On 15 September 1896, nearly a thousand people prepared to board a steamer in the port of Montreal, headed for Santos, Brazil, and on to the coffee plantations of São Paulo, while a crowd of a few thousand pleaded with them to stay. Families were split as wives boarded without husbands, or husbands without wives. While many prospective migrants were convinced to get off the boat, close to five hundred people departed for South America. Ultimately the experience was a disaster. Some died on board the ship, others in Brazil; yet others became indigent labourers on coffee plantations or beggars on the streets of São Paulo. The vast majority returned to Canada, many of them helped back by British consular representatives. While the story was widely covered in the international press at the time, a century later it is virtually unknown. In Mad Flight? John Zucchi consults a range of primary and secondary sources, including archival material in Canada, Brazil, France, and the United Kingdom, to recreate the stories of the migrants and open up an important research question: why do some people migrate on impulse and begin a journey that will almost inevitably end up in failure? Historical studies on migration most often account for successful outcomes but rarely consider why some immigrant experiences are destined to fail. Mad Flight? uncovers the history of an otherwise little-known episode of Canadian migration to Brazil and provokes further discussion and debate.

John Zucchi is professor in the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University.

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"Histories of failure have much to teach us about the human experience, even if only in the ways they complicate our understanding of how individuals navigate networks of power in the pursuit of a better life. Mad Flight? is a short, but riveting, book that tells the story of nearly five hundred migrants who left Quebec for Brazil on impulse in 1896. An engaging read that will undoubtedly generate further discussion and research in the field." University of Toronto Quarterly

"A fascinating study of the ethnic and social history of late nineteenth-century Quebec and what drove people to migrate, as well as a significant and welcome addition to the social history of free labour and the coffee plantation system in São Paulo." Oliver Marshall, King's College London and the author of English, Irish, and Irish-American Pioneer Settlers in Nineteenth-Century Brazil

"This little-known story deserves to be told and John Zucchi's hypothesis of 'mad flight' is intriguing and innovative in the Canadian context." Yves Frenette, Université de Saint-Boniface

"John Zucchi has unearthed the fascinating story of a group of almost 500 Canadians (or residents of Canada) who decided in 1896 to accept recruiters' offers to emigrate as agricultural workers to the state of São Paulo, Brazil ... Revealing a mostly forgotten link between Canada and Brazil, Mad Flight is of immense value." Canadian Historical Review