welcome niall o’donell, emigrant!: a chronicle of lower canada

Welcome Niall O’Donell, Emigrant!
Volume 1, Chronicle of Lower Canada

In 1828, 14-year-old orphan Niall O’Donell leaves Ireland for the new world. By good fortune, on the crossing he meets John Neilson, editor of the Québec Gazette, and a member of the Quebec Legislative Assembly. This chance encounter changes the entire direction of young Niall’s life. With his patron, Mr. Neilson, Niall heads to Lower Canada, learns French, and becomes a reporter.

In his job, he has a front row view as the relationship deteriorates between the British colonial government and the inhabitants of the colony-French, English and Indian.

Niall’s life in Lower Canada is not all politics. He meets charming young women, makes friends, encounters jealous sons, employees and rivals, and uncovers unscrupulous mountebanks as he grows to manhood. His love of dogs, horses, and the outdoors stands him in good stead as his work as a journalist takes him into the countryside to learn about life of in the rough, sparsely-inhabited interior.

When he travels to the principal city, Montréal, to report on elections, the simmering violence erupts. Then Cholera arrives on ships bringing immigrants from overseas, and an epidemic of disease and death sweeps the colony. As tragedies shatter the lives of his friends and adopted family, Niall suffers the blow of star-crossed love.

Jan Morgan’s novel reads like the most exciting fiction, yet it is solidly based on fact. She says, ＂I have been as conscientious as any doctoral student in digging up the past, in reading the primary documents, the newspapers, the letters, and in being as accurate as possible about the known historical facts. Where I have diverged from university practice is to reconstruct what went on when no facts are known.＂