Grosse-Île in Quebec - The last resting place for over 6000 Irish Souls: "s a strange feeling seeing the disinfection sheds with their huge metal furnaces, their large wire cages built to hold the clothing and property bags and the little shower cubicles with multiple showerheads. For some unknown reason it put me in mind of the European concentration camps.
There were 9 English speaking in our group, all with Irish connections, and one of the group had carried out a family search tracing his maternal great grandmother back to her departure from Ireland in 1834. He thought she may have arrived in North America through Grosse-Île.
As we made our way around the island we came upon a recent memorial erected in 1997 for the 150th. commemoration of the Famine. Our President, Mary McAleese, visited the island in 1998 for the official opening of the new monument.
It was a large circle of stones measuring about 30 feet in diameter. A cross pathway dissected it and down one of the paths was a string of iron sculptures shaped like ship sails and red from rust, very similar to those of the fountain in Galway's Eyre Square. All around half of the perimeter were 12 glass panels, each one interlinked and standing about 10 feet high.
The upper two thirds of each panel bore lists of names from 1832 onwards and the lower one third of each panel"
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment