Episode 2 Brave New World

'A land of spectacular contrasts.

'Vast prairies, a dense forest bounded by three oceans.

'Canada is the second largest country in the world.

'You could fit the whole of Northern Ireland

'inside one of its national parks.

'Yet people from Ulster have had a remarkable

'influence on the history and geography of this vast nation,

'spanning two centuries and across 5,000 miles.

'Today, 4.5 million Canadians can trace their roots back to Ireland.

'But there was a time when the Irish made up

'a quarter of the population here.

'And the majority came from the nine counties of Ulster.

'English-speaking Canada had a noticeable Ulster accent.'

This is the story of people from Ulster who,

from the 18th century to the present day,

have made this country their home.

Of how they came here in such large numbers that they didn't merely

adapt to the Canadian way of life, they helped to shape its culture,

its society, its politics and its economy.

Emigration from Ulster to Canada began as a trickle in the 1700s,

but by the 1830s, the floodgates had opened

and a steady stream of migrants were pushing westwards

to the newly-opened-up territories

of Upper Canada, today's Ontario province.

Some of those Ulster settlers came here,

to Amherst Island on Lake Ontario.

It's a very beautiful, very peaceful place

with just about 400 residents living here all year round.

These dry-stone walls that you find on the island

are very unusual in Canada and very reminiscent of home.

That's because they were built by farmers from the Ards Peninsula.

Just two miles from the mainland

and 10 miles across the water from New York state,

Amherst Island was once home to First Nations groups,

then to Americans fleeing the War of Independence,

and was, for many years, owned by a series of Irish landlords.

But it's the story of the people from County Down who came here

in the 19th century, who cleared the trees and ploughed up the fields

and made this place their home that I really want to find out about.

The last dairy farmers on the island, Bruce Caughey and his daughters,

are the descendants of one of those immigrant families

who came here from Ballymullen, near Kircubbin, in 1848.

Bruce, why don't you tell me a little bit about how much you know

about your ancestors and when they started arriving on this island.

Amherst Island was on the main street of Canada in 1850,

because a lot of travel was by the water.

But I understand that three brothers left Ireland together.

And they left Ireland in 1850

and I think it was during the potato famine,

what we call the potato famine here,

and I think they needed to seek employment.

They came here as labourers, basically, farm labourers.

And they worked on farms in the community.

We visited the place, the house that the Caughey family left from.

And that was in Kircubbin.

It was a stone house and there were animals in it at that point.

But I really felt a sense of, "I've been here before."

And, er... For whatever reason, but I really did.

You've been to the Ards Peninsula, as well. Did it look like home?

I felt it did, yeah.

I remember driving down the road and you kind of get this feeling,

"This feels like I'm on the Third Concession",

and then it would go away.

You'd kind of have these glimpses of Amherst Island

when we were driving around.

And certainly, the stone walls

and the pillars around the gates of the church.

And the church is here.

-I mean, the little Presbyterian church.

-Mm-hm.

-Barn-style, traditional Irish-looking Presbyterian church.

-Yeah.

The church kind of gives people the sense of community

and that's something that I think I, for myself and for my family,

take from my ancestors.

Do you think it's part of your story?

For sure, yeah. And part of our children's story, too, right?

I think it's important not to miss a generation on that stuff

because...you know, you can lose it if you don't teach the kids.

Yeah.

I think the people from the Ards made this island, you know,

maybe to look and be a bit like home.

Just everything they did.

They developed the farms as they knew how,

which was from their roots.

How many generations of your family have lived on the island?

I would be the sixth generation.

And my children will be the seventh generation.

But we're actually the fifth...

I'm the fifth generation to live in this same house on the island,

on the Third Concession.

I think that strength is something we can draw on, as well.

We think, you know, we have hard times,

but when we think of what our ancestors went through

to create something like this and a farm and a place that they can...

That lasted for over a century, it's quite something.

In fact, the Caugheys' ancestors were among 105 families

who emigrated from just one parish in the Ards Peninsula

between 1820 and 1860.

To make sense of why they came here, you've got to understand what they

were leaving behind and what they were hoping for in the new world.

By the 1820s, the Ards Peninsula had become overcrowded.

A European-wide economic depression

hit small tenant farmers hard.

Their incomes slumped, yet there was little opportunity to expand.

Canada offered them a chance to improve their prospects

and secure their children's future.

What makes this story so unusual is just how many of the emigrants

came from the same tiny townland.

