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 CHAMPLAIN
MONUMENT
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Like
all
great cities, Quebec has a history that encompasses all the elements of
epic drama: iconic characters, battles for power, the majestic, and the
mundane. Founded in 1608 by Samuel de Champlain and this year
celebrating its 400th anniversary, it is North America’s oldest
fortified city. The Vieux Quebec quarter of the Haute-Ville, the upper
village with its winding cobblestone streets and 17th century stone
houses, sits high above the St. Lawrence River on the cliffs of Cap
Diamant, almost regal in its position, still proud of the role it once
played as guardian to the riches of the New World and the gateway for
its profits.
It was this geography that made Quebec City an almost impregnable
trophy over which to wage bitter and relentless warfare. A part of New
France since the reign of Louis XIV, it was laid siege by British
troops during the Seven Year’s War, culminating in a battle fought on
the plateau just outside the walled fortress known as the Citadelle.
During the fight, both sides lost their leaders to mortal wounds: the
defender, Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, the Marquis de Saint-Veran, and the
British commander, General James Wolfe, neither of whom witnessed the
French surrender.
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lasting but twenty minutes, the outcome of the Battle of the
Plains of Abraham was monumental: within four years, all of France’s
possessions in eastern North America, with the exception of Louisiana
and the tiny islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon off the south coast of
Newfoundland, came under British control. The actions of the combatants
from both sides, likely the consequence of error and chance as much as
bravery, have been elevated to the heroic, and are commemorated in a
50-foot stone obelisk built in 1828 that overlooks the St Lawrence
River from the Parc des Gouveneurs, bearing the name Montcalm on one
side and Wolfe on the other, and engraved with the words “Courage gave
them a common death, History a common fame, Posterity a common
monument.” |
Yet
it was a conflict that almost never happened; more than a decade
earlier, as a young aide-de-camp at Culloden, the battle in Scotland
that marked the final defeat of the nearly triumphant troops of Bonnie
Prince Charlie, Wolfe refused a direct order from the Duke of
Cumberland, the King’s son, to shoot a wounded Highland major, offering
instead to resign his commission rather than kill a unarmed man,
risking in the act his own death for disobedience.
The dominion of British in North America was itself threatened during
the American War of Independence. Under the command of Colonel Benedict
Arnold, some 1,100 American troops marched to Quebec through the
wilderness of Maine in one of the most astounding military expeditions
of all time. Fighting starvation, poling inadequate bateaux against the
current of the Kennebec River through the late autumn, with many of the
troops succumbing to smallpox and fatigue, about 600 soldiers arrived
in November at the shore opposite the fortified city. After futile
attempts to encourage surrender, and reinforced by additional colonial
regiments from Montreal under command of General Richard Montgomery,
the American troops crossed the St. Lawrence on the eve of the new year
of 1776, their assault under cover of a severe blizzard.
But it was all in vain, the months of hardship and cold endured by the
men, with little but rags to cover themselves against the Canadian
winter: with Arnold wounded, and Montgomery killed by grapeshot set off
in futility by a retreating British sailor just as the American general
and his men breached the barricades, the colonial army withdrew,
fighting a rearguard action through the spring as they retreated toward
Montreal, Lake Champlain, and the sanctuary of northern New York.
And though Quebec returned to its peace in the years following
America’s independence, it was not immune to an appalling tragedy.
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THE FUNICULAR RAILWAY
ASCENDS IN THE BACK GROUND
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A BIT OF HISTORY AMONG THE EVOLUTION
PROVIDES
A POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHIC
SUBJECT
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Grosse
Isle is a small island in the middle of the majestic St.
Lawrence River, some 30 miles east of Quebec. It is one of the islands
of the 21-island Isle-aux-Grues archipelago, with shrub-lined bays
ringing its coast, the grass a brilliant emerald in the northern
spring, its fields sprinkled with a spectrum of colors from the
wildflowers that grow abundant, a haven, a fairy scene that masks its
legacy as a quarantine station to protect British North America from
the cholera and typhusbrought by European.
