Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day but celebrations in his honour go on for a few weeks, starting in early March. Saint Patrick would be horrified if he knew what kind of revelling and beer drinking was going on in his name. Patrick was a humble, religious, gentle man, who preached and converted Irish from their pagan ways to Christianity. He most certainly wasn’t a party animal. At the time of his arrival in Ireland around 433, Ireland was a land of Druids and pagans. He often used shamrocks to explain the Holy Trinity and entire kingdoms were eventually converted to Christianity after hearing Patrick’s message.
But this column isn’t about St. Patrick. It’s about Ireland’s history that isn’t always truthfully told in history books.
Ireland’s history is that of a proud but oppressed nation. During the time of Cromwell and his invading armies, the Irish were dispossessed, the monasteries sacked and the evicted people then became tenants working the land for their ‘planted’ owners. Many of the landowners were absentee landlords, extracting rent from their tenants, and placing agents in positions of authority.
Produce from Ireland’s rich agricultural countryside was harvested, transported east and the larger amounts shipped to Britain for the absentee landlords and the British markets. The Irish, many of them tenant farmers on what used to be their own land, were allowed only to raise a small crop of potatoes, turnips and cabbage, their main diet. What little they had was shared with friends and neighbours.
Cargo ships hauling timbers from Canada to Britain were doing a booming business. The dirty ships weren’t built to take human cargo. But that’s what they did. It was economical to take humans in the timber holds from the British Isles and Ireland to Canada and the United States. When the Irish were faced with starvation at home, many took the “coffin ships” to Canada. Of the 98,000 people sailing to Quebec City in 1847, six out of seven were Irish. The immigrants had to take their own food along for the 45 to 60 days of sailing. If they didn’t have food they could buy it on the ship at exorbitant prices.
Suffering from malnutrition, the poor immigrants were easy victims to the typhus that was carried by the lice that moved from person to person in crowded holds of ships. Lack of sanitation, lack of washing facilities, no medical attention, and lack of ventilation fed the hunger of the pestilence that afflicted the immigrants.
On Telegraph Hill at Grosse Ile, the highest point of the rocky island, overlooking the wide St. Lawrence River, is a 60-foot high Celtic stone cross that was erected in 1909. It proclaims its message of grief. It bears three inscriptions. One inscription reads (in part): Children of the Gael died in their thousands on this island having fled from the laws of foreign tyrants and an artificial famine in the years 1847-48.
At the so-called Irish Cemetery are rows of white token crosses. The mass burials — three deep in individual wooden boxes (coffins) — are clearly visible in rows. The ground has a depression — sagged in considerable over the years.
There is a memorial on the island with the names of the thousands of people who died while on the island. There is also a memorial to the Doukabors who were quarantined on the island in the late 1800’s.
No one died while at Grosse Ile during the last 10 years of operation thanks to medical advances. That’s just some of the sad but fascinating history of the island.
Maynard van der Galien visited the island in 2006.
