Toronto’s Irish Heritage: a bus tour

Posted by conference on September 5, 2009 under Blog: New Postings, Delights Stream, Tours and Events, Visiting Toronto | Be the First to Comment

Toronto was home to a vast number of Irish immigrants who settled here from the city’s beginnings as the Town of York in 1793. On Friday, May 14, you can join the Toronto’s Irish Heritage bus tour for a day exploring the Irish connections in Toronto.

The tour will begin at the Conference 2010 hotel. Participants will travel by chartered bus to Ireland Park on Toronto’s waterfront. The Park, opened in 2007, commemorates the arrival of some 38,000 Irish Famine refugees who inundated Toronto (population 20,000) in 1847.

We will continue on to the Corktown area of Toronto, named for settlers from County Cork, and explore various venues where they lived and worked, including Little Trinity Anglican Church. Participants will relax over lunch at Enoch Turner Schoolhouse, the oldest existing ‘free’ school in Canada.

In the afternoon we’ll visit the splendid St. Paul’s Basilica in Toronto’s first Roman Catholic parish, established in 1822.

We will continue our journey to the Necropolis Cemetery and the Cabbagetown neighbourhood of Toronto. Cabbagetown’s name has its roots from the cabbages and other vegetables that were grown by the thrifty Irish immigrants who settled in the area. Cabbages grew readily in the sandy soil and provided an excellent food source. The Necropolis was the second non-sectarian cemetery in Toronto. Opened in the 1850s, it provided the final resting place for a number of Irish immigrants who lived in the area and worked in the factories along the Don River. We will also visit the graves of other people who helped shape our history such as Thornton Blackburn, an escaped slave from Virginia who provided the impetus for the underground railway into Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie a leader of the 1837 Upper Canada Rebellion and Joseph Burr Tyrrell who found dinosaur bones in the Alberta Badlands.

Watch for more details about the Toronto’s Irish Heritage Bus Tour when registration opens this fall.