Emigrant Worlds and Transatlantic Communities: Migration to Upper Canada in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (review)

Reviewed by: Emigrant Worlds and Transatlantic Communities: Migration to Upper Canada in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century Robynne Rogers Healey (bio) Elizabeth Jane Errington. Emigrant Worlds and Transatlantic Communities: Migration to Upper Canada in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century. McGill-Queen’s University Press. xii, 244. $29.95 Errington’s most recent work on emigrant worlds offers a unique glimpse into the transatlantic experience of usually anonymous Britons who settled in Upper Canada in the years after the Napoleonic wars. Supplementing ‘information wanted’ notices from the colonial press with emigrant letters and diaries, she argues that emigration in this era was ‘an ongoing family affair’; everyone who placed a notice in the press ‘identified themselves within the context of familial and community relationships.’ Moreover, the process of emigration ‘created its own world and its own ways of thinking.’ Inasmuch as the experience of emigration, shaped as it was by polyvalent factors of identity and personal expectations, divided emigrants and made it impossible to distinguish a [End Page 278] single emigrant experience, the act of leaving home and crossing the Atlantic created a shared sense of identity among those who moved. The emigrant worlds created in the process were not only located on the Atlantic or in Upper Canada. They were found in reconstructed transatlantic communities that provided ongoing connections between kith and kin on both sides of the ocean. The extensive literature on migration history informs Emigrant Worlds and Transatlantic Communities. Errington situates her study solidly within this body of work, ensuring that she draws on a decidedly transatlantic perspective. Many studies are devoted to English, Irish, and Scottish immigration to Canada, but no one yet has tried to capture the migration experience itself from multiple points of view. Errington examines these perspectives through the five stages of emigration: the decision to leave or not; preparation for the journey; the Atlantic crossing; settlement in a new place; and the continued ties of the transatlantic world. The chapter that deconstructs the ‘nether world’ of the Atlantic voyage is the strongest. This transitory world ‘out of time and place’ was the defining experience of transatlantic migration. It was here, on the Atlantic, that the emigrant world took shape. And while it may have been out of time and place, the floating worlds of the Atlantic had their own rituals and rhythms that emerged from a blend of traditions from ‘home’ and the circumstances of the voyage itself. Just as rank defined British and Irish communities on land, so too did it prevail at sea. Social and economic hierarchy were most clearly expressed in the division between cabin and steerage class passengers. Not only did those in cabin class have more commodious accommodations, they also had access to the captain, another indication of their position in this mobile village. Interestingly, proximity to the centre of power as an indication of rank was reproduced in Upper Canada, where one’s relationship with the governor defined one’s place in the colonial structure. Those in steerage may not have had the rank of those in cabin class, but Errington demonstrates that they were not without agency. They also lived in a world punctuated by its own rules and patterns. Steerage committees organized an effective interface between passengers and the captain; they also ensured that the inevitable tensions of living in close quarters in less-than-ideal conditions could be contained and, in the case of violent outbreaks, controlled. For those who endured weeks or months at sea, the voyage defined their life experience. As they discovered when they finally made landfall, those ‘who left home between 1815 and 1845 were still emigrants when they arrived in the colonies.’ Even when emigrants eventually made the transition to ‘settler,’ the world they left behind remained integral to their awareness of who they were. Many made an annual ritual of marking their arrival in Upper Canada in their diaries, a testimony to their existence in two [End Page 279] worlds. Moreover, correspondence with ‘home’ recreated familiar bonds of family and community across the Atlantic. Emigrant settlers were well aware that their recreated world was an ‘imaginary’ one. Nevertheless, its existence reaffirmed their place in...

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