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The saddest place in Canada

By Mitchell Smyth Meridian Writers’ Group GROSSE ÎLE, Québec—Row after row of white crosses mark the saddest place in Canada, a cemetery on this island in the St. Lawrence estuary downstream from Quebec City.

By Mitchell Smyth

Meridian Writers’ Group

GROSSE ÎLE, Québec—Row after row of white crosses mark the saddest place in Canada, a cemetery on this island in the St. Lawrence estuary downstream from Quebec City.

Melancholy seems to ooze from the hard soil for this is the burial place of thousands of dreams... the dreams of a people escaping starvation and eviction. In one year alone, more than 5,000 men, women and children died on this island.

Today the island is a National Historic Site, with memorials to the thousands of emigrants, mostly Irish, who died here. And a museum tells the whole tragic story.

Epidemics such as typhus and cholera, which ravaged Europe, were brought to North America on the emigrant ships in the early 19th century. Quebec City was the gateway to Canada — and for many bound for the United States, too — and to stop the spread of disease the colonial authorities established Grosse Île as a quarantine station where emigrants would be examined before landing. That was in 1832.

Its biggest test came in 1847 during the Great Famine in Ireland. Ninety thousand emigrants poured in that summer; six out of seven of them came in the “coffin ships” — so-called because thousands died on the way — from Cork, Limerick, Galway and Belfast.

In the famine years of 1845-1849, the Grosse Île record shows, 7,556 people died here, 5,424 in the year 1847 alone, when the ships brought an unwanted passenger: typhus. Their names are engraved on a Plexiglas wall of an outdoor memorial near what is still called “the Irish Cemetery,” in the western corner of the island. Eight of the 11 panels in the wall record the grim toll from ’47.

The island was overwhelmed by the massive human cargo that summer. Ships queued up for kilometres to land the healthy, the sick and the dying, and the disinfection units and the hospitals bulged at the seams.

Grosse Île was in use as a quarantine station for 105 years, until 1937, by which time medical advances had made it obsolete. Later it was a government agricultural research station, then in the 1980s it became a National Historic Site, called the Irish Memorial.

Today visitors tour about 30 buildings, such as the disinfection quarters, the three “hotels” where healthy passengers stayed until they got clearance to proceed, the Anglican and Catholic chapels, and the lazaretto (quarantine hospital). Park rangers give guided tours and a trolley takes visitors around the site.

Something like 30,000 people visit each year. Most stop for a while at the huge Celtic cross that stands on the highest point of the island. It was erected almost a century ago by the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), an Irish nationalist organization.

The opening ceremony in 1909 was attended by some emigrants who had passed through Grosse Île in the famine years. Some of them were Irish orphans who had been taken in by Québec families, who brought them up as their own.

Every year, in August, the AOH holds a memorial pilgrimage to Grosse Île, to remember the tragic events of 1847.

 

Access

The Irish Memorial National Historic Site, on the south bank of the St. Lawrence River, 48 kilometres east of Quebec City, is open from mid-May until mid-October.

For more information visit the Parks Canada website at www.pc.gc.ca/grosseile/ .

For information on travel in Québec visit the Tourisme Québec website at www.bonjourquebec.com .

 

 

 

Making a meal of Quebec history

 

By John Masters

Meridian Writers’ Group

QUEBEC CITY—A traitor is in our midst. Two dozen of us are seated at five long wooden tables, eating dinner. The conversation is pleasant, but one of us has sold secrets to the enemy.

That’s the conceit of “Council of War,” an innovative, interactive way to let visitors learn a little Québec history and get a meal at the same time.

We are in Martello tower number two. It’s one of four squat, round towers built of thick stone to defend against the Americans in the War of 1812. It sits on the Plains of Abraham, famous for the battle between Wolfe and Montcalm in 1759 that gave the British possession of what had been French-held Québec.

No battle was ever fought here during the War of 1812, but military intelligence was sold, for $50,000, to the Americans, and someone in this room did it.

At the Council of War, 10 dinner guests are selected to play the parts of actual historical figures. As the meal is served, the 10 act out a short scene that casts suspicion on them all. It’s then up to the rest of the diners to determine who the real culprit was.

The quality of the entertainment depends largely on how well the “actors” throw themselves into their roles. The evening I attended was probably about average: two or three were thoroughly into it, adding flourishes and ad libbing, a few read their lines haltingly and without conviction.

The food, on the other hand, is always the same: the typical evening meal a British soldier in the colonies would have had back then. There’s bread and cheese, soup, a green salad and a meat and potatoes stew, all served on tin plates. But it’s tasty enough that one of our group went back for a second helping of stew, saying “I could survive on this for a month.”

While we puzzle who the guilty one is our hosts, real actors playing Lady Elizabeth Lake and Captain Jean LeBreton, teach us how to load and shoot flintlocks, and discuss aspects of the soldier’s life in 1812. We know the food was decent, but learn that the discipline could be severe. Capt. LeBreton tells us that “a soldier could legally be whipped 1,000 times in 1812. We have records of one being whipped 800 times in Québec.”

Our hosts also pass around historical objects a British soldier of the time would have known and ask us to identify them. Most are mystifying.

Then, over tea and dessert (plum pudding with hot sauce — a treat, since only officers would have had it), we fill out ballots with our guesses of whodunit. More suspense follows as our choices are whittled down by the hosts until at last the evildoer stands revealed.

A satisfying evening ends with a tour of the tower. You can also visit Martello tower number one, which is a museum, but there’s no meal and no drama. There’s also no wine. It isn’t supplied here, either, but, this being Québec, you’re welcome to bring your own.

 

Access

The Council of War is held weekly in July in August. Most shows are in French, some are in English.

For more information visit the National Battlefields Commission website at www.ccbn-nbc.gc.ca and click on “Activities.”

 

PHOTO

Participants in the “Council of War” at Martello tower number two get dinner and learn to fire flintlocks.

Photo by John Masters/Meridian Writers’ Group