The Contribution of Irish Immigrants to the Quebec (Canada) Gene Pool: An Estimation Using Data from Deep-Rooted Genealogies La contribution des immigrants irlandais au pool génique du Québec (Canada) : une estimation à partir de données généalogiques

European settlement in Quebec (Canada) began in the early 17th century, with the arrival of French pioneers. After the British Conquest in 1760, immigrants from the British Isles began to settle in some parts of Quebec. Many of these immigrants were Irish Catholics. Historians and genealogists have identified several names of Irish origin in the French Canadian population, and many scholars have wondered about the importance of the integration of Irish migrants and their descendants within this population. The purposes of this study are to identify and characterize the founders of Irish origin to estimate the importance of their genetic contribution to the contemporary Quebec population, and to measure the variability of this contribution according to the founders’ period of arrival and county of origin in Ireland. Data was obtained from a set of 2,223 ascending genealogies going back as far as the early 17th century. The average genealogical depth is a little more than 9 generations, with many branches reaching 16 or 17 generations. Although Irish founders explain less than 1% of the total Quebec gene pool, results show that nearly 21% of the genealogies contain at least one Irish founder. These founders contributed to the peopling of all regions of Quebec, but there are some important Preliminary results of this study were presented at the Sixth European Social Science History Conference (Amsterdam, 22–25 March 2006), the Annual Conference of the Canadian Association for Irish Studies (Ottawa, 14–17 June 2006) and the 56th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics (New Orleans, 9–13 October 2006). M. Tremblay (&) M. Letendre L. Houde H. Vézina Interdisciplinary Research Group on Demography and Genetic Epidemiology, Quebec, Canada e-mail: [email protected] M. Tremblay H. Vézina University of Quebec at Chicoutimi, Quebec, Canada L. Houde University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Canada 123 Eur J Population DOI 10.1007/s10680-008-9170-x