• Irish and Scots in the Maritimes
• Alexander MacDonell, Upper Canada's first bishop
• Bishop Michael Power:A martyr to duty
• Quebec and the Irish famine, 1846-48
• The beggar bishop: Armand de Charbonnel
• Western Canada: The Gospel takes root
• The Irish worker in Toronto
• Six days thou shalt labour
• Total pages 155

As the Foreword to CATHOLICS IN ENGLISH CANADA points out, this is a first popular attempt to let English-speaking Catholics know that they have a history. That history turns out to have many fascinating aspects. Few of us realize, for example, that life for Irish Catholics in Newfoundland in 18th century was a kind of purgatory. One Michael Keating, for example, lost all his possessions and was sent into exile because he let a priest say Mass in his fish store!

Many great men come into this account - Alexander Macdonell, first bishop of Kingston, who could get along well with the Anglican Archbishop of Toronto and members of the Orange Lodge but not with Toronto Irish Catholics; Michael Power, first Bishop of Toronto, who helped tend the fever-stricken famine Irish who had arrived by ship and died of fever himself; and the legendary figures who helped open up the west, such as the Black Robe voyageur, Father Lacombe.

But the book mainly gives us an impression of the struggles which very ordinary people had to undergo in order to keep the faith in an often hostile environment, and guard it for their posterity. Our Canadian Catholic pioneers deserve a book like this, and it does them justice.

Dr. David Dooley
Professor Emeritus
St. Michael's College
University of Toronto