After the Famine

"""Irish social and economic responses to the Famine have been widely studied in Ireland, but not in Canada, at the other end of the emigration chain. Identifying this gap in scholarship, Edward J. Hedican draws on census data, church records, local news sources, and family records to provide a dynamic longitudinal picture of life of Irish-Canadian farmers during this transitional period."" --Regna Darnell, Department of Anthropology, Western University ""Admaston Township, Renfrew County, Ontario, with its limited agroclimatic potential was not a Garden of Eden for the dozens of Irish immigrants who settled there in the latter years of the Famine and its immediate aftermath. But it did represent opportunity for improvement of self and family, particularly in the third quarter of the nineteenth century and before continuous cultivation of wheat had exhausted the meagre agricultural resources. Hedican investigates the experience of this settler community by means of family reconstructions and application of theoretical modelling, and his anthropological analysis provides many striking, and sometimes provocative, insights into a community in transition between subsistence and commercial agriculture. It is an in-depth study that transcends its local base and contributes significantly to the rich corpus of studies of the Irish in Canada."" --William J. Smyth, President Emeritus, Maynooth University, Ireland"