Half the families who left St Andrew's Parish,

including the Caugheys, came from a crossroads called Ballymullen.

After they'd gone, Ballymullen disappeared from the map.

'Like so many of those early migrants,

'the families who moved to Amherst

'came from a farming background and settled in rural parts of Canada.

'Those who came after them

'were more likely to gravitate to developing cities, like Toronto.'

Toronto is the third-largest city in North America.

It's one of the most culturally-diverse cities in the entire world.

Nearly 50% of its residents were born outside Canada.

It was already fast becoming one of the main destinations

for new immigrants 150 years ago, but back then,

the Irish were the single biggest ethnic group.

In some districts, more than 50% of the population was Irish.

And the majority of them were from Ulster.

'In fact, Toronto was once known as the Belfast of Canada.

'To find out, why I've come to meet Dr William Jenkins

'at the home of an Irish institution

'that made a deep impression on Canadian society.'

Well, the earliest reference that I've found to this name,

this label, the Belfast of Canada, comes from 1861.

And one of the reasons for that, of course,

is that the sheer numbers and presence of Orange lodges,

or even, sort of, the Ulster legacy imprinted upon the landscape

with things like the names of taverns, for instance.

Taverns with names like The Tyrone Inn,

The Coleraine Tavern,

The North of Ireland Tavern and, of course, The William III Tavern.

So people could see imprinted on ordinary buildings

the fact that there were people from the North of Ireland here

and that their institutions were also here.

If you look around in public life,

if you look at who's speaking at political rallies,

you'll hear Ulster accents.

The churches on any given weekend,

a lot of the time, you'll hear an accent that is recognisably Ulster.

The Orange Order arrived

with Irish Protestant immigrants in the 1800s.

And as their numbers grew,

so did the spread of Orangeism right across Canada.

And lodges served a variety of functions,

operating as mutual-benefit societies,

social clubs and job-finding agencies.

What we know about the Orange Lodge in Toronto, for instance

in the second half of the 19th century is that

you're talking about a group of people who were largely,

but not exclusively working class.

So for those sorts of people, in which their mission to find a job,

for instance, especially for their sons and daughters, was paramount,

the Orange lodges might actually offer them

some sort of in in terms of, um...

helping them to become acquainted with the local labour market,

where jobs were likely to be found.

What was the high point of the Orange tradition's influence in Canada?

The heyday was the late 19th century and the early 20th century.

In other words, the 20 years before World War I.

That's when lodge growth is especially pronounced.

So in Toronto in 1886, for example,

there are 34 lodges in the city.

By 1914, there are 72.

So you had lodges with names like

Ulster Black Watch, Belfast Purple Star,

Magherafelt,

and my all-time favourite, Sandy Row Volunteers.

And these lodges were incredibly influential in Toronto.

Comparable to Catholic Irish power in New York and Chicago,

the Orange Order virtually ran municipal government in Toronto.

In fact, almost every mayor from 1860 to 1950 was an Orangeman.

And the way in which that influence came out most effectively,

I think, was on 12th July.

Not simply because of the sheer size of the parade

or that it could be two miles in length

and it would occupy the principal streets of the city,

but also because of the fact that who was in it.

The mayor was at the head of the parade, you had employees

and the water works, the fire brigade, the police force.

And the 12th July wasn't an official public holiday,

but because so many of the employees in these essential services

were Orangemen, they simply took the day off.

The Orange Order had expanded beyond its Irish roots

to become a Canadian institution.

And the reason it was so successful

was that its ideals reflected what Canadian society

of the 19th and early 20th century wanted to be.

They were basically helping British North America

to become and remain British.

On the ground, they were basically supporting this idea of a loyal,

um...English-speaking,

Protestant, white, Anglo-Saxon vision of Canada.

By the end of World War II,

membership of the Orange Order was in decline.

It was becoming less and less relevant to a Canadian society

that was increasingly diverse.

And nowhere is that change more evident than here.

This is Fatih Mosque in eastern Toronto.

Originally the home of Dian Orange Lodge.

Named in honour of the very first lodge in Ireland.

The Orange Order may not be the social network it once was,

but immigrants from Ulster have always found

other ways to stay in touch and carry on traditions from home.

BAND PLAYS

This is the Ulster Accordion Band of Toronto.

-What's your name?

-Eileen Scott.

-How long have you been here, Eileen?

-Since '58.