In the year 1847, at the height of An Gorta Mor, the Great Famine of
Ireland, during which over a million of its poor died of starvation and
disease, ships carrying refugees from that blighted land spread out
over the Atlantic. News of the famine in Ireland, and the diaspora that
would ultimately send over a million Irish across the globe, had
reached Quebec, and a hospital was set up on the island, equipped to
service 200 patients. Yet the most vigorous response by the citizens of
Quebec to the impending disaster and the plight of the people who would
soon arrive, a response born of their contempt for the Irish and their
prejudice against them, was utter disregard.
The first ship, the Syria, arrived in May, just after ice-out, carrying
over 100 passengers ill with the fever, and the hospital and its single
doctor were soon overwhelmed. Over that summer, hundreds of ships lay
at anchor in the St. Lawrence River, in a line extending some 12 miles
northward from Quebec City, awaiting permission to disembark its cargo
of human suffering on the shores of Grosse Isle: those who had survived
a sixty day crossing of a turbulent Atlantic, those who had died en
route, and those thousands who in a few short weeks after setting foot
on this redemptive shore, would die, alone and un-consoled, in the
fever sheds built to quarantine them, on the ground outside of them, or
in the holds of the ships that had brought them, of the same typhus
that had killed their relatives, their friends, their ship mates.
In a wooded valley on the island, there is a monument that commemorates
those who died. Its inscription bears subdued testament to their memory:
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In this secluded
spot lie the mortal remains
of 5,294 persons
who, flying from pestilence
and famine in
Ireland in the year 1847
found in America
but a grave
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Of
the more than 100,000 Irish emigrants whose destination was British
North America, the records show that some 17,000 died during the
voyage, and another 20,000 in Canada itself, in Quebec, Montreal,
Kingston, and Toronto. Yet, the number of deaths was much higher than
that, perhaps as much as twice-fold; many of the dead, in some cases
entire families or neighborhoods, were interred in open pits, going
nameless to their graves, their life’s end passing unrecorded and
without ceremony.
Those who survived the ordeal of Grosse Isle made their way to America,
such as one John Ford, who carved a farm out of the wilderness of
Michigan, raising a family in the Great Lakes that included his
grandson, Henry, the automaker. But many stayed, especially those
children orphaned by the ravages of the fever and adopted into
Quebecois families. Today, the Irish constitute the second largest
ethnic group in the province of Quebec, after the French-Canadians
themselves, and as many as 30% of the Quebecois have some Irish
ancestry, most of whom are the descendants of the survivors of Grosse
Isle. |
HOLY ICON ON THE WALL
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On
the Rue Couillard, a narrow side street just below the city hall in
the old section of Quebec, a shamrock, the enduring symbol of the
Irish, hangs high on the wall of a building that dates back to 1749 and
was once used to store the ammunition for the town’s fortifications.
Below the shamrock is the entrance to the Pub St Patrick, its presence
standing as witness now to the city’s Irish heritage, a heritage that
began in the shadow of the Grosse Isle tragedy.
But it is hardly a tragic place. At one time a photography studio, then
a pharmacy, it opened in 1993 under the ownership of the Barre family
as a tribute to their ancestors, and greets the visitor now with the
same spirit of hope and resiliency that brought the Irish to these
shores over a hundred and fifty years ago.
There are six rooms in the pub. The main room sits under a high
ceiling, brightened in the day by the skylight above it. Five other
rooms branch cave-like into the interior of the pub, with thick stone
walls and ceilings that form an arch overhead. Fireplaces stand ready
for the boreal winter, and scenes of a more pastoral Ireland hang
against the stone. A mural, celebrating the lives of the early
settlers, the voyageurs and traders, fills a room with the pleasures of
the feast. And of course, there is much testimony to the undeniable
benefits of stout to general well-being.
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COZY NOOK
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ARCH SHAPED DINING ROOM
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it is the bar in which the visitor finds the most welcome. Chairs
and tables huddle together, inviting the exchange of conversation and
craic that whets one’s thirst. And it is a thirst that can be quenched
with the brews of Canada such as La Fin du Monde, St. Ambroise Pale
Ale, and Blanche de Chambly. |
THE LIVELY BAR AT ST PATRICK PUB
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But
it would be best perhaps, in the shadow of the spirits of Grosse Isle,
to
raise up a glass of the same beers that have for centuries given solace
to the souls of the Irish: Guinness, Smithwick, and Kilkenny.
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THE AUTHOR'S SMILE SAYS IT ALL
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