands and pipes and drums had a huge market share of popular musical entertainment in the 19th and even much of the 20th century, and of course played their part in St Patrick's Day parades,
It was the 1830s cholera epidemic and later the famine with secured the Irish hold or cartage, as they were given carts to remove and and dispose of their dead. They had also built the Lachine Canal (1825), which assured them waterfront work. Their presence in great numbers the famine altered the social balance, as before it was typically assumed that Protestants were English and Catholic were French. Now we had English Catholics and the first peasantry from the Old Country who spoke the language of the ruling classes, which made them excellent policemen at a time when their countrymen were beginning to form the first organised criminal community that required policing. As they did in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore.
By the 1860s, the Irish in Montreal were able to elect MPs and then from what was then called the West End, now Little Bourgundy. St Catherine Street was still burbsville, the action was on Notre Dame, Roscoe's Hotel on St Paul's near the market. Of course the big issue back then was between D'Arcy McGee, then Minister of Agriculture, about which he knew nothing but it was nearly as important as the Department of Finance of which he knew less. And McGee was important because he had the Irish or most of them, though a guy called Devlin was trying to get them all fired up about the Fenians.
You will recall there was a little thing going on back then - the American Civil War (1861-65), and we being loyal royal Canadians and supported the South because having the Excited States of America divided in two made better sense than it being the monolith that even then we saw coming.
What's more the Irish in Canada were not so British and might easily side with their openly hostile fellow countrymen in the US and vote with the Liberals whose hostility to the crown dated back to the Rebellion of 1837 in Ontario, but that was a largely Protestant anti-Catholic affair so turned off the Montreal Irish. While the more substantial Quebec rebellion was executed by Catholics, the Church condemned it and it was largely a French show in which the Irish had little part.
So while the American Irish fit in comfortably with the general anti-British sentiment of the country, the Montreal Irish while being more trustworthy than the French as far as a very British Canada was concerned tended to be kept away from the guns on any serious level. So while the Black Watch in Montreal and the Calgary Highlanders and the Seaforth Highlanders in Vancouver were formed, the Irish had the pubs while the Scots had the regiments.
But armed progress was made at the municipal level, where the Irish formed a disproportionate number of police and tended to have control of the waterfront clerks partly because they had by the 1870s command of cartage, the means of getting freight to and from the waterfront, the way Italians have control or gardening today. The French did the heavy lifting, but the waterfront clerks, or checkers, tended to be Irish.
Of course back then the Port of Montreal was shut down in winter. So was much of the city as snow removal was in its infancy and only main arteries were passable even by sleigh. The street car didn't start till 1888, that then only ran along St Antoine, up Bleury to St Joseph then down the Main back to St Antoine, then called Craig Street.
But throughout the late 19th and much of the 20th century Montreal was a manufacturing centre, making everything from railway rolling stock to clothing for Canada and the world, keeping the waterfront and the railways busy with output. Only the rich bought imported consumer products back then while these days only the rich buy stuff made in North America, the rest of us buy the cheap imports.
Much of what we exported were bulk commodities, grain and lumber. and the world beyond French producers in Quebec and grain farmers and railways was English, which again played well into Irish hands as clerks and cops and truckers and soon in the actual running of the Montreal Harbour Commission, which was only displaced the the federal National Harbours Board under increasingly French direction in 1936, supposedly for reasons for national defence.
Like so many golden ages, the golden age for the Irish contained the seeds of its own destruction. Its political importance diminished as the need to placate it diminished as French resentment had to be placated instead. First by measures in the British North America Act, which gave them guaranteed number of seats in Ottawa, but clear control of their own province and its control of municipalities, whose democratic input was limited like Hong Kong's with the English getting most of the control on the basis that they paid most of the taxes.
So while the Irish numbers stayed much the same in the police, and on the waterfront into the 1920s, the means for displacing them were there, so they didn't replace each other the way they always did. The New York Waterfront Commission has just won a court case in which it managed to stop the Irish hiring each other in the Port or New York and New Jersey in favour of blacks and women and the gender displaced.