You're disguising that very well.

I love saying I'm from Ireland. You never lose that.

Well, you haven't lost your accent, that's for sure.

Er...I have a wee bit,

but when I'm with a bunch of Irish people, it comes out.

-It comes out again?

-I don't want to lose it.

-Are you all from Northern Ireland?

-Yep.

-Yep.

-Where are you from?

-Portadown.

-You're from Portadown, are you?

-I'm from Portadown.

Portadown, yeah.

The band is a social club.

It was formed initially in 1954.

And it was a couple of guys from Northern Ireland

that wanted to keep the tradition of accordion music going.

We were the first button-keyed accordion band in...

marching band in North America.

And to this day, I believe we are the only button-keyed

accordion band in North America.

There have been a few in between that have come and gone,

but we are still surviving.

I was in the band when I was about 12, I guess,

for about five or six years, then I quit.

And I came back when I was 58.

We have a lot of fun.

We play a lot of senior homes, a lot of hospitals

and a lot of parades, stuff like that.

Amazing. I didn't even know you could play a typewriter.

THEY LAUGH

That's not bad. That's not bad.

We've heard a lot. That's not bad.

I joined it in '57.

And I've been with it ever since.

My future wife came alone the year before I did.

And we happened to...

I happened to hear about this accordion band

that had a dance on a Saturday night.

And she was at that same dance.

So then when we finally got together,

it's been carried on since then.

She's originally from Dungannon.

You travelled a long way to meet a woman from Dungannon, didn't you?

Absolutely. Absolutely!

-Where are you from originally, Bobby?

-The Shankill Road.

July 29th, we arrived here.

Ruby had her fur coat, I had my three-piece suit.

We got picked up in a big convertible car

with leather upholstery and we're driving along.

It was like Hollywood.

Honest to God, it was like Hollywood.

And then we got to this apartment building

and we were in a basement apartment.

And Ruby says to me, "What have we done"?

But, you know what? It worked out good.

The first couple of times I went home,

every time I went into a bar, "There's Bobby!

"You're banned, Bobby! You're banned, Bobby."

APPLAUSE

But it's still home. It doesn't matter...

You don't think of this as your home?

If anybody says to me, "What are you?"

I say, "I'm an Irishman. I'm from Belfast."

BAND PLAY

We've been called all sorts of things.

We've been called the Ulcer Accordion Band,

we've been called the Lister Accordion Band in the United States,

but they usually know by the time we leave.

One Canadian institution with Irish roots whose name is as familiar

to Canadians as Marks & Spencer or Tesco is to us is Eaton's.

Once the largest department store chain in Canada,

it had 125 shops,

stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Almost every household in the country received its catalogue.

And it sold everything from hosiery to pre-fabricated houses.

And the man who created this business empire began his working life

as a grocer's assistant in Portglenone.

Born in 1834, Timothy Eaton was the youngest of nine children.

His father, a prosperous tenant farmer,

died two months before he was born.

At the age of 13, he began an apprenticeship

in a shop in Portglenone.

The hours were long and legend has it

he had to sleep under the counter.

So when his mother died in 1854, Timothy left the shop

to join three of his sisters and two brothers in Canada.

To find out how Timothy Eaton went from

an unpromising career in County Antrim

to become one of the best-known and richest men in Canada,

I've come to meet his great grandson, John Craig Eaton II.

He first of all had a small store in St Mary's in Ontario.

He wanted to get to the big market, which was Toronto.

So he upped stakes and moved to Toronto.

But in 1869, he bought William Jennings'

dry goods business in December,

and he never looked back.

With the opening of his first store in Toronto,

Timothy Eaton set about changing the way Canadians shopped.

There was a lot of bartering

and bargaining on how much a person should pay for their goods.

And he decided that he would price his goods.

In other words, you'd come in the store, the price was on the goods

and you paid cash money and that was it, period.

This was, at the time, a revolutionary idea.

And one that appealed to female shoppers in particular.

He had his famous guarantee,

"Goods Satisfactory or Money Refunded",

put in so that if a woman who came down to buy

knew that he would stand behind his goods

and if she wasn't content or happy,

then she would get her money back.

Another really interesting aspect of this story

-is how Timothy Eaton involved women in the business.

-Yes.

Well, he realised that women were much more comfortable

dealing with other women.

So he hired some, er...women

to, er...be his sales personnel.

And that was an interesting and new thing to do.

