EGAN, JOHN M.P.P
Publication
28 February 2023Born, Lissavahaun, County Galway, Ireland, 11 November 1811. Died Québec City, Québec, Canada, 11 July 1857.
Author: Michael McBane
From birth into a poor Catholic farming family in the west of Ireland to wealthy lumber baron and much loved Member of the Parliament, John Egan’s life was a spectacular transformation wrought by the combination of his natural talents and the opportunities provided in the Ottawa Valley. He had left for Canada aged 20 with few resources and little education. By the time he died of cholera aged 46, Egan had used his business and political pre-eminence to develop the lumber industry, encourage Irish settlement, secure land for the Anishabeg reserve, support the campaign to make Bytown a capital city, and help lay the foundations for liberal democracy in pre-Confederation Canada.
John Egan was born in 1811, the youngest of William Egan’s three sons, in the townland of Lissavahaun in the Parish of Aughrim, County Galway. During Egan’s youth in Ireland, Daniel O’Connell’s popular movement for Catholic Emancipation, the right of Roman Catholics to vote and sit in Parliament, sparked a Protestant backlash. It was led by the Orange Order, a secret society and exclusively Protestant organization dedicated to defending their interests in Ireland against Catholic advances. This is where John Egan’s world began and where he developed his sense of justice, and his resolve to fight sectarianism and bigotry. His world was also shaped by the ending of the Napoleonic Wars which brought economic depression to Ireland while boosting the strategic value of Canadian lumber to Britain.
The transatlantic timber trade, supported by a protective tariff, enabled emigration from Ireland. Without it, there would have been no fleet of empty timber ships to transport hundreds of thousands of Irish emigrants on return trips to Quebec. The Ottawa Valley attracted Irish Protestant farmers with offers of cheap land and Irish Catholics who found work on the Rideau Canal and then the growing lumber industry which sourced and squared timber for transport to Montreal and then across the Atlantic to Britain and Ireland.
Lumber was the life-blood of the Canadian economy with much of it coming from the Ottawa and Gatineau Valleys by mid-century. Operations cutting, squaring and transporting the great pines were conducted simultaneously on almost every stream emptying into the Ottawa River between Pembroke and Ottawa. The complex logistics were as challenging as the physical risks. Yet by 1854, John Egan & Co. (J.E. & Co.) employed 3800 men in one hundred lumber camps. No one lumberman had ever directed an enterprise of such magnitude. Egan’s company was of tremendous importance for the entire Ottawa Valley. As well as employing thousands directly, his business was a major purveyor of farm supplies and river transportation.
Egan was a man with a social conscience who never forgot his Galway roots. Ottawa Valley Irish emigrants made up the bulk of J.E. & Co.’s workforce. Egan endeared himself to many Irish settlers by selling them land at fifty cents an acre, with an indeterminate time for payment. In the early 1850’s, Egan even advertised affordable steerage passage from the ports of Cork, New Ross, and Donegal for family and friends of the Ottawa Valley Irish.
As well as raising a family of nine children with his wife Anne Margaret Gibson and running his many businesses, Egan entered politics, elected mayor of his hometown, Aylmer, Quebec, in 1847. Between 1848 and 1857, as the elected representative of Ottawa County (then ‘Pontiac’), Egan worked tirelessly to encourage government support for public infrastructure in the region.
John Egan believed Irish emigrants came to Canada, not only for economic opportunity, but also to escape the inequality, injustice and sectarianism of life in Ireland. He was determined to prevent sectarian divisions influencing the Canadian social order.
In a sectarian time, Egan was a Catholic convert to Anglicanism and was comfortable with both religious traditions. He was a bridge-builder and mediator in an age when ecumenism was rare. The English and French residents of Lower Canada tended to live as two solitudes, with Bytown on the faultline between Ontario and Quebec. Egan had business partnerships and friendships with French Canadians, including Joseph Aumond, Jos. Montferrand and Louis Joseph Papineau, and was well respected in the francophone community.
Egan’s anti-sectarian politics helped bridge the ethnic and linguistic solitudes of Francophone Lower and Anglophone Upper Canada decades before the arrival of Thomas D’Arcy McGee. Egan’s words written in 1841 resonate still: “Ireland…has suffered long & much [through] a party spirit which has had the effect of forcing many of the peaceable & well disposed, to emigrate to another land. Do not allow such conduct here; let all national and religious differences be buried in oblivion.”
Egan the lumber baron politician defied stereotypes. The lumber community in the Ottawa Valley was politically conservative and hostile to the notion of responsible government that devolved power to local executives. Egan rejected the Tories and embraced responsible government. The economic and social elites lived in a world of privilege and greed. Egan maintained solidarity with emigrants, the working poor and people in need. The lumber trade was notorious for drunkenness and violence. Egan encouraged temperance among his shantymen and acted as conciliator in local disputes. In a rough business, Egan dressed as a refined gentleman. Lumbermen opposed the granting of land to the Algonquin community of the Gatineau River. To Egan’s lasting credit, he played a pivotal role that helped secure land for what is today the thriving Kitigan Zibi Anishinàbeg.
Egan facilitated the economic integration of thousands of newly arrived Irish into Canadian life, notably throughout the Ottawa and Gatineau Valleys. He played an important role in advocating for Bytown as the permanent capital of Canada. In a world of election violence and fraud, Egan supported free and fair elections. He practiced the politics of inclusion that enriched Canadian political culture and contributed to the building of a liberal democracy in Canada. His untimely death robbed the region of an innovative business leader, a tireless advocate for his adopted city, a community bridge-builder, and a leading political figure at ease entertaining the elite of British North America, as he did when Governor General Lord Elgin visited the frontier town. The passion and compassion of this generous Irishman made Ottawa a better place in his lifetime. Egan’s contribution to public life would yield fruit in a future he did not live to see but bears his mark to this day.
Further Reading:
Richard Reid “Egan, John,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Vol. 8, U of T/Laval, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/egan_john_8E.html.
Michael McBane, John Egan: Pine & Politics in the Ottawa Valley, Ottawa, 2018.