Gaelic Organizations in Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Ontario

Abstract

This article offers a brief summary of the history and activities of Gaelic organizations in Ontario in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It examines how Ontario Gaels thought about themselves as a distinct group, what particular people considered to be valuable or disposable aspects of their ethnicity, how they negotiated between their ancestral inheritance and the expectations of Angloconformity, and how contemporary values and events conditioned internal and external perceptions. It concludes that previous commentary about Scottish and Gaelic organizations in Ontario contrasts with the Gaelic texts produced by and about these groups.