The ghosts of Grosse Ile

On of the major ports for Irish Famine immigrants, Grosse Ile is in the St. Lawrence River, just east of Quebec. It contains the largest Famine cemetery outside of Ireland.

Those who survived the trip and could not be accommodated in the Grosse Île hospitals were transferred to Windmill Point, another quarantine area where almost 6,000 Irish died from typhus. The sick were crammed into poorly built quarantine houses called “fever sheds” where the Grey Nuns of Montreal acted as nurses, many contracting illness themselves.

Meanwhile the city of Montreal was in a panic over the epidemic. According to John Loye, his grandmother Margaret Dowling witnessed “a young Irish girl, stricken by the disease…dressed in a nightgown and holding a tin cup in her hand.” The girl had wandered into the city of Montreal and was apprehended by a policeman to keep citizens away from her for fear of contamination. “A military cordon had to be established around the area of the sheds to contain the infected immigrants,” Loye said.

When workers began construction of the Victoria Bridge in the area in 1859, they uncovered the remains of immigrants who had died of “ship fever” at Windmill Point. Wishing to commemorate the victims, the workers erected a large boulder from the bed of the St. Lawrence River as a natural tribute to the 6,000 Irish who died in 1847. Officially the “Irish Commemorative Stone,” most Irish and locals know it simply as “Black Rock.”

Though the death tolls were high at Grosse Île and Windmill Point, large numbers of Irish were able to get through the port, arriving in Toronto during 1847 and 1848. Between May and October of 1847, more than 38,000 Irish arrived at the Toronto waterfront. The city’s population was only 20,000. Some of the city’s officials and religious leaders were sympathetic to the Irish people, setting up “emigrant sheds” and offering medical care. Typhus and cholera, however, remained a danger as many invalid Irish had been allowed to leave Grosse Île and enter Toronto due to lack of resources. These “healthy” Irish could barely walk when they arrived, and those who could often developed the fever only weeks later. An entry from Robert Whyte’s 1847 Famine Ship Diary describes starving, homeless Irish families succumbing to the harsh Canadian winter. Just as before, more and more fever sheds were built, ineffectively run and infecting doctors and nurses in the process. By the end of 1847, 1,100 immigrants had died.

Toronto’s Ireland Park now serves as a memorial site for the Famine Irish. The park features Rowan Gillespie’s “The Arrival” sculptures, a response to his “Departure” figures that stand on the Liffey quayside in Dublin and depict Irish men, women and children waiting to leave Ireland on ships. The Ireland Park figures are just west of Reese’s Wharf where the immigrants landed and south of where the fever sheds were built.

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Nster.com