William Bryan's journey from his birthplace in Ireland to his final resting place on Manitoulin Island would not have been an easy one. Born into a family of tenant farmers in Ireland in 1816, his life was destined to be difficult. An absentee English landlord made the rules by which his family had lived for generations, and those rules were harsh and unforgiving. The arrival of the Great Famine in 1845 made an already difficult situation untenable.

Like so many Irish in those dark times, Bryan boarded a "coffin ship" headed for Canada. Whether that was by choice or the result of an unscrupulous landlord ridding himself of the young man by promising him that a job would be waiting in Canada when he arrived (he wouldn't have been the first or the last to succumb to such trickery), these ships were packed to the rafters with people living in cramped, unsanitary conditions with little in the way of food or fresh water. If they didn't die of starvation or dehydration, they were subject to the kind of outbreaks that thrive in such conditions: cholera, dysentery and typhus.

Upon arriving in Canada, Bryan would have been quarantined at Grosse Isle in the St. Lawrence River in what was then Canada East (now Quebec) alongside any other shipmates who survived the crossing. Many would die in quarantine from the diseases they picked up on the voyage, but Bryan was one of the lucky ones. Upon leaving the island, he made his way to Canada East (now Ontario), settling in an Irish community northwest of Toronto where he quickly found work as a farm labourer.

While anti-immigrant and anti-Irish discrimination were commonplace in 19th century Canada, Bryan had a few things working in his favour. He spoke English and, unlike so many of his fellow Irishmen, he was protestant. These two things alone meant he would have faired better than many new immigrants. Because he had also been a farmer in Ireland prior to fleeing the famine, it was relatively easy for him to reestablish himself as such in Canada. Within a few years, he was operating a farm in Erin, most likely under lease.

Then the government of Canada began building colonization roads in the mid-1940 to encourage European immigrants, who at the time were largely clustered in settlements along the shores of the Great Lakes, to permanently settle a much greater geographic area. Bryan was able to obtain a land grant and finally achieve his dream of owning the land he farmed, a feat he would never have managed in Ireland. The better life he had been seeking in Canada was within his grasp.

It would all be undone in the end, of course. The toxic mix of heavy drinking, poor decisions and a violent temper would ultimately lead to an argument with neighbours that proved fatal. By that time, the Bryan family was entrenched in Canada and continues to thrive to this day, making William Bryan ultimately successful in achieving his goal even though he would not live to see it.

The oil painting depicting the harbour and waterfront of Montreal was created in 1847 by Andrew Morris, the year Irish immigration to Canada peaked as large numbers of Irish fleeing the Great Famine arrived. Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.