And where Timothy Eaton led, his competitors followed.

Even in his decision to cut the store opening hours.

Well, I think they thought he was a little bit mad,

er...or strange.

However, when his formula for business started to work out,

they quickly decided that,

"he's on to something and we'd better get on the bandwagon,

"or we're going to be left behind,"

because his business did multiply

and grow very, very quickly.

Eaton's catalogue was Timothy's son's idea.

Immigrant farmers were pouring into

the newly-opened provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta,

yet their nearest store could be hundreds of miles away.

Through Eaton's mail order catalogue, they could have farm implements,

household goods, clothes and toys delivered to their door.

A lot of people in the west who grew up with the catalogue

saw a world that they thought would never exist anywhere else.

And at that point, and well before that, actually,

Eaton's is a household name.

Yes. Yes, it was.

And it survived the Great Depression,

it survived two world wars

and, er...it was a great store.

And we were one of the biggest employers in Canada

for quite a while.

The only bigger ones were, of course, the government

and the railroads.

But we employed part-time and fulltime, 65,000 at our peak.

In September 1906, The Globe newspaper wrote,

"There is hardly a name in Canada,

"with the possible exception of the Prime Minister,

"so well known to the people at large

"as that of Mr Timothy Eaton".

Yet, after generations of being the number one department store

in Canada, Eaton's closed its doors in 1999,

and one of the few reminders of their incredible success story

is found here at the Royal Ontario Museum.

This statue of Timothy Eaton

originally stood in his Toronto department store.

It became a handy meeting point for customers.

In his poem Meeting Mom at Eaton's,

the Canadian poet George Morrissette describes how

"Timothy in bronze was sternly watching me wait for my mother."

And it became a tradition amongst customers to rub the toe of his foot,

perhaps in the hope that some of his success would rub off on them.

Eaton's never forgot their Irish connections

and many Ulster immigrants got their first job at one of their stores.

But even without Eaton's or the social and political network

offered by institutions like the Orange Order,

people from Northern Ireland are still making their mark in Canada.

Elizabeth Dowdeswell is the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario,

the Queen's representative in this province.

It's a role steeped in history and tradition and one that often

brings her into contact with new immigrants to Canada.

..for entrusting me with the responsibility of serving

as the 29th Lieutenant Governor of Ontario.

'In this position,

'as I have been interviewing people who've won

'the Order of Ontario awards, for example,'

I'm finding a lot of the immigrant story.

People who grew up wanting to find a better life

for themselves in some way,

strongly influenced by education

and then making their fortune in this new country that seemed to be

so open to everyone, a land of opportunity, in many ways.

Thank you, merci.

In fact, Elizabeth is part of the immigrant story herself.

She came to Canada at the age of four from Northern Ireland.

My parents came from Larne and from very close to Ballymena,

from Cullybackey.

I think my father and a couple of his buddies decided there

didn't look to be a promising future for him in Ireland

and so they left for Canada.

And my mother, a couple of months later, flew over,

her first time on a plane,

with the two children, myself and my brother, at that time.

But it was my uncle who said to me at one point,

"Do you have any idea how courageous your mother was?"

And that was a word that had never been used to tell our story.

And I said, "What do you mean?"

And he said, "She had two small children, she was by herself,

"she left the country for the first time ever,

"she took an aeroplane for the first time ever,

"going to a country that she knew nothing about."

He said, "And I know,

"because I'm the one who drove her to the airport."

They were very close.

But it was a description of her that I had never heard

and so that combination of courage and risk-taking, I think,

was very important.

How do you think those risk-taking personal attributes affected you

and your career here in Canada?

I'm not sure whether it was...

..Irish characteristics or simply the characteristics of my parents,

but it was clear that education was highly prized.

There was never any thought about not going on to further education.

And creating the best possible sense of confidence that you really

could do anything you wanted to do.

And, in fact, in many ways,

I think my parents, actually,

they certainly thought about their family back home.

But they were really all about the future.

Once they came to Canada, they were a part of Canada.

I remember my father saying once, when he was asked the question

whether he'd had any regrets,

and he said, "Never a regret at all."

He said that...

Canada gave him so many opportunities

and he hoped that he had brought the best of Ireland to Canada.

Men and women from Ulster have come to Canada with one aim,

to provide a better, more secure,

more prosperous life for themselves and their families.

And in doing so, they have contributed to the wealth of this

great nation and to the social and political institutions it holds dear.