Montreal, which in 1847 had a population of about 50,000, received 70,000 Irish refugees at the time — the equivalent of about 2.4 million refugees today
MONTREAL — While Montreal is generally viewed as a mixture of British and French influences, look closely enough and you’ll see the Irish have left their mark — including the 6,000 who lay buried in unmarked graves in the city’s Sud-ouest neighbourhood.
For over a decade, Montreal’s Irish community has lobbied authorities for a park on the spot to serve as a more fitting memorial for the stone and the bones it guards, which historians believe to be the first-ever memorial to those affected by the potato famine, and the biggest Irish gravesite outside Ireland.
Keyes said he’s been touched by how the people at Hydro-Quebec, who are almost all francophones without Irish heritage, have embraced the project, offered funding and held numerous meetings with the community. Keyes said the city has also jumped on board, and now, instead of moving the stone, there’s talk of instead moving four-lane Bridge street so the stone could sit in the centre of the new green space.
As he paused by the crumbling greystone of the Grey Nuns former hospital, he described how three successive orders of nuns volunteered to nurse the sick, knowing full well that many of them would contract the illness and die.
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