n half rations, part
of the time living on nothing but oatmeal and water. Ship fever, the
dreaded typhus, broke out on her vessel as on so many others, and
more than half the passengers perished. Many, many thousands of the
Irish emigrants thus died on ship-board or shortly after landing. In
1912, the Ancient Order of Hibernians erected near Quebec a monument
to the victims. In spite of the untoward conditions, emigration
continued unabated, and in 1875, in the population of Ontario,
Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, it was calculated that the
Irish numbered 846,414 as compared with 706,369 English and 549,946
Scotch (Hatton, quoted by Davin in _The Irishman In Canada_).

It had become clear that Canada would prosper more if united than in
separate provinces jealous of each other. The first move in this
direction came from the Maritime Provinces, where the Irish element
was so much stronger than elsewhere, and when a conference of the
leading statesmen of these Provinces was appointed to be held at
Charlottetown, P.E.I., September 1864, representatives of Upper and
Lower Canada asked to be allowed to be present to bring forward a
plan for a Federation of all the British Provinces in North America.
The British North America Act was passed, and received the royal
assent, the queen appointing July 1, 1867 as the formal beginning of
the Dominion of Canada.

Among the men who were most prominent in bringing about federation
and who came to be known as the Fathers of Confederation were several
distinguished Irishmen. Thomas D'Arcy McGee was the best known and
probably did more than any other Canadian to make the idea of
confederation popular by his writings and speeches. He had come to
Canada as a stranger, edited a newspaper in Montreal, and was elected
to the Assembly after a brief residence, in spite of the opposition
cries of "Irish adventurer" and "stranger from abroad," was
subsequently elected four times by acclamation, and was Minister of
Agriculture and Education and Canadian Commissioner to the Paris
Exposition of 1867. His letters to the Earl of Mayo, pleading for the
betterment of conditions in Ireland, were quoted by Gladstone during
the Home Rule movement as "a prophetic voice from the dead coming
from beyond the Atlantic."

Another of the Fathers of Confederation was the Honorable Edward
Whalen, born in the county Mayo, who as a young man went to Prince
Edward Island, where he gained great influence a