Irish community shocked by sale of cherished site
Had dreams of memorial park for famine refugees who died in 1847
For five years, members of Montreal’s Irish community have been working on plans for a park to memorialize the 6,000 famine refugees who died here in 1847’s Summer of Sorrow.
Now, the sale of the site of the proposed park appears to have dealt a death blow to the plans to commemorate North America’s largest Irish Famine burial ground.
On Tuesday, organizers learned the Canada Lands Company, a federal agency, has sold the land near the Victoria Bridge to Hydro-Québec.
Given that they had been working with all levels of government to bring the memorial park to fruition, the news came as a total shock, said Victor Boyle, national president of the Ancient Order of Hibernians and a director of the Montreal Irish Monument Park Foundation.
“After all, we have met with every level of government, from the local borough mayor right up until the local MP, Marc Miller, so repeatedly that these guys know our shirt size. And they promised that they would keep us in the loop,” Boyle said.
Johanne Savard, a spokesperson for Hydro- Québec, confirmed that the utility is acquiring the lot at Bridge St. and Des Irlandais St. to build a new electrical substation.
Savard said the new substation is needed to supply the future Réseau électrique métropolitain (REM) train as well as the growing population of Griffintown.
She declined to reveal further details on the sale, which will close at the beginning of July, as did Manon Lapensée, a spokesperson for the Canada Lands Company, the federal agency that owns the vacant land.
The news comes just a week before the annual Walk to the Stone, when community members walk to the Black Rock in the median on Bridge St. It commemorates the impoverished Irish immigrants who escaped the Great Famine, only to die of typhus on Montreal’s waterfront in 1847.
Workers building the Victoria Bridge, completed in 1859, carved the memorial on the giant rock after discovering a mass grave.
The typhus victims died in fever sheds on the waterfront. (Now, the river is farther away because landfill has altered the shoreline.)
It’s unacceptable that the monument to a tragedy of that scale should be in the middle of a busy artery, Boyle said.
“There’s 6,000 people buried around where the stone sits right now, and look what we have for a memorial,” he said.
Boyle noted that while other North American cities, like New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Toronto, have memorial sites for famine victims, Montreal, whose monument is the oldest, does not.
Speaking to journalists at City Hall, Mayor Denis Coderre said he supports the proposed memorial park and has not lost hope for the project.
“We will look at how can we make it happen,” said the mayor, who refused to give specifics.
“The contribution of the Irish is also part of the legacy of the 375th anniversary, so the Grand Marshal in me is telling you that we want to do something about it and we will take a look at it,” said Coderre, who was Grand Marshal of this year’s St. Patrick’s parade.
The project also has support from the Irish government, which could be prepared to contribute financially, said Michael Hurley, a press officer at the Irish Embassy in Ottawa.
“We would strongly support this community initiative to preserve Irish heritage,” he said, noting that his government has provided funding for other famine memorials, including the one in Toronto.
Marc Miller, the MP for Ville Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des Soeurs, said he has been pushing for the project for years.
“I feel that it’s an important memorial in terms of the Irish contribution to the world,” he said.
Miller said a clause in the sale by Canada Lands to Hydro-Québec obliges the utility to erect a memorial to the Irish victims near the new substation.
However, that probably won’t satisfy those who have worked long and hard for the project, he said.
“It won’t make me happy and more importantly it won’t make the Irish and other stakeholders happy,” he said.
Jason King, a historian in Dublin and adviser to the Irish Heritage Trust, called the news “devastating.”
There is tremendous interest throughout the Irish diaspora in famine burial sites, he said.
“Every North American city where the famine Irish arrived in significant numbers has a major monument except Montreal,” said King, a former Montrealer who moved to Ireland in 1997.
“The paradox is that in Montreal, the Black Stone is the oldest famine memorial. It’s also the most neglected and the least appreciated,” he said.
Boyle said the tragedy of 1847 is important to all Montrealers.
“Much as the tragedy of what took place in 1847 is an Irish story, the bigger story is the number of Montrealers — French, English, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, that all came down to that site, that horrible site. It was mired in mud and sickness and disease, it was the hottest summer on record, yet all these people came from their homes and went down to see if they could help,” he said.
Mohawks from Kahnawake contributed food, nuns and other volunteers nursed the ill and families adopted Irish orphans, Boyle noted. Many caregivers died, including the then-mayor of Montreal, John Easton Mills.
“The story that we’re hoping to preserve is one that Canada sticks to today. Look at the refugees that we accepted from Syria. The rest of the world was holding them at arms’ length and we embraced them, just like we did the Irish in 1847. That’s the story we want to preserve,” he said.
The Walk to the Stone will be held Sunday, May 28. For information, visit www.montrealirishmonument.com