This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/0AC.2ACI/2616.1.1 Message Board Post: Thanks very much for the response and information. I will get a copy of MacKay's book. From the research I've done so far I understand that cost of passage to Canada was much cheaper than to the US. Ireland was part of the UK at the time as was Canada so that appears to be another factor in that being the point of emigration. There were more ships from England to Canadian ports because they could bring lumber back to England and have a more profitable voyage. As MacKay noted, many of the ships themselves were actually cargo vessels. There were also landlords in Ireland who chartered vessels for estate tenants and sent them to Canada. Some of the estate owners paid their passage and others just literally shipped them off and they had to pay their own way, often winding up as indentured servants in Canada. Since the landlords often converted the tenant farms to grazing land for sheep and cattle (much more profitable and easier to deal with than the tenants), the tenants choice was literally to emigrate or die. Once they arrived in Canada and the US they literally had nothing to lose and were much more forceful in their approach than they were in Ireland. The rioting actually doesn't surprise me at all. There were many riots by Irish Catholics in the US too during the 1830s and even later. The Draft Riots in New York City and parts of upstate New York in 1863 were the worst riots in US history, far surpassing any of the Civil Rights riots in the 1960s for damage and loss of life. They threatened to burn the entire City down. New York State Irish even organised a march on Canada in 1866 to remove Canada from English rule. Eilis O'Hara