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There are twice as many Irvings in Canada as in the United States. Many Irvings came from Scotland or Ireland to Canada's Atlantic provinces--Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PEI, and Newfoundland and Labrador.
Three Irvings arrived in New Brunswick in the early 1820's:
- George Irving and his wife Jane, from Dumfriesshire
- another George Irving from Dumfriesshire, this time married to Agnes
- and two brothers, John and Henry Irving, from Ulster.
The first George had a son named Kenneth Colin and, two generations later, a Kenneth Colin Irving was born in 1899 in Bouctouche, New Brunswick. Known as KC Irving, he went on to found the Irving industrial empire, one of Canada's largest, which remains New Brunswick based, privately-owned, and run by the family (through his three sons - James, Arthur, and Jack - and their children).
In Prince Edward Island, several Irvings settled in the area just north of Charlottetown; they named the town Bonshaw, after Bonshaw Tower in Dumfriesshire.
Another branch of the family, having settled originally in Jamaica, moved to Newmarket, Ontario, in the mid-1800s. These Irvings were descended from William Irving of Woodhouse, then of Bonshaw; they named their new home "Bonshaw," and it still stands in the area today. Sir Æmilius Irving, eldest son of Jacob Æmilius, was a barrister of some note, and served two terms as Member of Parliament. He was also an avid genealogist, who collected a vast amount of information about his family line, which he compiled into a book entitled "James Irving of Ironshore and his Descendants: 1713-1917."
If you have Canadian Irvings in your tree--whether they're from the East, the middle, or Canada's West Coast--feel free to link them to this project.