But only the resentment was building as the 19th century came to an end, and the Irish were doing well. In the Boer War (1899-1902), Canada's first overseas military engagement, the Royal Canadian Regiment, with its disproportionate Irish content, its E company being from Quebec and almost entirely anglophone, acquitted itself magnificently. It was said with some justice that the British were losing the war until we got there. The French sided with the Boers for the most part.
So with the German armies crashing through Belgium, and with the call to the Empire for troops the Montreal Irish were considered trustworthy enough to be allowed to raise their own regiment, the 199th Duchess of Connaught's Irish Canadian Rangers. This many thought would help the Irish scale the heights of Westmount and make the St Patrick's Ball with the Rangers' silver band as magnificent as the St Andrews Ball had always been with the help of the Black Watch Pipes and Drums. After all, the war was supposed to over by Christmas!
But this was not to be. And when the IRA's Easter Rising erupted in Dublin in 1916, and a series of hangings followed, the Irish Canadian Rangers refused to soldier for England, and there were shots fired when British took over the Canadian camp outside of London in Essex. But it was a surrender under terms. No one would make much fuss of the mutiny if the regiment agreed to be filmed on a march through Ireland to show how loyal the Irish were. The film was called The North and South Irish at the Front, ironic as they were not north or south Irish, nor were they at the front, but Canadians touring Ireland - most for them for the first time After the walkabout, the individual ranger companies were sent as drafts to other Montreal regiments, and except for its colours, which went to the Loyola Chapel, And that was the inglorious end of the Irish Canadian Rangers.
Of course, English controls were failing at City Hall with the election of Mayor Mederic Martin in 1914. It had been the custom to alternate between English and French mayors, but when it was the Englishman's turn in 1914, the Frenchman ran anyway. There was no rule against it - and Mederic Martin won. Which ended the polite fiction, which has become increasingly threadbare that the city's population was fairly represented in the quadrants of the city's flag, the cross of St George with the French, English, Scots and Irish equally represented. I think it is still only armorial bearing in Canada in which the Irish are represented.
Still the waterfront was secure. At age of 23, an ex-Irish checker who started on the docks when he was 14 became port manager. He put local financiers together, and we had a handsome collection in those days, to build the Jacques Cartier Bridge (nee Montreal Harbour Bridge). And if you pull over to the those towers in the middle of the bridge at the St Helen's Island exit, you will see the names of the men involved. The ones in large type forming a pyramid at the top and another in smaller type forming a junior pyramid below it. At the top of the second worker bee pyramid, you will find the name of MP Fennell, who told me in 1969 that "if any Irishman said he didn't have a job, it was only because he hadn't spoken to me yet".
Then he ran off to get the Chicago meat, which at the time was railed in from the south west on the hoof and railed out to Baltimore, frpom where it was shipped to UK north Continent and the Med. But the Irish who ran the the rail and stockyards in the "slaughterhouse of the nation" would put no meat through a port which flew the Union Jack, as we did in the 1920s.
But Fennel didn't give up or stand on his dignity as port manager, but rode the rails to Baltimore like a tramp in search for a fault he could exploit. And on the Baltimore docks, he found it, the meat, he said, carried from shore to ship on the "backs of sweating niggers". He hired a photographer and got pictures , forged a letter of credit and bought passage to Southampton where he retailed the story in London for the benefit of importers, with press statements for the continent. He told them of pristine snows of Canada, how Montreal had a cold storage shed. Not true at the time, but soon was, and it's still there - the big brown brick building with the vertical white stripes at the water's edge, east of Market Basin. To hear that Chicago would not ship through such a wonderful port simply because it flew the Union Jack was too much for British importers. So Chicago changed its mind and trade patterns changed too.
When the Twenties ceased to roar, and the Dirty Thirties descended like a London peasouper, the private sector had failed to deliver and government was supposed to save the day. Increasingly political appointing were made and they involved more French and while the business of the waterfront remained anglophone, the checkers union was merged in with the French main local and the Irish disappeared. As I suspect happened at other stations.