The maritime Provinces had been under British rule before the fall of Quebec and contained a large element of Irish population.  In Newfoundland in 1753 out of a total population of some thirteen thousand, Davin says that there were nearly five thousand Catholics, chiefly Irish.  In 1784 a great new stimulus to Irish immigration to Newfoundland was given by Father O’Connell, who in 1796 was made Catholic bishop of the island.  Newfoundland, for its verdure, the absence of reptiles, and its Irish inhabitants, was called at this time “Transatlantic Ireland”, and Bonnycastle says that more than one half of the population was Irish.

In 1749 Governor Cornwallis brought some 4,000 disbanded soldiers to Nova Scotia and founded Halifax.  Ten years later it was described as divided into Halifax proper, Irishtown or the southern, and Dutchtown or the northern, suburbs.  The inhabitants numbered 3,000, one-third of whom were Irish.  They were among the most prominent men of the city and province.  In the Privy Council for 1789 were Thomas Corcoran and Charles Morris.  Morris was president of the Irish Society and Matthew Cahill the sheriff of Halifax in that year.  A large number of Irish from the north of Ireland settled in Nova Scotia in 1763, calling their settlement Londonderry.  They provided a fortunate refuge for the large numbers of Irish Presbyterians who were expelled from New England by the intolerant Puritans the following year.  They also welcomed many loyalists who came from New York and the New England States after the acknowledgment of the independence of the American Colonies by Great Britain.  Between the more eastern settlers around Halifax and those in the interior, the greater part of the population of Nova Scotia was probably Irish in origin.

It was in the Maritime Provinces that the first step in political emancipation for Catholics under British rule was made.  In 1821 Lawrence Cavanaugh, a Roman Catholic, was returned to the Assembly of the Province for Cape Breton.  He would not subscribe to the declaration on Transubstantiation in the oath of office tendered him, and as a consequence was refused admittance to the Assembly.  But he was elected again and again, and six years afterwards Judge Haliburton, better known by his nom de plume of “Sam Slick”, in an able speech, seconded the motion to dispense with the declaration, and Cavanaugh was permitted to take the oath without the declaration.

The War of 1812 brought over from Ireland a number of Irish soldiers serving in the British army, many of whom after the war settled down and became inhabitants of the country.  They were allotted farm lands and added much to Canada’s prosperity.  A type of their descendants was Sir William Hingston, whose father was at this time a lieutenant adjutant in the Royal 100th Regiment, “the Dublins.”  Sir William’s father died when his son was a mere boy, but the lad supported his mother, worked his way through the medical school, saved enough money to give himself two years in Europe, and became a great surgeon.  He was elected three times mayor of Montreal, serving one term with great prestige under the most trying circumstances.  He afterwards became a senator of the Dominion and was knighted by Queen Victoria.