1867-1914: Background / Fitful Growth / Changing Conditions / First Wave / Laurier Boom

Background

The British migrants who made up the vast majority of nineteenth-century immigration, however, required little encouragement. Many were artisans-Benson himself was a trained cloth spinner-displaced from their rural homes. Land owners who were consolidating their properties no longer needed large rural populations. In industrial areas, like Birmingham, Manchester, and London, the new working classes, underpaid and living in urban poverty, faced squalid living conditions. Overall, Benson's generation was part of a population boom in the British Isles that had left young people with fewer economic opportunities. When social and

economic circumstances worsened, still less persuasion was needed to encourage emigration. Poor economic prospects, growing unemployment, and, finally, the devastating effects of the Irish Potato Famine of 1846-1847 prompted an enormous Irish exodus. So large was the Irish immigration to Upper Canada that by the time of the 1871 census, four years after Confederation, a full two thirds of the province's population was of Irish descent.

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