Irish Newfoundlanders

According to the Statistics Canada 2016 census, 20.7% of Newfoundlanders claim Irish ancestry (other major groups in the province include 37.5% English, 6.8% Scottish, and 5.2% French).

[1] However, this figure greatly under-represents the true number of Newfoundlanders of Irish ancestry, as 53.9% claimed "Canadian" as their ethnic origin in the same census.

Some went on to other North American destinations, some stayed, and many engaged in what has been called "to-ing and fro-ing", an annual seasonal migration between Ireland and Newfoundland due to fisheries and trade.

[9] To Newfoundland the Irish brought family names of southeast Ireland: Wade, McCarthy, O'Rourke, Walsh, Nash,[10] Houlihan, Connors, Hogan, Shea, Stamp, Maher, O'Reilly, Keough, Power, Murphy, Ryan, Griffin, Whelan, O'Brien, Kelly, Hanlon, Neville, Bambrick, Halley, Dillon, Byrne, Lake and FitzGerald.

The many Newfoundlanders with the surname Crockwell (Ó Creachmhaoil) derive from 19th Century immigrants from County Galway, in the west of Ireland.

Many of the island's more prominent landmarks having already been named by early French and English explorers, but Irish placenames include Ballyhack (Baile Hac), Cappahayden (Ceapach Éidín), Kilbride and St. Bride's (Cill Bhríde), Duntara, Port Kirwan and Skibbereen (Scibirín).

[citation needed] But the majority of the Irish were Roman Catholics, and they brought with them a version of Catholicism which was strongly marked by belief in fairies, magic, omens, charms and protective rituals.

[14] It also played a part in the greatest early challenge to the Catholic Church, when the Reverend Laurence Coughlan, a Methodist preacher, managed to convert most of the Newfoundland North Shore in the 1760s largely because of his fluency in Irish.