Plagues of the Past
Eileen Manion
“It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of a skunk.”
Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
The Irish Commemorative Stone or The Black Rock was hauled out of the St. Lawrence River in 1859 by workers building the Victoria Bridge when they came across a mass grave of about 6000 Irish immigrants who had died a little more than ten years earlier.
It’s inscribed:
To preserve from Desecration the Remains of 6000 immigrants
who Died of Ship Fever. 1847–48.
Since no official memorial had been erected, the workmen of “Messers. Peto Brassey and Betts” took it upon themselves to dedicate the rock to the forgotten dead.
Today the Stone, located on a Bridge St. median, not far from Costco, is not very impressive. You could drive past it dozens of times and miss seeing it. But I wanted to get a closer look, so I walked through an industrial area near the port and then crossed a large parking lot.
Plans to improve the site by building an attractive memorial space around the Stone were announced a few years ago, but so far they are still in the fund-raising stage.
As we grapple with contradictory advice and conflicting strategies on how to deal with our corona virus pandemic, it might be comforting to think about some diseases from the past that we don’t worry about now — at least not in North America in the 21st century.
How about typhus or ship fever as it used to be called since many immigrants caught it on crowded ships?
Although we now know that typhus is a bacterial disease transmitted by body lice who bite one infected person, and then feast on another, 19th century Montreal citizens did not have access to this information. Infectious diseases like typhus or cholera were thought to be caused by miasmas — bad air endemic to poor neighborhoods.
If you can take showers and wash your clothes on a regular basis, you can cross typhus off your anxiety list.
But there are still other reasons to reflect upon past epidemics.
They crossed the Atlantic on what they called “coffin ships” because so many sickened and died on them. As they arrived in Montreal, they were regarded as disease carriers and forced to crowd into a Point St. Charles ghetto.
Although they shared with French Canadians their Roman Catholic faith and their grievances against the British, the Irish, who spoke English, were looked upon with resentment and suspicion. Many Quebecois were forced to emigrate to New England and seek jobs in American factories when thousands of Irish arrived in Montreal.
Today we can congratulate ourselves on improved hygiene, as we’re constantly reminded to wash our hands; nevertheless, some of the attitudes that stigmatized the sick in the 19th century persist, despite progress in scientific understanding of infectious diseases. Irish immigrants who came to Montreal in the midst of the 1847–48 potato famine obviously had no access to indoor plumbing.
When, for example, someone succumbs to Covid-19, we try to figure out how it was somehow their own fault.
Did they venture into a crowded elevator? Go to a bar? Get a hair cut?
Scientists were able to sequence the genome of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 in a few weeks, but politicians dither on committing the necessary funding to public health.
Challenged by unprecedented dangers, we look for someone to blame. In their fear of bubonic plague, people in the Middle Ages scapegoated the Jews Today we see a dramatic rise in hate crimes directed against Asians and bizarre examples of irrational violence resulting from common sense requirements to wear masks in public.
The Irish in Montreal have not lost sight of their troubled history. Every year at the end of May there is a tradition of walking from St. Gabriel’s Church in Point St. Charles to The Black Rock to remember those who died because those in power did not value their lives.
The potato famine was caused not just by a blight that ravaged crops, but also by British landlords who insisted on collecting rent, and by an imperial policy that regarded Irish peasants as expendable.
Today we know that Covid 19 has a disproportionate effect on marginalized groups: First Nations people, the incarcerated, the poor, the old, the homeless.
Some government officials have implied that such people, like the 19th century Irish, are expendable.
Making it worth remembering this sad piece of Montreal history when others were blithely sacrificed to disease and death.
