Why did large numbers of Scots leave a temperate climate to live permanently in parts of the world where greater temperature extreme was the norm? The long nineteenth century was a period consistently cooler than now, and Scotland remains the coldest of the British nations. Nineteenth-century meteorologists turned to environmental determinism to explain the persistence of agricultural shortage and to identify the atmospheric conditions that exacerbated the incidence of death and disease in the towns. In these cases, the logic of emigration and the benefits of an alternative climate were compelling. Emigration agents portrayed their favoured climate in order to pull migrants in their direction. The climate reasons, pressures and incentives that resulted in the movement of people have been neither straightforward nor uniform. There are known structural features that contextualize the migration experience, chief among them being economic and demographic factors. By building on the work of historical climatologists, and the availability of long-run climate data, for the first time the emigration history of Scotland is examined through the lens of the nation’s climate. In significant per capita numbers, the Scots left the cold country behind; yet the ‘homeland’ remained an unbreakable connection for the diaspora.

For most of the nineteenth century, the Irish formed the largest non-French ethnic group in central Canada and their presence was particularly significant in Ontario. This study presents a general discussion of the Irish in Ontario during the nineteenth century and a close analysis of the process of settlement and adaptation by the Irish in Leeds and Lansdowne township. Akenson argues that, despite the popular conception of the Irish as a city people, those who settled in Ontario were primarily rural and small-town dwellers. Though it is often claimed that the experience of the Irish in their homeland precluded their successful settlement on the frontier in North America, Akenson's research proves that the Irish migrants to Ontario not only chose to live chiefly in the hinterlands, but that they did so with marked success. Akenson also suggests that by using Ontario as an "historical laboratory" it is possible to make valid assessments of the real differences between Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics, characteristics which he contends are much more precisely measurable in the neutral environment of central Canada than in the turbulent Irish homeland. While Akenson is careful not to over-generalise his findings, he contends that the case of Ontario seriously calls into question conventional beliefs about the cultural limitations of the Irish Catholics not only in Canada but throughout North America. Donald Harman Akenson is professor of history at Queen's University and the author of numerous books on Irish history, includingIf the Irish Ran the Worldand the acclaimedConor: A Biography of Conor Cruise O'Brien. His most recent book is the groundbreakingSurpassing Wonder: The Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds.